So many tears have been shed these past couple days— tears of worry, tears of sadness, and plenty of tears of happiness! Today, I sat and wept with Walter’s mother who was so thankful for the cleft palate surgery he received at Hope of Life today.
As she wept, she shared the story of how many children in her village have died from complications due to cleft lip/palate. She wept as she remembered that 10 years ago, she was one of those very mamas who had lost a baby for this very reason. She wept as she reminisced of the day four years ago when she handed her one month old malnourished baby over to me. She couldn’t come with her baby because her husband wouldn’t allow it. When she ultimately refused to abandon her baby, he left.
When sleepy post-op Walter opened his mouth and she saw the new little palate, she wept again.
Today was all of the feelings.
In these remote areas of Guatemala, health issues are common and healthcare access is rare. On this #WorldHealthDay, I’m so proud of the work being done at Hope of Life to provide this basic human right to families who are unable to afford it but more than deserve it.
And more than ever, I am in awe at the beauty, the bravery, and the strength of these Guatemalan mamás. Providing what is a very basic service (in our eyes), is literally the life-changing help that keeps children alive and in their own families.
Thank You, God… for putting Your goodness on display through sweet little ones like Walter. 😭💞🙌🏻
When I think of strength, I think of Dulce. A young girl from Guatemala’s Corredor Seco, her father didn’t have the financial means to provide dire medical care for her.
4 years ago when we brought her to Hope of Life, I would have never guessed how resilient, intelligent, and sociable she was! Diabetes and malnutrition robbed her of many things in her life— her vision, her joy, her strength, and even her own mother were lost to these difficult diagnoses.
Through Hope of Life, she has received surgery to restore her vision, training to learn to manage type 1 diabetes all on her own, and dental care to restore her beautiful smile.
When I asked her if I could share these pictures, she latched onto me with the biggest hug. Somewhere between giggling and sobbing, she agreed and thanked me… but it occurred to me that her thankfulness needed to be directed to all of you, too.
To those who support us, pray for us, and encourage us… thank you for letting us do the work God has called us to. You generosity is part of Dulce’s story, too. Truly, stories aren’t always as hope-filled as this one, but God’s hands are always ever-present over us and the amazingly strong Guatemalans we get to work with. As we enter into 2022, we are so deeply thankful for our friends, family, supporters, and encouragers for keeping us afloat in this crazy world!
“Don’t forget to be faithful to do the thing you’ve been called to do. It’s easy to get distracted, much harder to stay focused. Nothing lasting is built without steadfast endurance, wisdom, & the ability to press through the unglamorous, unrecognized, unseen, & laborious middle.” Christine Caine
Today, and really just lately in general, have not been days that I want to place on the highlight reel of my life. Maybe it’s this season of being temporarily uprooted from our home and our work in Guatemala, maybe it’s the weird season we’re all in and all of the changes due to “the” virus, maybe it’s a little bit of a lot of different things… but today it all came crashing down on how I’m in this weird unseen middle. In my stubbornness and consternation, I sent myself to my room twice today until my attitude would improve– but that didn’t really happen until I stumbled across this quote from Christina Caine.
And I realized– I might not be where or who or what I want to be at this very moment, yet I am still called to be faithful.
For the past month, I have been grieving over sweet Brenda in the above photos. I was so worried about her returning home. Is she getting enough to eat? Is her mama doing therapy on her arm? Is she safe? I seriously thought of this precious girl ALL the time, and would whisper prayers for her safety throughout each passing day. At 3 1/2 years and only 13 pounds, her frail little body was shutting down when we received her. Could she survive the damaging effects of severe malnutrition? Miraculously, she nearly tripled her weight… but we had to discharge her to go home during a government shutdown and with the uncertainty of when we’d see or hear from her again. When I received word this evening that she doing well at home, nothing else mattered… not the things that I was mad about… nor the fact that I’ve experienced a lot of change lately and I’m just not good with changes. Knowing she was okay all of a sudden made everything with me okay.
Tonight was a beautiful reminder that when we are faithless, He is still faithful. In the anxiety and stress and confusion of this season, may we all be gently reminded of this.
I stepped outside for a few minutes today to remove my face mask. The heat index reached 110 inside the hospital, and every time I exhaled I felt like I was suffocating myself with my own hot air… meant to protect me, I felt like I was going to die if I had to breathe beneath my N95 for one more minute.
We’re weary. All of us. And we’re scared– but not in the way that we are timid creatures living in fear, but we are scared because we know the urgency and the weight of this situation and that when the time comes it will be US running fearlessly to the frontlines. Every single healthcare provider across the world is burdened, worried, and carrying the heavy responsibility to help others the best we can while doing no harm… even if it means that we are put in harm’s way.
Watching the medical system become overburdened in the United States is scary for those of us down here. I cannot count how many times I have had to resuscitate a child for an additional 30 minutes because all of the vents were “ocupado” at the first hospital we stopped at. Hearing just how loud silence can be as you intubate a baby– you see them screaming, but they don’t make a sound. What is overwhelming and devastating in the states could become catastrophic here in Guatemala where resources are less than limited.
The hard decision was made to temporarily “bar the doors” here at Hope of Life– nobody is allowed in, and nobody is allowed out. While I miss the luxury of being able to buy my own groceries or even pick up fast food on the weekend, I am willing to be part of the team doing what it takes to keep our vulnerable little babies safe… and behind the scenes, hard working Guatemalans have worked 15 consecutive difficult days to keep things running here. All masked. All gowned. All suffocating under their masks just like me.
I think the most difficult things about this quarantine, is that although we are taking aggressive preventative measures, life is still carrying on.
We are still watching babies like Santos gain enough weight so he can be strong enough for surgery.
At over 10 pounds, he has more than TRIPLED his weight in the past two months. He’s ready for surgery as soon as the travel ban is lifted!
We are still providing physical therapy for babies like Brenda whose bodies are reaping the long term damage from the devastation of severe malnutrition.
Playing with play doh to increase her strength and mobility in her right hand.I know this picture is graphic, but it is REAL. I am thankful Brenda came to us over a month ago before we had to stop accepting new admissions.
We are still watching miracles unfold before our eyes — just like sweet Franklin. Less than two months ago, he was cyanotic and in severe respiratory distress due to a cardiac condition called PDA. The Lord breathed life into Franklin’s lungs again by sustaining his little body for long enough to be rushed into urgent heart surgery. Now that he has a healthy heart, we anxiously await for him to start gaining weight. It’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen fast!
His smile! His tooth! His ever so little beginners belly! Those PINK nail beds!
And even though so much good is happening within our walls, my heart breaks for the families outside who need help. For the families whose children were starving before the government shutdown. For the parents who made two dollars a day and now make nothing as many jobs have been suspended. For the mama’s who are having to say “it’s not time yet” when their child is asking at 4pm when they can eat their first meal of the day.
We have already received word of one baby dying and many others who need our help. We are just waiting for the travel bans to be lifted, for the quarantine restrictions to be loosened, and for the world to have a better grip on things before we can risk opening the gates back up to allow others in for help.
I am begging you. If you are able to, STAY AT HOME. The sooner we flatten the curve, the sooner this goes away. The sooner this goes away, the sooner we can be out in the mountains again to bring in those who desperately need help. This is the heartbeat behind what I do and why we are here.
If this post stirs your compassion into action, I encourage you to support Hope of Life or one of the missionary families serving here. Closing the gates has also meant cancelling groups that visit here, which is a devastating blow to the ministry’s income. Were you planning to come here and had to cancel? I challenge you to pray about still donating part of your expenses. The gates may be shut, but the work is harder and heavier than ever. And even though God has called us into a season of doing work here that is HARD, it is HOLY as we are watching some truly miraculous things unfold in these children and mama’s.
I know greater things are yet to come. I feel it. I believe it. We’ve all just gotta make it through this season.
She hadn’t been in for a follow up appointment, so we were all worried. We were already reeling from the difficult news of another patient who passed away, so we were naturally guarding our hearts and expecting the worst. We travelled for hours, climbed down a steep mountainside, crawled through a dangerous rocky ravine, and limbo’d through rusty barb wired fences to get to her.
We approached their home carefully, the whole time praying she would be healthy and safe. When her grandparents saw us, they burst into smiles. “Just wait til you see Santos!” her grandmother grinned. Immediately, all my fears subsided.
Her mamá walked out of their house made of palm fronds. Santos Cecilia was in her arms with the biggest smile on her chubby face and her little belly spilling out of the bottom of her shirt! She looked absolutely perfect! We got them set up with a follow up appointment, but I was so at peace seeing how she is thriving at home.
I wish all stories were this successful. My heart longs for a world where poverty and malnutrition don’t exist. But until we see things “on earth as it is in heaven” we will continue doing whatever it takes to bring help to the physically and spiritually starving. God, protect these children until help can arrive.💛🙏🏻
May 2019 – the first photo we received of Santos Cecilia asking us to help. She was a month old and weighed under 5 pounds.
January 2020! Santos (mamá) and baby Santos CeciliaMay 2019 – Santos Cecilia’s familyDr Kyon Hood, his wife Victoria, and their family sponsored Santos Cecilia’s rescueWhat a difference several months can make!
Being on the frontlines of seeing babies grow and be saved is a high honor that I carry close to my heart. Watching their progress and sharing with others the work The Lord is doing through Hope of Life and the team at St Luke’s is one of my greatest joys. What we see is miraculous. But there is a darker side of my job that I don’t like to speak about very often…
Being on the frontlines also means you are the one there to hear a mother’s horrified crying as you carry her lifeless baby in a silk wrapped burial box. You are there to catch her as she almost collapses into the muddy hillside because grief and sadness have overcome her body… and she shakes as she sobs into your chest… and all the rain that falls cannot drown out the sight of your tears or the sound of her screams. Those moments are literally what nightmares are made of.
Today is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Day and also the International Day of Rural Women.
Could I just combine the two of these days to take a moment to spread awareness of the battle that the women of rural Guatemala face? The rate at which babies are dying in these mountains brings me to my knees.
In the past three days, we have lost three babies. One, I had prayed over for a night. One, I had prayed over for three weeks. And the other, I had prayed for over the past two years.
How deep it must hurt for you to read this post, know that it hurts even deeper for me to write it. To somehow try to formulate words for these traumatic moments, all the while knowing that their stories were beautiful even though the ending was ugly. And even deeper still is the hurt that I see in their mamás eyes and tear soaked faces. Maybe one day I will share their full stories, but today my heart hurts too much to write.
If nothing else— know that these babies didn’t die in vain. My friend Julia Homan said it best… “if this narrative softens the heart of even one towards those who look/talk/believe differently, then their short life will have served a great purpose.” Allow these stories to fuel you with a fire to have compassion for the women in Guatemala. Allow them to break your heart with the understanding that government corruption, violence, and a lack of support have left them without help and without hope… and babies are dying because of it. We cannot turn a blind eye to what is happening here in the Corredor Seco of Guatemala, these babies need our help. We pick up and push on to be harbingers of hope in this dry valley of hurt. And I share their painful stories so that their lives serve a great purpose.
One thing I know for certain, is God weeps when He sees what I’ve seen these past few days. And if you, too, have experienced loss and this day stirs up your emotions as well, He weeps with you too. He is close to the broken hearted. (Psalm 34:18)
Each of these three babies were deeply loved.
You are loved, too.
-Whitney
Erickson was 15 days old and weighed just above 3 pounds. Hope of Life set out for him the moment we heard of his case, but he passed away the next morning in a different hospital. His malnutrition was so severe it had already started shutting down his little body. Baby Rufino was 2 months and only 5 pounds. Along with malnutrition, he was suffering from pneumonia and his body was too weak to fight it despite several weeks of antibiotics and admission into the NICU at Chiquimula. And maybe the most difficult of all was the loss of our sweet Deisy. She gave me so much hope that things would be okay… but a long battle of chronic complications took her from us. She was loved by so many… even by my own mama. Allow each of these images to break your heart… so that these little lives will have served a great purpose.
“How sweet! She looks so healthy with her chubby cheeks!”
Sometimes malnutrition is easy to spot– a three month old clocking in at only 3 pounds, her ribs prominent, her crying only consoled by a bottle of milk that she quickly consumes.
But in other cases, malnutrition can be very difficult to detect to the untrained eye. Clothed and standing on a scale, a child can sometimes meet all the criteria to be deemed ‘healthy’, but through skillful assessment and observation, you can gain a more accurate picture of what is going on ‘beneath the surface.’ This type of malnutrition is silent and insidious and is claiming the lives of many children here in remote Guatemala. Hope of Life is fighting daily to reverse the statistics.
So, heads up… NERD ALERT. This purpose of this blog post is to give a little bit of medical perspective to what we see and treat daily here in Guatemala. Today, I am only focusing on the two types of acute malnutrition we treat most often here in rural Guatemala– Marasmus and Kwashiorkor.
When I woke up at 5am, I had already decided my mood for that day. I wish I could give you some fantastic missionary answer and tell you that despite my circumstances, I had chose joy… but I hadn’t. I was irritated. My face burned hot with anger, a trait that I unfortunately inherited honest from my Dad.
The night before, a transformer had blown, leaving our house and many others without power or water. The nighttime temps of course were in the 90’s, the air was still, and mosquitos kept zipping in through the windows and persistently buzzing around my face. I covered myself up with the sheet and got hot. When I’d uncover myself, the mosquitos went into attack mode on my arms and legs. Have you ever tried to sleep when you’re frustrated? It’s a vicious cycle of being angry that you can’t sleep, and not sleeping because you’re too angry to do so.
I learned in the morning that my frustration could become a vicious cycle too. When I got ready, I carried my frustration to me into work. I was tired, sweaty, covered in bug bites, I clearly had gotten ready in the dark, and I somehow managed to sit in a puddle of cat urine on one of the outdoor couches. I hate cats. At this point, my attitude was as ripe as my odor. Everything stunk.
It wasn’t until I pulled up the demographics of the baby we were going to get that I realized what an ungrateful piece of work I had presented myself as that morning. You would think that I live a life of 24/7 gratitude when you see the things I see on a daily basis. I love where I’m at, I love what I do, and I’m thankful we have air conditioning.. but it’s amazing how quickly I unraveled after a night without electricity and water.
We were heading to a really remote village La Ceiba in the mountains of Camotan to pick up a baby in a village that I’d visited many times before.
“Did you notice where we’re going?” Alfredo had asked me. I shook my head yes.
“How about the baby’s last name?” I opened the message with the baby’s demographics.
“He has the last name as Valentin,” I responded. It was then that I found out we were traveling to pick up the nephew of one of my patients.
The words in bold I had written that day were both salt and salve to my wound. It burned, knowing how I had acted like a petulant child that morning. It healed me, knowing that The Lord had provided me this 2+ hour long journey to pull myself back together. I bowed my head and prayed as hot tears welled up in my eyes. “Lord, I know it’s only 7AM and I have acted a complete fool. Please let me honor Valentin and honor you in how I carry myself today.”
When we arrived to the small house made of palm fronds, sticks, and plastic tarp, we were greeted by the same brother and sister in law who had presented Valentin to us. Only this time, we were there for their malnourished son. We all started crying as we reminisced Valentin’s earthly body. Though very sick for the last few years of his life, Valentin carried on a legacy of joy and great faith through every one he ever met. He never complained– despite years spent in severe poverty, severe sickness, and severe pain.
The Roque family — Valentin’s brother and sister in law and baby Victor. He is 2 years old and showing signs of moderate to severe malnutrition.
Could I ever be like Valentin? Could I ever be full of joy despite my circumstances and surroundings?
Romans 12:2 says “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Renewing of your mind. As I sat in the back of the ambulance, holding Valentin’s sick nephew, I realized how things truly come full circle. I pray that my mind is constantly renewed with joy, with gratefulness, and with patience. That even when I’m exhausted and covered in dirt, bug bites, and dry cat pee, that I don’t allow negativity to creep in. How dare I even for one second have the right to be frustrated, knowing later that day I would be face to face with a family that lost their young brother and was now struggling to provide for their malnourished baby. May we never forget the blessings in our lives. I pray my mind is renewed and the overflow is thankfulness, even, and especially, on the hard days.
