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!
I apologize for my absence, more on that in a moment. Let me give a very brief rundown of what The Saultons have been up to this past year!
+Covid hit in March 2020 causing a complete shutdown in Guatemala. Air travel, buses, and cars were forbidden to travel, meaning thousands of men and families were put out of work right in the middle of harvest season. Families who lived on a meager $2/day now lived on nothing. Malnutrition and poverty skyrocketed. For us, we worked hard to fill in needs around the ministry. Whitney worked 24 hour shifts every 2-3 days and on her off days, Bryan would fill in cooking at the senior center. John just bobbled around completely clueless of the havoc around him. Babies, man. 🙂
+After a few months of serving very long, difficult hours (24 hour shifts in full PPE in the 100 degree heat while in your first trimester of pregnancy is no joke), we were fortunate enough to get one one of the very rare flights being offered out of Guatemala at that time. “We’ll ride it out for a couple more weeks and then it’ll be over” or so we thought.
+On July 8, 2020 my best friend Jazmyn welcomed her beautiful daughter Kira into this world. Her birth was complicated by postpartum hemorrhage, a very sick newborn with a scary diagnosis, then an alarming health complication meaning Jazmyn needed to be admitted to the hospital without Kira. Being here in the states meant we were able to step in and help her husband Jordan care for baby Kira and their 2 year old son Zuri. God was so gracious and He truly answered all of our prayers in that season! Many tears were shed, but God was so good to all of us.
+On September 28th, Guatemala re-opened their borders, allowing air travel again. We booked return tickets for our family of three, excited to return home and give birth to Flori in Guatemala. Just 2 days before leaving, we discovered Flori was no longer growing due to placental insufficiency. Carrying the pregnancy much longer meant risking Flori’s life.
+October 12, 2020 we welcomed our precious Florence Jane into our arms. Tiny, but healthy, our 4.5 lb Flori was discharged after only 3 days in the hospital.
+Early November, back-to-back hurricanes hit Eastern Guatemala devastating rural communities, roads, and completely washing out a village at the base of Hope of Life’s campus.
+In December, my sweet buddy Yolanda passed away. She was a patient of mine that I have known for over 8 years! She is already deeply missed.
+We enjoyed Christmas and the new year with our family and babies. We missed out on seeing so many people because of pandemic + preemie baby + flu and rsv season… Please feel our love, hug, and presence despite our absence! I also dealt with some pretty brutal postpartum anxiety + depression. Listen, if you are dealing with the same, Jesus is wonderful BUT SO IS ZOLOFT. Through medication, Pink Stork mood support supplements, and pressing into The Lord I think I am finally better. Could that be hope I see on the horizon?!
+In a season of waiting for Flori’s passport, my precious Granddaddy passed away. He had just celebrated 70 years of marriage to my loving Grandmother. His health had been declining, but it was unexpected. However, he didn’t suffer and we were still in the states and able to see him and take him a prime rib dinner just one week prior. For all of those things, I am forever grateful and able to see God’s goodness even in the midst of our sadness.
+The end of February and the beginning of March were crazy! We finally received Flori’s passport, we were able to book airline tickets, and receive both of our Covid vaccines. Finally, some breakthrough in this past year that has felt suffocating and dark!
Which leads me to say… WE ARE HEADING BACK TO GUATEMALA ON WEDNESDAY!
I know the transition will be hard but we are still excited to get back. Our hearts are so invested in the work God is doing in rural Guatemala! The price to pay for having our hearts in two places is that it is hard to leave, but it is also hard to stay. Although it hasn’t always been comfortable or what we expected, we have also enjoyed this slow season of being in the states. We already so deeply miss our family– John and Flori will especially miss their cousins and grandparents!
Talking about what we do sometimes feels so weird. I never want the focus to be on us. I never want the focus to be “Oh, poor Guatemala… Thank God YOU were there to help THEM.” No, the glory is not ours to enjoy. The praise goes to God alone. We just goes where He has sent us. In the same vein, because we have so many amazing financial supporters and people who carry us in their prayers, I do feel responsible to let you all know about all of the exciting projects we have supported over the past several months. Through your generosity, we have been able to regularly supply a village of 100+ families with food bags every month. We have been able to minister to mothers and families who were once patients of mine, and helped coordinate medical care through Guatemalan missionaries who travel into the regions where we work.
We look forward to keeping you posted on when we get back home to Guatemala. We’ve been gone far too long and have so much work ahead of us. We are ready to get these hands dirty again.
Until then– stay healthy, stay masked…
And know that you are loved. -Whitney
It’s pretty impossible to reduce our time here to just a few pictures, but here are just a handful of the literal hundreds that have been taken!
One of our last photos as a family of 3 <3
We were able to see our amazing friends The O’Connors. Such a fun time seeing friends who fill our hearts and souls (and tummys!)
John and his BFF Zuri!
John and his Great Granddaddy John!
Welcome, sweet Flori!
Snuggles with Daddy
Flori and her Great Granddaddy
Our last picture with Granddaddy and of course John is picking his nose haha!
Precious girl
Christmas babies
How cute?!
Family of four!
John loved the snow!
Flori and her big cousin, Sarah Jo
Aunt Rachel is a pro-snuggler
So thankful for this whole group!
Proud big brother
… and an even prouder big cousin!
Kira and Flori!
Loved seeing our friend Kleinert and meeting Damian!
She was a real life sour patch kid and the closest thing I would ever have to a little sister.
It’s ironic, really… when I moved to Guatemala I didn’t speak one word of Spanish. Yet the person I understood better than anyone else was Yolanda. A deaf teenager growing up in an extremely remote and extremely poor village in the mountains of Guatemala, she spoke her own unique sign language. Her family didn’t have the resources to care for her diabetes, so finding a school to teach her to sign was so far out of the picture that I doubt they even thought of it. It wasn’t until Hope of Life started sending her to a deaf school that she began to speak some Guatemalan sign language. Even still, she spoke her own way and it’s remarkable how well we understood each other. She wasn’t completely nonverbal though… her laughter was boisterous, the way she shouted my name was precious, and she would say (rather loudly) some pretty obnoxious things at inappropriate times… this unfortunately always seemed to happen whenever I was responsible for her and of course always in a public setting. These memories crack me up but also make me want to cry knowing I will never experience them again.
Typing this out is painful. I don’t want to put it in writing because I don’t want to believe it’s real… and I don’t know HOW to put in writing a relationship that ran 8 years deep. We weathered many storms “through sickness and in health” and I was privileged to see a side of her that not many got to see.
My selfie queen, my shadow, my sidekick, my sweet girl. I only wish I had gotten to hold your hand, braid your hair one last time, and say goodbye. I will love you and think of you forever.
“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.
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.
Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
It never takes long… when I pull out my small, see through bag filled with nail polish, the hospital mamas all come running toward me for a manicure. I wish I was able to describe to you how much they love this small act of being pampered. These are mamas that have lived tough lives– having dropped out of school, raising several children by the age of 18, and carrying gallons of water on their heads for miles when they are home in their village. The moments that I am painting their small, dirty, hardworking hands are some of my most cherished moments in Guatemala. It gives me a moment to speak to just them and get to know them personally… rather than my usual sweep through to ask medical questions about their babies. Having their nails painted is more than just some frivolous act of vanity. Rather, it is an opportunity to speak into them of how important they are and that they are loved.
This day was particularly exciting because I had finally replaced some of my old nail polishes with new ones I had received from the students in Ms. Kleinert’s class at Freedom Middle School in Spotsy, VA. As we meticulously lined them all up on the table, the mamas and little girls were enamores by the new packaging and fun, glittery colors. One of the more clumsy mamas excitedly reached across to grab the popular color, and we all watched as the color slipped through her fingers and shattered onto the floor.
The table of mamas all gasped, and she immediately bent down to try to scoop up the glass shards covered in paint and somehow salvage what was left. While I knelt down beside her to convince her it was okay, she looked at me with tear soaked guilty eyes. She was frozen in fear from a history of being abused. “It’s only nail polish, it’s okay!” I attempted to reassure her, as I reached out my hand to help her back up. But the expression on her face was as though she had committed the world’s worst crime. My heart shattered that day just like the nail polish.
John 12:1-11 is a beautiful story of a girl named Mary who intentionally broke open an expensive perfume to wash Jesus’ feet. Using her hands and her hair, she anointed his feet out of an act of love and service. This perfume was a rare gift and incredibly expensive. The small bottle that she used cost a year’s wages!
Those who were present during this moment judged her and called her wasteful for pouring out all of her precious gift. “The expensive perfume was wasted!” “You could have sold the bottle and given the money to the poor!” Despite what critics would say, Mary’s gift wasn’t wasteful. It was worship.
How many times have I allowed a critic’s opinion to interfere with my worship? I can remember when I had shared my crazy dream of living in Guatemala with others, and they responded with confusion, eye rolls, and disappointment. I don’t know where I would be now had I listened, but I know my heart would still feel a restless longing to be here in Guatemala had I stayed. While there are fleeting moments of me being a heroic nurse and saving lives, the majority of my time spent here are the small moments of holding hands, wiping up broken nail polish, and wiping up tears. It’s allowing myself to be broken and poured out in an area of the world that is desperate to hear about the hope of a God who would die and rise again for each of us.
A glimpse inside this family’s smokey home. This home is one room and has over 10 people living inside.
What I do can be so difficult to describe sometimes… I made a pretty detailed blog post about it a year ago… Click here to read more about child rescues at Hope of Life. What I love most about this program, is the opportunity to connect with the mommas. To let them know their need has been seen, their voice has been heard. It paints such a beautiful picture of how God sees and hears us, even in our most desperate moments.
Today, I want to give you a glimpse of some of the families we have been able to help. It’s a huge honor and blessing to be part of the Hope of Life team. 2018 is already shaping up to be a year filled with lots of healing and help here in rural Guatemala. Thanks to each of you that help support this. <3
This man works hard to try to provide for his family. Here, he is collecting corn kernels for about 40q (or $5/day)
He is 75 years old and has 15 children in this home. The youngest is malnourished because the mother has poor milk supply.
I hope this helps to provide some perspective. The disparity here in these mountains is great, Hope of Life is working around the clock to bring hope to those who need it most. Praise God.
