EASTER JOY FROM GUATEMALA

EASTER JOY FROM GUATEMALA

April 20, 2014

Friends and Family,

Guatemala Mission                                              

I am writing this letter on Easter Sunday. Holy Week is over.  Beautiful customs, traditions, and beliefs are part of Holy Week celebrations.  The Passion and Death of Jesus is re enacted, with great drama and color, in small towns and cities, in the streets, and in churches. On Holy Thursday, families share bread with friends and strangers. Washing of the Feet of the Disciples, and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, are part of our Holy Thursday Church Services.  On Good Friday, the Passion and Death of Christ, is dramatized on the streets of every town, and in Church liturgies.  In the past, the climax of Holy Week was Good Friday.  The Church has always emphasized the Resurrection, but only recently has it become the focus of celebration here. Following Easter Vigil, images of the Resurrected Christ and Mary, the Mother of Sorrows, are carried on shoulders of Parish Youth, and come together, in front of the Church, for the “Encounter”! Images of Mary, the Sorrowful Mother, and the Resurrected Christ, bow to one another, as the youth genuflect with the images.  Bombs, music, fireworks fill the sky with glorious songs! “CHRIST IS RISEN”, IN OUR LIVES.

I want to thank you, for your generosity and caring for the POOR, in the Clinica Maxeña. I thank you for your private donations and your support of the ACA Campaign of the Diocese of Helena, MT.  Our Guatemala Mission is in its 50^th year, our “GOLDEN JUBILEE”!  THANK YOU!

Please Continue to support our Clinic                     Check out Facebook for

Donations can be sent to:                                             CLINICA  MAXEÑA

Guatemala Mission                                              Diocese of Helena

P.O. Box 1729

Helena, MT. 59624 

NOTE FOR CLINICA MAXEÑA

                                                                                               

EASTER BLESSINGS

Sheila McShane 

Diabetes and Cancer with the POOR

We are coming to the end of the year 2013.  Our Clinic was founded in 1966.  So many years have passed.  We have been present to the PEOPLE in their lives and sufferings. Our very first clinic had a dirt floor, no light or running water.  Myself and another young nurse came as Papal Volunteers for Latin America.  Our commitment was for three years...I have witnessed many changes, progress and suffering. In the year of 2014, we are witnessing, a decrease in funds for our work, as our Diocese struggles with economic issues. The Coffee harvest and salary for field workers is unjust; there is hunger and disease among the POOR.  The Diseases are more complex and costly to cure.  Diabetes is pandemic in the World. Guatemala has over 1 MILLION Diabetics, according to the newspaper report on November 14, 2013.  Cancer is also diagnosed more frequently in the Clinica Maxeña but treatment centers for the POOR do not exist.  The Clinica Maxeña also performs Papanicolau exams and has succeeded in arresting this cancer, with chemotherapy and radiation, in a few women; others have not survived, following minimal treatment provided by the Center for Cancerlogia, INCAN, in Guatemala City.  INCAN is the only CANCER CENTER in a Country of 13 Million population!  A Project for the NEEDY, of Sister Anna, ANGEL PROJECT, helps defray costs for Cancer patients of the Clinic. . Today, a special BREAST cancer patient with Lung metastasis, Maria, will be buried.  She spent the last night in our clinic with oxygen, before dying in our car, as we took her home to be with her family.
Here she stands in her kitchen, over a year ago.  The treatment did give her more time to be with her six children, for awhile longer.

Thank You for your interest in the People of Guatemala and the CLINICA MAXEÑA!

Preparing for WORLD DAY OF HUNGER and The Eye Brigade!

Friends and Family,
We have been very busy at the Clinca Maxeña. We are pleased that the Clinic has a new roof.  Our own worker, Martin, head of maintenance, designed and directed the construction to completion. All are pleased with the success of this project.

The 34th Eye Brigade of Opthamologists, and surgical team of Nurses,

are arriving on October 20th, so we have little time for clean up and set up, for this important Medical service. We have over 300 signed up for eye consult.

We are also celebrating tomorrow, WORLD DAY OF HUNGER, in our GOOD LIFE booth.  Usually we would have this in front of our Parish Church, on a Sunday; time does not allow the workers preparation time. We decided to have a smaller event, in our Good Life Booth, in front of the clinic.  Our Team of Sustainable

Agriculture, are directing this endeavor. We will share without cost, all natural organic snacks,  which includes organic coffee, from our Coffee Cooperative, established by our Mission in the sixties, wheat bread, organic tortillas made fresh on site on an Onil stove, black beans with Xipilin,  a natural herb, from our garden. Most in our audience will be patients awaiting consult. There will be lots of health teaching on diet, sustainable agriculture, and protection of the environment.

We are mostly seniors now at the Mission. Times are changing, as is the concept of Missionary, and the number of persons of Faith, who work in foreign countries, for their Church. We have to embrace change, as our work moves into the hands and hearts of local people. Thank You.

A picture of our Good Life Booth on WORLD DAY OF HUNGER, and Martin, standing on our new roof of the Clinica Maxeña.

HAVE A GREAT DAY.

Midwives and a SPECIAL PATIENT

Good Evening Friends and family,

The Clinic is always busy.  More sick, more Poor with acute illnesses and less funds to help them.

One very special patient and her two young children come often to our clinic. Isabela, the Mom, is an epileptic whom we provide her medications.  She has several scars from falls and burns. She has two young children.  Their home is extremely poor and rarely is their food visible in the outdoor kitchen. Her husband is an alcoholic.  Isabela is in her ninth month of pregnancy. We have tried to convince her to go to the hospital to give birth but we know this will not happen.  I have become acquainted with her midwife and often visit and bring some food for her and the children.  I have gotten the infants clothes ready for birth and have seen the midwife materials for receiving the baby.  Manuela, the midwife, is visiting Isabela now every two days and her birth date nears.  She has at times slept in the home, even though Isabela is not yet with birth pains. Manuela is in her sixties and has been delivering babies in the area for the last 22 years. She lives about a fifteen minute walk from Isabela's home.

If you are following Facebook of the Clinica Maxeña, you are aware that Isabela did concede to go to Hospital for delivery of her baby.  She had a six pound baby boy, by Cesarean dilivery.  She is now back in the clinic and her two small children are accompanying her and enjoying their new baby brother, Diego.  A good ending makes all very well and all content.

Her living conditions of her home leave much to be desired. We hope to improve this situation when campus ministry students come in the Spring.  Stay tuned. Thank you for prayers and donations for our work in Health with Mayan population of this mountainous area.