Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Heidi and Jentry go to Gautemala


This is the home of Byan Buchanan, the founder of Jungle Medic Missions, where Jentry and I along with 10 other team members from utah stayed during our medical mission to guatemala.


This is the one room ER on the first floor of the house where Bryan does anything and everything from delivering babies, suturing cuts and preforming minor surgery.


This is Bryan's ambulance. Jentry and I had the opportunity to go with Bryan on a call to a motorcycle accident. It was crazy! It is amazing to see the things that Bryan can do with such limited resources. Everything he uses from the high tech computer communication system right down to every strip of gauze has to be donated from somewhere.


Did I metnion that Guatemala is BeautifuL?

In the mornings we would hop on Bryan's school bus with all our medical equipment and travel to some of the most remote villages in Gautemala.



Here is the bus at a village all set up and ready for clinic.



Over 3 days of clinic our team saw and treated 700 people who otherwise would have NO medical care at all. To us it may not seem like a big deal to get some vitamins, have some skin cream applied, and recieve some tylenol, cough medicine, or tums but to people who live in the remote villages of Guatemala, it is a huge blessing.




This is a typical house in a jungle village. Thatched roof, plank walls, dirt floors, and just one room for a family of anywhere from 4 to 10 people.

They cook sleep and eat all in the same room. The girl here is making corn tortillas. The typical diet of a villager is three corn tortillas and black coffee for every meal. They do not know how to grow anything but corn and are not educated enough to know that the lack of variety in their diet is causing them to be malnourished.



Jentry had fun playing with the kids, he even taught them how to play paper rock siccors.

They also loved to have their picture taken and then be able to look at themselves on the camera. We had a lot of fun with them.



Now I know you are starting to feel a little sorry for us, but before you do just know we did a little more than work work work!

We also

Visisted a hot springs and jumped off a hot waterfall



Visited some ancient Mayan ruins (Tikal aka the "forset moon Endor")



And flew through the jungle canopy on a zip line tour!



We had a lot of fun but also worked very hard. Guatemala is an exteremly poor nation and the remote villages like the ones we visited are even poorer than the general population. If you would like to learn more about what you can do to help, or if you just want to see a little more about what we did please visit www.junglemedicmissions.org














1 comment:

Alyssa said...

LOVE YOUR PICTURES! :D i'm so glad you guys had such a good time!