New Blog!

Well, if anyone sees this, whether by accident or for his or her insatiable desire to know about Jill and I, we have a new site, one dedicated to life post 2007. Do a click here.

From Bolivia

Hey, everyone. We are in La Paz! Tomorrow morning we take a bus to Cuzco, Peru and we´ll spend the weekend at Machu Picchu. The real reason that I started this entry was to post some great pictures that we have made here in Bolivia, but this computer doesn´t seem to like uploading pictures. It is funny, because this is the same computer that last time wouldn´t let me put up a title for the entry. Oh well...

We´re Not Dead!

Sorry about the lack of entries to the blog, especially considering the earthquake in Peru. Thanks for your concern and love! We have really been running around since Jill got here to try and see everyone and do everything that we can. Here is a quick photo update.

This is the head of surgery and I at end of the last surgery that I was able to attend. We took out half of 2 ribs that had a tumor attached to them... that´s right I said we. I scrubbed in and got to stick my hands in. The surgeon used a hammer and chisel to cut the ribs in order to take them out and you could see right into where the boy´s lungs were working. Also, if you look close, you can see that our scrubs are wet from sweat. It is hard work to pry open and hold open a hole in someone. The boy is recovering fine, but since this is his 3rd relapse, his prognosis isn´t too good...

Finally, Jill got here! And we kissed! She also brought me the new Harry Potter and we have been reading it out loud together.

This is the Lopez family that got baptized when I was a missionary here. The first night that Jill was here we went to the temple with them. Since my mission they have a new son in law, a new daughter in law, and two new grandchildren. They have all been sealed in the temple.


Osvaldo Lopez and I worked to get this group organized at the hospital. Osvaldo is the young adult leader of the church in his city and asked the girl to my left in this photo, Irene, to be a representative of the church in the hospital. She is a nursing student and wanted to volunteer, so now she comes twice a week to the hospital and coordinates projects between the youth of the church and the kids at the hospital. I also got around 120 beanie baby stuffed animals donated for them to hand out on Children´s Day last week.

This is the start of our vacation. We snuck across the border to go to Iguaçu Falls in Brasil. Technically you have to pay for a $100 visa, but we didn´t. The part that we are standing on is a platform that is on the edge of another waterfall, as in, you could look over the guardrail and down 150 feet or so. Iguaçu Falls is more of a complex of waterfalls than just one waterfall. It was very cool.


This is the church in Saltos del Guaira, an area on the border with Brazil where I was a missionary for 6 months. The man standing next to Jill is Felix, who is now the leader of the church in that area; he and his family have really been changed by their baptism.

The girl under the blanket is named Liz, Felix´s daughter; all of the girls were in love with Jill.

A friend lent us their little motorcycle to show Saltos del Guaira to Jill.

We have a change in the itenerary... tomorrow we will fly to Cochabamba, Bolivia, instead of riding the bus there. It will cut at least 40 hours of travel time and give us those precious hours to instead focus on Machu Picchu. We will also gain a little wiggle room for any situations in Peru. We are loving life! Once again, sorry about the last two weeks without any entries. We love you all very much.

To Paraguay and Beyond...

Yesterday I felt that I have had an experience comparable to John’s tumor, body cutting, tissue tearing ordeal. At my work we have the opportunity to house not only girls but horses as well. Horses are awesome to ride and fun to watch their teeth being worked on, and add a certain therapeutic element to treatment. Personally, horses are also scary. They are big and get spooked easily. They have metal on the bottoms of their feet and they weight so very much more than me. To me, they are unpredictable. Yesterday morning I went out with the girls to feed the horses. One of the girls, stroking the horse’s nose, began to shout. She had blood on her hand. I rushed over to see horse skin everywhere and a gaping gash through skin, muscle, and who knows what else between the eyes of the horse. Apparently he had collided with other horses in a rush to get his dinner (It looks about the same feeding 14 teenage girls at dinner!). Here is where John and my interests/reactions part. I felt sick and panicked seeing and the inner nasties out. I frantically started calling everyone I knew. One of the girls removed the horse and put him in a separate stall by himself while I was trying not to pass out. I stoked the horse while trying not to focus too much on his bloody head. I don’t know how John likes this cutting of tissues/bloody stuff! Gives me the willies!

On a different note, should anyone be interested I go to see John/meet Paraguay on Friday!!! YEAH!! I’ve been listening to a lot of Spanish and Portuguese music in preparation. I also followed a Spanish speaking family around in Wal-Mart for a few minutes until the kids started to notice me and stand around me speaking stuff I didn’t understand. I really am very excited to finally get why John loves Paraguay so much and learn to love it myself. I won’t be there very long, but I love people and places easily! I love John and can not wait to see his face again! Six weeks is plenty long and I want him back in my everyday life badly. I am so grateful for/to Jack and Pam – you have raised an amazing, smart, kind, thoughtful, hardworking and strong son. I like him a whole lot.

Well there is lots of work to be had and cleaning to do before departing. A bit of exciting news – I do have red tomatoes now along with ripe lettuce and beans!!!!! I originally put just a period after that sentence but realized it deserved so much more! Too bad I won’t really be here to enjoy the feast. None the less I do hold a small amount of pride in my meager accomplishment. :) Much love to all!

Surgery

Well, I got to see another surgery. This time I was there from the very beginning. The patient was an eleven year old girl with a large tumor below her lungs and near her aorta and kidneys. The doctors wanted to do a biopsy and evaluate the extent of the tumor growth, so they opened her up and looked around. I got to look over their shoulder.

The idea is really simple, "something is wrong, so let´s take a look." I mean, we have our insides with us all the time, but we don´t ever get to look at them, which is kind of sad in a way. It´s like being married to someone and living on seperate continents. It would be so cool to see how all our little organs do their thing, maybe we would be nicer to ourselves if we could see all our internal squishy machines working so hard to keep us going.

Simple idea, and they made the procedure look simple. They just cut her open, layer by layer, cauterizing any bleeds, until they had reached the abdominal cavity. Then they stuck their fingers in and felt around, then they stuck their whole hands in and felt around, then they cut a chunk out of the largest tumor in front for the biopsy. They showed me the aorta pulsing to deliver it´s cargo to the bottom half of the body. "Veedy dangerous," says the doctor. They are actually hoping that the tumor is malignant, because it has wrapped and attached itself to the aorta. With malignant tumors, you can do chemo and radio thearapies, but if it is benign, it will continue to grow and strangle that artery; the only option if it is benign would be a risky surgery to remove the growth from the aorta.

I also made a small change to the Mita´i website. It sort of looks cooler, I think. I have also been training one of the secretaries to update it and she has also been making a blog for the hospital itself.

This weekend I am going to Saltos del Guaira to see my friends Felix and Lili. As a missionary, my companion and I taught them so that they could get baptized in 2003. Their 2 sons Fernando and Alejandro were also baptized. I hadn´t heard anything from them since the mission, but it turns out that about a year and a half ago, Felix was put in charge of the church in that town.

One week till Jill gets here!! I am very ready to see her again and for her to see, hear, and taste Paraguay. I was going to put smell too, and Paraguay has a lot of good smells, but there may be more bad smells than good ones.

Beard Update

So I didn´t sleep but instead thought of something so here I am again. Here are some more photos. I took it just now using the timer, cause everyone is asleep. I like my beard.

This is a picture of Raúl and I. He is the real estate guy that took me to meet Cuevitas, the famous soccer player. Today was a really nice cool winter day with sun, and as you can see by the redness on Raúl´s chest, we sat outside all day after church and just talked. It was a good day today.

This is my beautiful wife, Jill! Did you all see her entry too? The other day she called and was really sad because someone weedwacked her flower garden. Then today she messaged me and told me that a dog dug up her vegetables.

Okay, this one doesn´t really have to do anything with the trip, other than the fact that I miss riding the scooter with my wife.

Superseis

This past week one of the things that I did was to make a powerpoint presentation for Mita´i to use in a meeting with the supermarket chain "Superseis." When you shop at Superseis they ask you if you want to round up your purchase to the next 1000 guaranies, and then they (supposedly) give the difference to charity. So Mita´i wants in on the action, hence the meeting and the powerpoint. I don´t know if they actually want me at the meeting, but we´ll see. The presentation was the result of a very long meeting that I had with the president of Mita´i, Monica. She is a well-to-do Paraguayan-German mother of a cancer survivor. Most of the meeting was her asking me questions about Mormons, sharing her feelings on almost every other religion, her husband´s job, her special diet of biblical foods, her opinion on international loans, and me listening while eating lots of food that her cook had prepared. Everyone who has even a little money here in Asuncion has a maid or a cook or a maid/cook. Sometimes I love the idea, but sometimes it drives me crazy. Like when Monica takes care of talking my head off and her cook takes care of everything else.

Something cool this week - I got to scrub in and see a surgery. I got there as the surgery was finishing;I went back to the surgical wing, introduced myself, and they said that they had a surgery going on right then and why didn´t I go watch right away. So they gave me scrubs to put on, and then the cap, face mask, and booties. Then they told me to wash my hands and just put me in the door. No introduction to the surgeon or anasthesiologist or anything. So I introduced myself and they welcomed me in and I watched as the surgeon stiched his little patient up. Everyone here is really confused when I tell them that I haven´t gone to medical school yet, because here you go to medical school right after high school. So they always ask if I´m a doctor, then if I´m studying medicine, then they are confused as to why a 24 year old kid wasn´t already in if not done with medical school. When I asked them what was wrong with the patient, they gave the diagnosis, which of course I didn´t understand. So I asked them what that was and they pointed to the kid´s manly parts and said that they didn´t work. If I didn´t understand the formal diagnosis, how would I ever understand anything besides, " this part here that I am pointing to doesn´t work, stupid." (the stupid was inferred) The patient was probably eleven years old or something around there, and whatever they did required stitches all around the penis and some on his inner thigh. It kind of looked like to me that his penis was attached to his inner thigh and they had to seperate it and kind of reconstruct it.

The interesting part was when they finished and the anasthesiologist started to wake the kid up. He hurt a lot and started to move around, wanting to touch the stiches and his wound. The nurses were doing something else and the doctor couldn´t hold the kid down by himself, so I held the kid´s legs. It reminded me a whole lot of docking the lambs with grandpa. The interesting part was that the anasthesiologist didn´t put local anesthesia on the surgical wound until after he was awake and hurting. Maybe there was a reason for that and maybe not, but it seemed like kind of a dumb idea for the ten minutes that the kid was crying and we were all holding him down until the local anasthesia kicked in.

This week I would like to see a complete surgery, hopefully a tumor removal or something. But for now, I need to sleep, people.

On The Home Front . . .

Jill here. No, I am not writing from Paraguay or some other exotic foreign wonder, but it occurred to me the other day that in a small way I am currently a part of this big adventure. I am spending my weeks in Provo looking forward to the not so distant day when I meet up with John. While he works in a hospital and makes his mark on the hearts of others, I too am working-and thankfully finding time for fun. I am glad to have work, as it seems lonely at my house without John. With no John to come home to I have picked up a lot of extra shifts, and in turn have learned a lot more about my job. I feel like I have been a team player, and that feels good. I am also glad for the time to paint, garden, sew, build relationships with friends/family and work on myself.

I'm sure most everyone is thinking, how is Jill taking this? And I can't and won't lie... I MISS JOHN! I miss him like crazy and realize how lucky I am to have him in my life. He's so funny, cute, honest, and kind... it's sad not to have him around! I am very glad however for the opportunity that he has to be in a place he loves with people he loves, serving and giving to others. He is a good man. I know that we are both being blessed because he is there.

I was able to fly to Colorado for a week and go camping with my family. It was so fun! We talked and laughed, fished and swam! We also hiked the much feared hike of Water Dog Lake. We spent a rainy night in the tent trailer playing games and eating snacks! Thanks to my awesome mom there was much much much good food to be had! It was fun to be around my sibling and see my parents, as I don't get that opportunity very often. It was also fun to see my niece and nephew.

Well I love you all and am so grateful for the support that you give to John and I. We feel very loved and thankful. We look forward to seeing each other again. I know that I am excited to finally see Paraguay and John is happy to show it to me. Again we love you all very much...

The other blog...

Hi, everyone. Last week was really slow as far as the volunteering has been going; like I said before, everyone really loves me, but doesn´t really know what to do with me. So last week I just kind of spent a lot of time on the internet trying to figure out how to get Mita´i online. Here are the beginning results.

I decided to make a blog at first, because it's quick and free. I think that it turned out okay, but it still needs further tweaking to be more visually appealing. The tweaking will take place once I get some help on the more technical stuff, I ask everyone I meet if they know how to make webpages. If I come across the right people and get the right programs, I would really like to make an actual website, ie www.fundacionmitai.org. I still have three weeks until Jill gets here, so I think that that may be possible.

Over the weekend I talked to everyone about ideas for more development of volunteerism here in the hospital and feel like I made a lot of progress. One of the suggestions that I recieved was to start up a patient visit program with the young adults of the church. It just so turns out that Osvaldo Lopez, one of my friends that lives really close to the hospital here, has the church responsibility of being president of the young adults for the entire city of San Lorenzo and the surrounding area. The idea would be to have him organize the volunteers from the church so that the come for an hour or two each week. Here at the hospital they would have a tupperware bucket full of toys and materials for drawing so that they can come and play with the patients that are staying here at the hospital. The visits would be good for everyone involved; the children themselves recieve the treatments they need, but for the rest of the day they often really don't have anything to do. Being weak from the chemothearapy doesn't exactly let them run around outside, and they really would benefit mentally and physically from more human interaction. The volunteers themselves would of course benefit by fulfilling a need in others. Those that work here at the hospital would benifit by having happier patients and less work for them to do. It would also be great missionary work.

Yenny Figueredo, the mother of the family that I am staying with, did a humanitarian aid type project a few years back involving toys that people sent from the US. They sent so many toys in fact that there are still boxes full of leftovers. I talked to her about it and she would love to get them out of her house and into the arms of the kids here. So that is another awesome thing.

Another possibility - I met a missionary that came here to Paraguay to work in the temple with her husband. She also organizes projects with the church's women's organization, the Relief Society, in which the ladies make blankets and take them to kids at the hospitals. So far they have only taken them to one of the nicer hospitals in Asuncion, but I am going to try to get some of her blankets out to our little hospital.

Interesting story not related to volunteering... On Saturday I met an (apparently) really famous Paraguayan soccer player, Nelson Cuevas. So one of my Paraguayan friends' name is Raul. He is a very successful real estate agent and on Saturday he drove me around to some of the properties that he is dealing with, and introduced me to one of his clients. Imagine meeting a South American soccer star. Okay, it was exactly like that. As we pulled into one of the houses, a guy walks out of his beautiful house with palm trees and everything, all decked out in unbelievably white, brand new, as in I am going to wear this once then throw it away high tech looking soccer clothing, and at his side, is his 6 foot tall woman/trophy wearing sunglasses bigger than her head. The only thing missing was a toy dog under her arm.

So I shook his hand and of course women greet people with kisses down here, so the 6 feet of woman did the double kiss thing and I don't know if I was more scared that she was so beautiful or that there was so much of her. Cuevitas tried his english and said something like "hhhouu add youu?" Then, without waiting for my answer, put all of his energy (he had a lot of energy) into saying "eeeevrytin auu riideee!!!" After that, I was kind of glad that everybody ignored me as Nelson showed Raul some things about the house, and when we left we had to do the hand shaking and kissing and "auu riideee!!!" thing, this time as a farewell instead of as a greeting.

In the Hospital!

I finally made it! I am writing this entry from the General Pediatric Hospital in San Lorenzo, Paraguay. In 2002 I lived about 2 km. from here! About 40 doctors work here and there are about 70 beds for patients. The hospital is kind of like a complex of buildings that are interconnected by nice walkways and of course it is Paraguay so there are lots of plants and green and in general it is a nice place to be.

Dr. Noguera picks me up in the mornings and then she goes home at midday. Most of the doctors here work for the government in the mornings and have their private practices in the afternoons. Dr. Noguera is a mom, so she just goes home to her kids in the afternoon. I thought before I came that Mita'i was going to be in its own little building and everything. It turns out that Mita'i isn't a clinic, but an organization that supports the cancer ward here in the pediatric hospital. Most of the money comes from a similar organization in Italy, and some of it is raised here. The organization was started by some more affluent mothers of children with cancer who were able to send their kids to different countries for better treatment. Bone marrow transplants here in Paraguay are the big goal that both Mita'i and Dr. Noguera have. Right now the kids have to go to Argentina or Brazil for transplants.

I have found that basically everybody loves me for being here and I will be able to do whatever I want. My official assignment is to make a webpage for Mita'i, which should be interesting - let's sum me up: a history major who wants to go to medical school and works in the biology and political science departments and is now going to try to design and build a website in 3 weeks. But it shouldn't be too hard, I guess. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be able to put up a link to the site so that you can see the fruits of my labor. Apart from the website I can just kind of wander around and talk to whoever I want. There is one building that Mita'i has built which has little rooms and a kitchen and stuff for poor families from outside of Asuncion to stay in while their kids are here for treatment. Also, Dr. Noguera is friends with the Chief of Surgery, who is present at the more serious surgeries, aka tumor extractions, and she said that I should be able to scrub in and observe whenever I want.

Oh, and sad news about the plane in Sao Paulo. Coincidenally, Jill will be flying into Sao Paulo on her way here, but into a different airport. Apparently the airport involved in the accident was right in the middle of the city and consequently there wasn't very much room for any mistakes.