Blog update August through December 2021

Greetings to all! We hope this finds each of you doing well and blessed beyond measure by our loving heavenly Father! He is certainly good to us!

I (Laura) am embarrassed that I never got back to doing the second part of the November, 2021 update. It was too much for one reading, and I had very good intentions of getting the second part out 2 weeks after the first, but it didn’t happen! I will try to get you caught up now and send you shorter and more frequent reports this year!

Where I left off in November was before our August visit to the States. We traveled to the States for three weeks as we normally do in August, but had some unforeseen twists to our visit. Both Dave and I contracted Covid! We are thankful we were able to visit Grace Chapel before being diagnosed with Covid, and recovered in time to be at St. James Methodist on August 23rd. So enjoyed getting to be with Pastor Don Elliott and all at Grace Chapel, and to be at St. James again and to meet Dr. Greg Tolle and his wife and daughter and to reconnect with friends there. However, we had to give up visits to New York to see Dave’s children and grandchildren, and were not able to be with Gaines Chapel nor First Presbyterian Churches in Mississippi. Look forward to next visit!

We do not have any family pictures from this visit because much of the time we were in isolation!

In September on returning to Mexico, we continued on with clinic activities, and Dave with Spanish School, Multigrade School, and Bible School classes starting up again. This year Dave is serving as director of the Multigrade School because the previous director had to move away to another state because of her father’s health. That has added some extra work hours to his days, but is a great opportunity to serve the next generation here. Some of you may have seen his announcement that the Multigrade School and High School are now in a building project to provide extra classrooms so that they can receive more students. Thank you so much to each one who has donated toward that project!

In late September, Laura’s Mom fell and broke her hip, so Laura traveled to Mississippi to help her for a few weeks. That was a good time of being with the family — was a great blessing to get to meet her two new great nieces and spend some time with them and the family while home! Thankfully her Mom had a successful surgery and has done very well.

Laura returned to Mexico on October 18th, but just missed the St James Methodist Church trip and village outreach to Peñas Negras. The clinic staff accompanied the group on their village trip, and the St. James team members also served in the Multigrade School, Orphanage, and Trade School during their time at the base. What a blessing they were in many different areas! Thank you, St. James!

On Oct 21st, the Gateway Women’s team came and did some wonderful ministry to women on staff and in leadership in the churches. These women who are always serving were able to sit and receive during some very refreshing sessions and have some great fellowship time with other women.

In November, the Zion School of Ministry from Queretaro, Mexico was with us doing Medical and Evangelistic Outreaches and Food distribution in Loma Bonita in Rio Grande with Pastor Abel and in “La Bomba”, Puerto Escondido with Pastors Oscar and Anabel.

The woman in the photo to the right had been believing for some time to be able to walk without her walker, which she did after receiving prayer from the team – it was a glorious moment! One young lady from the team promptly took off her tennis shoes and put them on the lady’s feet so that she would have more supportive shoes to walk in.

One of the highlights in December were baptisms for the “Jesús, Fuente de Gracia” Church in Cacalote. Seven people were baptized — some new believers and one wanting to renew her walk with the Lord. They were done at a local swimming pool, and there was a great time of fellowship for the whole church afterwards.

Another highlight was a Christmas program put on by the Multigrade School. Dave and his team of teachers at the school put together a beautiful program of songs, reflections on the birth of Christ, a the Nativity Scene complete with sheep, shepherds, and Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus, and participations by different schools and departments on the Missions Base. Above are photos of Dave with grandaughter Sage and Sage’s Australian friend Ella at the program.

We had one week over Christmas in which both Dave and I were free from work responsibilities and were able to spend a few days with Ben and Hannah and the grandkids in Huatulco, a beach town about 3 hours from here. It was fun to be with the family and to get away! We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and have had a great start to the New Year! Thank you again so much for your faithful prayers and gifts which keep us going here! We love and appreciate each of you!

In His Love,
Dave and Laura

PS A quick story…

In a couple of previous blogs I have mentioned a young girl named Maria whom we have been working with for several years. She is a 13 year old girl who is a slow learner and has never had the opportunity for formal schooling. A young lady from the missions base is now giving María some individual classes to help her with some basic skills. María’s main caregiver is her great aunt who took her in when she was very young, and her aunt and uncle who live in the same household formally adopted her, and also help with her care. The great aunt, also named María, has become very ill recently. I want to share how we have seen the Lord work in her healing over the last few weeks.

I was first aware of her illness one Sunday afternoon about three weeks ago when I went the home for a different reason, but was asked if I could check “Doña María” because she wasn´t feeling well. I examined her and found that she had a lot of abdominal pain, especially in the right upper quadrant, which was not being relieved by pain medication. She had been constipated for several days and felt very bloated and uncomfortable in her stomach and lower abdomen. She also had fever and nausea. Because the pain was not responding to analgesics and the stomach discomfort was not responding to antacids and other stomach medications, I suggested that she should go into the hospital for a more thorough exam and studies. She was very opposed to going into the hospital. We find much distrust here among the people of the government health care system. She expressed that she was afraid that she would go and would not get out of the hospital alive. We were not able to convince her to go to the hospital. I did convince her that she at least needed an ultrasound, in particular to check out her gall bladder, and she did agree to allow me to take her and her son and grandson in to our neighboring town to try to find a private doctor to do an ultrasound. We went and looked pretty exhaustively, but were unable to find a physician with an ultrasound open to do the exam. She began to feel better because of a shot I had given her at her house which was taking effect, so she just wanted to go back home. We did return home, but her symptoms returned.

The next morning, her other son came to see her and insisted that she go to the hospital. That was definitely the right move, because they found that she needed a gastric lavage (a stomach tube put down to suction things about of her stomach), and some enemas to clean out her colon. An ultrasound did show some stones in her gallbladder, but they did not seem to think that was the primary problem. She was put on injectable antibiotics for infection.

She was better for a few days, but continued to have constipation, so she asked her family to give her what they call a “purga” here, a combination of laxatives that they take to cleanse themselves. Although it does often have the desired effect, the effect is often more than what they need, as it was in Doña María’s case. She developed diarrhea, and I found her the next Sunday very weak and not doing well at all. I took Drs. Dave and Mary Kay Ness with me to help evaluate her, and they felt she needed to go back to the hospital right away. She had signs of peritonitis (infection in the abdominal cavity) which can be very serious. She was still running fever, had rebound tenderness in her abdomen, and her blood pressure had dropped a lot from her normal pressure. We found out that she had suffered from diverticulitis at an earlier time, so we were afraid she had developed that again and might have a complication from that. We talked very openly with her and her family that to not go back to the hospital at this time could even lead to her death, but she was still very firmly opposed to going back to the hospital, and said that if the Lord said her life was finished, that was okay. We left her and her family to consider the information we gave them and make a decision, but they honored her wish to stay at home and did not force her to go to the hospital. We first offered no treatment hoping that she would decide for the hospital, but when we saw her decision was firmly made, we did give some symptomatic treatment and antibiotic shots for five days in case this were an infection that might respond to the antibiotics. But we made no promises and really were not optimistic about her outcome unless the Lord really intervened. We did continue to pray and ask the Lord for a miracle if He desired to give Doña María more time here on earth. We then were out doing village outreaches for three days, so we left a granddaughter of hers who is a registered nurse in charge of giving her antibiotic shots.

When we returned four days later, we were amazed at what we found! She was much improved, much more than what we would have expected with just the antibiotic shots! She was now eating, her intestines were working, and the pain was pretty much gone. We have continued to follow her with almost daily home visits, and although she has developed some other complications, she is getting the victory over each one and continuing to improve! We are seeing the Lord working a miracle in her. Her conditions have required some interventions — we are now giving her nebulization treatments and have her on an oxygen concentrator because it seems she developed a pneumonia during her convalescence, but that is also improving. She is a real fighter, and it has been amazing seeing the Lord working a healing in her when we had almost given up! God is so good!