The following is the letter I sent out to about two hundred friends and family announcing my plans to spend the summer working in a clinic in Mexico. Considering the internet connection there was a predictable 28.8 Mb/sec. it was difficult to post any updates on the internet. Instead, I regularly e-mailed "journals" to chronicle my experiences in Mexico. The journals were intended for all those who asked to be on my mailing list. Due to popular demand I am posting them here for all to see and access at the same time. I hope you enjoy them and are encouraged to continue making your relationship with God more personal as I have.
Matt. 28:18-20 "Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the end of the age."
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To my lovely friends and family, I know that I haven't communicated to some of you for quite a while, so I am going to give a short wrap up of the last couple of years: Since graduating Highline Community College in 2004 I have been attending Northwest University and have gained entrance into their 4-year nursing program. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at NU, completing my last year of prerequisites with excellent grades and making several life-long friends. There is now about two months left to complete my Junior year, a feat I questioned several times last semester when I had some very involving health issues. Now for the news: In October of 2005 God orchestrated a meeting between a Mexican evangelist named Magdiel and myself through my church’s missionaries to Ecuador. Due to discussion about my current status as a nursing student and my desire to work in a rural setting he informed me of a rural clinic in his hometown that would be willing and welcoming to a nursing student. The town is called Xocempich in the state of Yucatan in Mexico. It is located on the Yucatan peninsula about 60 miles Southwest of Merida. After communicating with Pastor Magdiel, his brother Pablo, and an American graduate student who has lived in Xocempich for a total of about a year, I plan to minister there as a volunteer student nurse from the beginning of June to the middle of August. The clinic also runs a nursing school and I will be staying in the "hotelito" adjacent to the clinic with the Mexican nursing students. The town of Xocempich itself is only a couple of hundred inhabitants but the clinic serves people in a 150 km. radius. Many of the people that come to the clinic for services are of native Mayan descent and a large percent only speak Yucatec, a dialect of Mayan. The weather there is hot and humid and May is reportedly the hottest month. Most of the churches in the area were founded by Presbyterian missionaries in the 1920s who also did the first translations of the Bible into Mayan. Above all, I covet your prayers during all phases of this trip especially because it will be my first time traveling alone and by far the longest missions trip I will have attended. My goal in Mexico is not only to learn about the culture, their methods of communication and rural methods for health care, but to show God’s love through word and deed to my hosts, the other nursing students, the inhabitants of Xocempich and all of whom I come into contact. I am excited and very blessed to have such an opportunity virtually "fall into my lap" and come to be a reality after much prayer and investigation.
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