Fall update 🤗

Michigan Visit and Fundraising

I flew home on August 1st with Dr. Angel for work meetings and fundraisers followed by a family vacation. The first couple of weeks in Michigan were very busy going to meetings on the west and east side of the state and also to Indiana! If you had the chance to read my last blog, Palo Seco, our mission house that we have been using for over 10 years, has been sold. We needed to figure out what we were going to do for lodging our mission teams. We decided to build a new mission house on land that was purchased years ago. 

It has been a long time since we have hosted an in person fundraiser and we decided to host TWO in the same weekend. At first we thought we were crazy, TWO IN ONE WEEKEND! Friday evening we were in Pinckney and on Sunday evening we were in Belmont. The two fundraisers went better than we could have ever imagined. I am happy to announce we raised over $70,000 dollars! This will be a great start to our new mission house. It was so amazing to see so many familiar faces all in the same room! I am so thankful to everyone who helped put the fundraisers together in such a short time. 

With the initial funds we completed a land study and we are about to begin excavation. We are hopeful that by Christmas the foundation will be completed! 

October Team

In October, Jasmin, one of our ambassadors, brought down a team to spend the week with us. Since we no longer have the mission house in Palo Seco, fortunately we were able to stay at the house where I stayed on my very first trip here in 2010! It brought back so many memories. The bottom part of  the house was originally used by our BBOH founder sister Roselyn. Now our parish priest in El Llano lives there. Jasmine’s team was wonderful! Before coming down they raised money for women to get Pap smears. During the week, alongside a normal clinic, they offered Pap smears to women and were able to get 51 completed! 

This year Jasmin stayed an extra week with us to see what life was like outside of a team. It was wonderful to have her with us during the week. The week was nothing like what we expected. Jessica Carlile, our BBOH director, and her oldest daughter Emily flew stateside for the week to visit family so we had her youngest 4 kids with us. Between Maritza, Jasmin, and I we took care of the kids and still were able to offer mobile clinics. During the same week, Dr. Angel got into a serious car accident. His truck was totaled, and he broke 11 ribs which kept him in the hospital for a week. He continues to slowly recover, and we are so thankful that he is okay. Please keep him in your prayers while he is recovering. 

Hurricane Melissa

As many of you know hurricane Melissa recently impacted our island. Many areas of our country had significant flooding and damage. Thankfully where we live, there was minimal destruction. Students were unable to go to school and we were unable to work for a week because of the storm.

Visitor Spain

We had a visitor from Spain come work with us this past week at the clinic in Rosa la Piedra. Cancha is a Nurse and midwife. While she was here she was able to spend time educating many of the women that visited the clinic. This was highly beneficial. 

Challenges

In the past couple of weeks we have been dealing with four very small babies all under four pounds from the clinic in Rosa la Piedra. Unfortunately, one of the mothers recently died and one of the mothers is very sick. The last mother is dealing with twins that are malnourished. Over the past weekend while I was in the capital picking up a friend at the airport for a visit, I was able to go see Wiskinlove at the hospital. Her case has become more complicated and the tumor on her face has rapidly grown over the last month. Sadly surgery is no longer an option due to the size of the tumor. 

Prayers: 

• For Wiskinlove: For healing and relief from the pain. 

• For Dr. Angel: that he is able to heal and get much needed rest from his car accident

• For these 4 small babies in the mountain: that they get the nutrition and care that they need

• For the beginning of the construction on the mission house.