We are a group of medical people and support staff who travel to Guatemala twice a year. We spend a week in the Rio Dulce area on the Eastern side of the country visiting the Mayan villages of Tablitias, Boqueron, Nacimiento, and Las Brisas. We then travel to Monterrico , on the Pacific coast, where we work in three more villages (La Curvina, Cebollito, and Agua Dulce). Accommodations for the first half of the trip are in hotels. During the second half, we stay at the CCCG Retreat Center which is located on the Pacific ocean. This is an amazing place hand built by members of the church. Our groups travel with a team from CCCG who take care of all the travel plans, driving, food, etc. Many CCCG people speak English and act as interpreters for us. The CCCG teams also visit these villages every month and have ongoing relationships with village leadership.

After arriving at each village, we hold a community meeting with our team members and the village leaders. Next we do health teaching, work on projects or begin our screening and clinical care activities. We run our own laboratory doing hematocrits, urine dips, blood sugars, pregnancy tests, and microscopic exams. Clinical screening includes checking blood pressures, height and weight for nutritional status, triage health problems, and have the option for pulse oximetry. Time spent in each village is between 3 and 6 hours with a break for lunch. Rest day excursions have taken us to an amazing waterfall and hot springs for swimming, to Tikal ruins for a walking tour, on a boat trip down the Rio Dulce to Livingston, into a villager’s home for a tortilla workshop, onto the beach for sunning and wave surfing, as well as a conservation program baby turtle release event.

Currently, we bring mobile clinics to each of the villages and the Retreat Center in Monterrico for the three west coast villages. Our long-term goal is to have a permanent clinic site accessible to each village. We have applied for and received grant money from the Seattle International Foundation to begin clinic construction in the Monterrico area. However, we have only raised half of the funds needed to purchase land in a location that can be easily accessed by the three nearby villages. In collaboration with the Ministry of Health, training for lay healthcare workers and midwives is being provided. These individuals will be able to staff the clinic when we are not there. Funding for a permanent Guatemala doctor to run the facility may be forthcoming via the Ministry of Health.
In Rio Dulce, we are collaborating with the Ministry of Health in that district on two more clinic sites. One is a small health building that needs remodeling and staffing. The other, is ground-up construction of a clinic that will serve 15 communities including one of the villages we visit. At these sites, we will assist with on-going provision of medical staff, equipment and medications.

Current nursing license. Spanish is very helpful.