Sarah and I left shortly after midnight today for Guatemala with Hands of Hope. This Winona Lake based group has been doing medical mission work in Guatemala since 1999 and now travels to Guatemala four times a year to touch hundreds of lives at every visit.
In today's medical world, US privacy acts preclude any type of personal observation, much less hands-on experience until you are actually in medical school, so when Sarah declared she wanted to pursue a career in medicine, I knew we needed to join Hands of Hope.
Sarah, our "Sleeping Beauty," has always loved to sleep. In fact, at the age of 4 she declared that she NEVER wanted to be a doctor because she didn't want to get up in the middle of the night!
Well, Sarah just pulled her first all-nighter as we arrived at O'Hare around 3 am and then tried to doze on the hard, cold terminal floor until they opened for our 6 am flight.
Next stop: Miami where we were greeted with "Love" and we were in Guatemala by 2pm.
Three hours later, we finally made it through customs......
We had ten 50-pound suitcases filled with medication, formula and other medical supplies. Never before has a Hands of Hope group even been questioned, but today we received uncustomary treatment by Customs and they confiscated nearly all of our supplies!
We took an inventory of all our supplies and left them behind, but hope to retrieve them soon. In the meantime, HOH has supplies here that are left over from previous trips.
Lessons learned: 1) Patience and diplomacy 2) Government interferes with the good of the people 3) Man cannot stop the momentum of God's work.
The morning will come early......Good Night.
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