So when push comes to shove, I would rather talk or journal than write on this blog. Since I decided to make it though, I feel obligated to write on it every once in awhile, especially since it allows me to share my experience with those who care about me back at home. The past couple weeks have been more of an emotional roller coaster than I have ever experienced before. I know that it is a good thing that I’m here, and I am recognize that the challenges are God’s way to help me grow. That doesn’t make the challenges any less.
We are in our new house now as of the first week in September. It is in the same block as a couple of Sisters of the Incarnate Word that are amazing. Sor (Sister)Beatriz and Sor Angeles both work at the clinic that we are at. Both are nurses and have done a lot to make us feel at home here in Monterrey. Sor Beatriz has been our main contact for moving forward at the clinic, and we fondly call her “Mama.” Sor Angeles is our “tia” or aunt. The house is pretty fancy for what we were expecting. It is two-story with a bathroom, kitchen, and dining/living room on the first floor, and we have 3 bedrooms upstairs. Mike and I each have our own rooms and share a bathroom and Linda and Paula share the master bedroom that has a bathroom and walk-out terrace. Here’s to living simply… We do wash our clothes by hand which is interesting! Yesterday I bought scotch tape so I put up pictures on my walls, which actually makes my room feel like home.
This past week, Mike and I went on a trip to Huasteca in the state of San Luis Potosi from Monday through Thursday to live with indigenous families. There were 10 of us total that did the 7 hour drive each way. Most of the group had participated in a weekend workshop on non-violence with Carl Kline who is an activist in South Dakota and Mathai who is from India and has worked with many people who knew Gandhi. It was the best 4 days that I had had since being here. It was my first time bathing outside with a bucket of water and cup, and even though everything was harder and took more time, I loved being there. I learned how to make tortillas by hand and we had a traditional danza where the Teneek people did their type of folk dancing…very fun! Also, Mike and his host family killed a deer, so I got to try very fresh venison. I felt like the trip was what I was hoping for in the whole missionary experience. It was very hard to come back to the city life of Monterrey after enjoying Huasteca so much.
Friday we went back to work at the clinic and I actually had a really good day—probably the best day since being there. In the morning, Mike and I talked with Laura Vega (a wonderful social worker that had been working at the clinic in Huasteca for the last 4 years, but decided to go back to school for physical therapy so is working full time at our clinic, Fommerey 35, while she also goes to school full-time. She has been working a lot to help us set up our game plan at the clinic and in her time off, she has even helped us to figure out the bus system a little, and has offered to help us figure out the city and do whatever she can to help. She’s 31 but I feel like we’re peers….a very good person to know here.) Then I visited with Laura Dwarte (She is a middle-aged nurse who is in charge of taking care of the details for Brigades. Every couple weeks, a team of doctors and nurses spends a Saturday at Zuazua which is another clinic in the Fundacion. Also, they send medical brigades out to 2 clinics that are in Huasteca about every few months. The clinics are always staffed with general doctors, but the brigades are made up of specialty docs that are willing to take care of people in poorer areas.) Talking with Laura reminded me that Monterrey is our home base, but that we aren’t really stuck here. I will probably have opportunities to get back to Huasteca and spend time with those people who I really loved there, so I don’t need to worry that I’m in the wrong place for mission. Laura gave me some apple juice and some sweet bread that is typical of Monterrey too, and I had been too sleepy to pack a lunch because I was wiped out after the trip, so I really appreciated her generosity. I can actually understand and participate in conversations in Spanish now, which is really exciting. After I left Laura’s office, I went in search of my fellow missionaries. Paula and Mike were in the auditorium listening to a group of nursing students from UdeM (University of Monterrey) give a presentation to the community about hypertension. After the talk, they gave water bottles and fruit cups…I’m kind of a sucker for free food. Anyone who knows me enough to read this already knows that. After the presentation, I went toward the bathroom, but ran into Dr. Julio who I had met a couple weeks ago at a baby shower for one of the nurses at the clinic. He is 25, and works as a general physician at the clinic. When I met him, he told me that he works 8pm-8am, so I assumed that I wouldn’t see him at the clinic again, but we got along really well from the beginning. He plans on specializing in dermatology at a school in Spain after working a year at this clinic. (To become a doctor in Mexico, right after high school there are 6 years for med school followed by a required year of social service which is common to any major. So…there is no undergraduate degree with pre-med requirements like I had to do, so they can actually finish med school at a decent time in their lives.) Dr. Julio told me that he had been working the day shift all week and since I wasn’t there with Linda and Paula, he thought I had gone home. It was nice that he noticed. I think he’d be a great friend, too. He has offered that I can shadow him anytime when he’d working over in the clinic since he knows that I am hoping to have some clinical experiences during this year.
Then Linda, Paula, Mike, and I had some time with Laura Vega to talk about the goals of the program that we are putting together to implement at the clinic. The goal of the program is to create a team to serve people with disabilities and terminal illnesses that are pretty much homebound. The idea is that we as missionaries work together with nurses and doctors to serve these members of the community that currently are not receiving all the care they need. We have spent a lot of our time at the clinic reading about how to do hospice care in order to visit sick people in their homes like a pastoral minister would. We are working with the local parish that already has la Legion de Maria which sends volunteers out to people’s homes to help them clean and just listen to them. The idea is to build on this service by providing pastoral and medical care too. I am honestly getting tired of the planning for this program because it seems like busywork and it doesn’t seem to move forward. I want to go with a volunteer on their visits and just start spending time with the old folks. I’m not much of a planner by nature. That’s how I feel about that.
Antioco, one of the accountants who works at the clinic drove us home and he is such a hoot. He wanted to know how to say happy birthday in English, and it was a wonderful opportunity to actually laugh out loud. Mike says I cannot do justice to the moment by writing about it. He is a jokester, and it was just we needed at the moment.
Later that night, Mike and I decided to make a birthday cake for Linda, so Mike ran to the grocery store to get a cake mix and frosting, and we made a cake while she was at the ciber café. It was a big hit. Her birthday was September 16th when we were gone. It was good to do something for her.
Yesterday afternoon, Mike and I went grocery shopping for the house, and then prepared a wonderful spaghetti supper, we went to mass with Sor Angeles, and then invited her over for supper. It was awesome to have company because we all sat down to eat together for the first time since being in our house. We played one round of uno which was also very fun.
I have had to learn a lot about myself in order to be a helpful member in community. I have had to adjust my expectations a lot. Also, many things I have “known” about getting along with others has taken on a whole new meaning for me.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things which I cannot change, the strength to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Please keep us in prayer. I miss and love you all. We are going to have wireless internet in our house sometime in the relatively near future, so hopefully I can talk myself into writing on this more often. I also have wonderful pictures that I will get up soon somehow. Please write me too. Love, Andrea Michelle