Old and new friends

This week I haven't blogged much because Kathy and Victor Garcia have been visiting. Kathy's our PazSalud program manager and Victor, her husband, came down to help us in the process of looking for a newer car (the PazSalud '96 4Runner, a magnificent workhorse, is getting old enough that we began to worry about having to make major repairs). We found the car we wanted, but the owner decided he didn't want to sell, alas.

Meanwhile, we've been able to introduce Victor to many of our friends and helpers here - he met Sister Margaret Jane, of course, and Sister Bernadita, also a native of Honduras, at Hospital Divina Providencia (she is the tiny one in the photo). We took him to visit with Leslie Schuld at CIS, and with Dina Dubon at the Archdiocesis of San Salvador, and we had a splendid lunch with Hernan Merino , our indispensable motorist (Victor is on the left in the photo). Hernan was delighted to meet Victor in person, as they've often talked on the phone. Sister Peggy O'Neill gave us a special tour of the new skateboard park and the soon-to-be-opened museum of Suchitoto life and history at the Centro Arte para la Paz

Meanwhile, Victor was feeling bad because we didn't find a car to buy, so he and Hernan put their heads together and took the 4Runner to a shop Hernan knows where our dim headlights were replaced by much brighter lights, a huge improvement for night drives to Suchitoto. The 4Runner's engine has now been inspected in detail by all the experts and pronounced perfect. The 4Runner no longer has even a single squeak (Victor plus WD-40). Why, I wonder, did we even think about replacing it?

Meanwhile, he and Kathy and I have gone through our enormous collection of supplies and medications to organize things for our November, February and May missions and to figure out what we'll need to bring down here. And Kathy and I have proofread our 2011 calendar, which is going to be glorious. And we've eaten well, talked lots, and enjoyed a relatively cool week with lots of rain showers at all odd times of the day and night.