A glorious moment, captured

Here's Marta, one of the two patients who came to us blind, at the moment when the bandage removed and she could see again!  What a joy and what a privilege to be the person standing next to her at that moment.  It's even more special when you know a bit of Martha's story.  Literally blind in one eye, she couldn't see out of the other because of her cataract.  She had gone to FUDEM, the Salvadoran foundation that offers relatively low-cost eye care, but you still have to pay for eye surgery there, about $150, I think I remember, and that was more money than Marta could raise.

She lives in Estanzuelas, heard about our mission the week we started surgeries, and contacted Marvin Hernandez, who asked if we could possibly add her to our full list.  Well, we'll try, I said, bring her on the bus.  But we had a full patient load for Wednesday and again on Thursday, and for both of those days she sat there for about three hours and had to go back on the returning bus.  I never saw her smile once in all that time of waiting.  She sat hunched over, not communicating much at all except through her presence.  Then on Friday she came in again, for the third day, and finally we could fit her in.  She had her surgery - a huge, dense and dark cataract came out - and on Saturday morning I got to see Marta smile.  Isn't that a beautiful sight - in all senses of the word?

Our last patient, the newspaper vendor who like Marta was blind in one eye and couldn't see out of the other, also came out seeing and smiling after his surgery, but Mitch Costin wasn't there to photograph the great moment, and my attempt isn't worth posting.  You'll have to take my word on it.

Ah yes, and we completed 53 surgeries on 49 patients - (3 patients had both pterygium and cataract surgery, and one had to come back for a 2nd surgery as it hadn't been possible to implant the lens the first time).  Since 50 is our usual maximum, and one we've never reached before because we haven't had that many patients, this was a happy week that kept our surgeons - the Pisacano father and daughter team - well occupied.  Terry Clark, our optometrist, also gave about 130 eye exams and - when needed - reading glasses to all the hospital staff who showed up (and that was most of the hospital staff).

As a gift from our PeaceHealth hospitals, we gave some cool stuff to the hospital - scissors and forceps and tweezers (German made, the Director was delighted), wound dressings, sterile towels, patient gowns, and best of all a brand new EKG machine donated to us in Eugene, and made usable in Santiago de Maria by the manual en español that Darren found with great persistence on-line, printed and bound.  We were even able to promise them the donation needed to buy a new autoclave (I hate to think how they are making do right now) through the kindness of a very special donor.

But for me, Marta's smile says it all.  That's why we were in Santiago de Maria, Usulutan, El Salvador.

Photo by Mitch Costin

Maria del Carmen almost mobile!

Maria del Carmen has now had surgery on the right leg. the one she broke, and the left leg, where she tore tendons, has been freed from its cast.  In fact, she now has two visible legs, for the first time in a month, but she still can only use the left leg.  As you can imagine, after a month of having both legs elevated with minimal movement, it's going to take a while to build up the muscles in the left leg again, and she thinks it will be another month before she's allowed to put any weight on the right leg.  I picked up a walker for her to use - it will return to our PeaceHealth bodega when she no longer needs it - and hope that she'll soon be hobbling about. 

It's a long slow process!  But she is in a good situation right now, staying in her sister's house in Ilopango, in a little room that is right off the kitchen/dining area, so she's right in the middle of everything.  It's a bonus that her 94-year-old father and her stepmother are also staying there for a prolonged visit - in addition to her sister's son, daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter. 

I'd love to share a photo, but Maria del Carmen has steadfastly refused to have any photos taken during this time.  But her spirits are good: after some mourning on the day of the break, as she realized all the changes this was going to mean in her life, I haven't heard one complaint from her (well, not quite: there was a fairly passionate complaint about unresponsive nursing in the Zacatecoluca hospital).  She's clear, determined, and looking for the finger of God along this unexpected pathway.

Day One of the Estanzuelas Clinics

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Our first full clinic day in Estanzuelas, and all is very well. 

Yesterday I exchanged congratulations with Marvin Hernandez, our amazing chief organizer for the Estanzuelas community.  I was relieved that we’d come through the airport arrival and the customs process with no problems and in record time.  He was relieved that all the organizational pieces – the invitations to patients, the welcome at a local school with dancers and lunch for 120, the rental of tables and chairs and canopies, the organization of volunteers for the week had gone without a hitch.

And now we’re off and running, working our way through the opening day questions and glitches (there are always a few of these).  Medics have paired up with interpreters, we’ve figured out how to write up the references for patients who need further tests or specialist care, and every clinic is full of Estanzuelans telling their stories, talking about their needs and anxieties, being fitted with new glasses and being heard with attention and respect.

Especially on Monday, it always feels like a river overflowing: local volunteers, PazSalud providers, interpreters and patients: we’re all trying to figure out the flow. By Friday we'll have everything clear - and then we have to leave!

(Photos, top to bottom: Brian checks a young patient's heart rate; Carol helps a woman choose glasses; Darren listens to a story; Lorna and Moises give patients their medications.)

Darren's back!

In 2012, Darren Streff often showed up in my blog posts as a Maryknoll Lay Missioner who was working with our PazSalud program.  Then for the past couple of months, he's been absent.  Now he's back, but under different auspices.

What's happened is a longer story than I'm going to tell, but the short version is that the Maryknoll Lay Missioner program came to the conclusion that Darren's proposed work as a coordinator for PazSalud was not a good fit with their expectations of what Lay Missioners would do.  Their expectation, as I understand it, is that Lay Missioners will work directly with a local community on a development project that can later be turned over to the local community.  I'd agree that this is not a good description of our work in PazSalud.

By the time that Maryknoll reached this conclusion, though, Darren had already spent some months working with us.  He'd come to know our program and our people in El Salvador.  He'd even come to the Northwest to meet the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and the PeaceHealth Board of Directors.  He loved the PazSalud program and was convinced that he was called to do this work.

So Darren had to make a choice between PeaceHealth and the Maryknoll community who were his friends and his primary support system for his first year in El Salvador.  The Maryknoll Lay Missioners wisely ask a Missioner who is considering leaving to enter into a formal process of discernment, and Darren entered into that process wholeheartedly, praying through the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises with the help of a Maryknoll spiritual director.

He has been in that process for most of the month of January, and on February 4th finally told his Maryknoll Lay Missioner group that he would no longer be a Lay Missioner, but would continue to be their friend and would continue to carry the Maryknoll spirit in his work with us.

We in PazSalud and at PeaceHealth are sorry that Darren had to make this choice, but we are glad he chose to come work with PazSalud.  It's wonderful to have his positive spirit, his joyful energy, and his great commitment to the people of El Salvador working for us again.  We missed you, Darren, and it's great to have you back!

Otra vez, Eleanor in El Salvador

The past week has been filled with joyous reunions, only slightly interrupted by the serious work of getting the paperwork ready for our doctors' permits and our customs clearance.

One joyous reunion has followed another since Sister Eleanor Gilmore walked off the plane last Saturday.  Eleanor's long history in El Salvador goes back to time during the civil war in the 1980s, when she worked with the Archdiocese of San Salvador and with Jesuit Refugee Service, was twice picked up for questioning by suspicious authorities, and helped people coming in from the campo, including a few guerillas, get some much-needed health care.

Eleanor left El Salvador after the signing of the peace accords in 1992, but the people had found a place in her heart, and she returned in 2000 to begin the El Salvador Health Mission of PeaceHealth and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace.  She and Kathy Garcia developed the PazSalud mission over the next nine years as Eleanor continued making friends.

She's stayed away for four years and a few surgeries, but this week she's back at last for a good visit with those friends.  We began the celebrations on Sunday with Mass in the Crypt of the Cathedral, where Monseñor Romero is buried, followed by a festival dinner at Estela and Susy Garcia's home, with almost all the Garcia family in attendance.  Here's Susy and Estela with Estela's mother and Eleanor- it was a glorious afternoon and wonderful Sopa de Gallina India, la abuela having provided the gallina. 

It's been like that all week - we've connected with many, many friends, and each connection has been a delight.  I get to share in the memories and in the joy that Eleanor's presence - in El Salvador again! - brings to her and to the many, many folk who know and love her.

Eleanor and I were both saddened that Sister Noreen Linane died while we were so far away.  Eleanor says she was ready and completely at peace - it's good to know that, and no surprise.  Noreen was a tiny woman full of life and energy who loved gardening and sewing and creating the most beautiful flower arrangements.  I first got to know her when, as a novice, I was told to shadow her in her work at Jubilee Women's Center, transitional housing for homeless women in Seattle.  As I quickly found out, Noreen's shadow had to move fast and listen hard to the wonderful stream of Irish talk that moved with her - I was exhausted by the day's end, and enchanted.  She's continued to be one of the hearts of our community at St. Mary-on-the-Lake, and while she's gone through many serious health crises, she always before has emerged full of energy, ready to move fast, to talk fast and to create beauty.  We will miss her so much.

Oh the permissions?  I hope all is well....it's always an area of headache and worry until that moment when the customs people wave goodbye to us, and that's still a little more than a month away. 

Introductions and New Possibilities

This long and informative blog post somehow got deleted, probably by me...  So I am trying to recreate what I vaguely remember saying a couple of weeks ago.

It's about Darren Streff, the Maryknoll Lay Missioner who has appeared in a few of my posts.  Darren began his Maryknoll mission in El Salvador with three months of Spanish study at the CIS, and while he was there - by beautiful serendipity, or as I prefer to think by grace of the Holy Spirit - he learned about our El Salvador Health Mission from Marilyn.  Marilyn, who was also studying at the CIS, met me when she was visiting in Suchitoto.  She's an adventurous Canadian, traveling on her own at the age of 80 (a great role model!), and we had connected over lunch at my favorite Suchi restaurant.  I had given Marilyn my e-mail address which she passed on to Darren.

He e-mailed to say that our mission sounded exactly like the kind of work he wanted to do in El Salvador, and could we get together?  We connected when all the Maryknoll Lay Missioners were making a retreat at the Centro Arte para la Paz, and began to talk.   Kathy Garcia and I invited Darren to come to a day of our eye surgery mission in April, and he loved every minute.  We could see how good he was with the patients and how much he enjoyed working with them, and we learned as we continued to work together that he's also reliable, creative, energetic and super-organized.  Here's a photo of Darren from that day.

Darren's background, with years of professional work in health care planning, administration and advocacy, was a great fit with PeaceHealth, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and the El Salvador Health Mission.  Kathy and I had been talking about a succession plan, as my asthma has been slowing me down and making me realize that it's about time for a quieter life.   We saw a few possibilities, but once Darren showed up, we knew that he would be a ideal person to be our new in-country coordinator. 

Happily, PeaceHealth Board President Sister Andrea Nenzel and PeaceHealth CEO and Chief Mission Officer Alan Yordy agreed that Darren will be a great person to carry on the mission that Sister Eleanor Gilmore began 12 years ago.   We were able to introduce Darren to PeaceHealth and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace in October and November, in a rapid series of meetings that we all enjoyed.  Darren will be working with me until May, and then will get to take over the car and the bank account and the family support and scholarship programs and the many, many tubs of stored mission materials (his San Salvador house will be bulging!).  I'll continue to be involved with the mission in many ways - helping with fund development, updating the website, and - most important of all - participating in all our missions. 

It's a very happy development, and I'm grateful for Darren, one of the better gifts of the Holy Spirit.  May his work with the El Salvador Health Mission be full of joy and peace.

Quilt makers and indigo dyers

I've been having a good visit with Cathy McKay.  Cathy's an obstetrics and delivery nurse at PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center, Bellingham.  A couple of years ago she was the nurse on our mission team at San Juan Opico, staying after the mission to spend a couple of months learning Spanish on the island of Tasajera, where Dr. Lauren Herbert, a pediatrician at PeaceHealth Riverbend, has helped to build a clinic.

During Cathy's time on the island, she taught several of the women living there to sew, and started them creating beautiful bags, made from Salvadoran fabric, that are now being sold as Bolsas de Cati.  But, Cathy found it hard to learn as much Spanish as she wanted without formal instruction, so she's come back this year for another stay of several months, taking Spanish classes at the CIS.

She's also interested in learning about indigo dying - for future Bolsas de Cati possibilities - and indigo is a Suchitoto specialty, so she's up here for the weekend.  It was one of those serendipitous moments - the day before she came, I met Marilyn, a Canadian woman who's living for a couple of months to study Spanish, and who also wanted to learn how to dye with indigo.  And even more serendipity: on Saturday, Cathy and I stopped in at the Concertacion de Mujeres, and learned that they were having an indigo-dying workshop on Sunday, and that Cathy and Marilyn would be welcomed.  So they had a great time, learned a lot about indigo, and probably picked up quite a few new words in Spanish along the way.

It's a short hop from indigo dying to quilt making - well, maybe a long hop - but I want to share this photo of a group of women in San Rafael Cedros receiving new quilts for their babies.  Each year, we get a wonderful collection of quilts and baby blankets made by Cindy Hellerstedt's sisters in Minnesota (a good thing to do during the long winters, I'm told), and these become gifts for poor mothers in the towns we visit.  Here's Iris Chacon, our San Rafael Cedros coordinator, in the middle, with the group of women delighting in their new quilts.

I'm not at all "handy" in the sense of being good with needles or cloth - never quite got over rebelling against my mother, an expert with a sewing machine - but I'm glad for the women who are, who make quilts or start other women making bags, whose handiwork makes the world a better place.

The Nenzel Sisters

Andrea and Judith (Knight), the two Nenzel sisters, are safely back home in the Northwest - Andrea in Vancouver, WA or somewhere up or down the highways from there on the way to many PeaceHealth meetings, Judith in Nanaimo sorting through photos and memories to share with other family members.

It was a joy to have them both here, and it was fun to get to know them as sisters.  After working for six good years with Andrea, I know her pretty well, but it's always a new light to see the family connections, the shared jokes, the pauses, the likenesses and differences.

As you can see, it's not at all difficult to guess that these two are sisters, and since they're both tall and blond women, I had a rather nice two weeks of being short - not my usual experience in El Salvador.  We also got to hear, from Lita Calderon, Dina Dubon and John Guiliano, some good stories about Andrea's time here at the Calle Real Refugee camp from 1985-87.  My favorite was about Andrea using every one of her inches of height to insist peacefully and with great determination that an unhelpful local priest send a water truck up to Calle Real.  He did. 

It's always a moving experience for me to hear the Calle Real stories as I continue living my part of our Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace history in this country, which now stretches back more than 25 years.  And it's wonderful to see the love and gratitude that greet Andrea and Margaret Jane in this country.  The people remember who was there with them in a dark and uncertain time.

For the past three weeks I've been selling crafts from El Salvador with Kathy Garcia and Cindy Hellerstedt. It's our annual fall round that takes us to the PeaceHealth hospitals and to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace Fall Assembly with 2012 calendars, Christmas ornaments, crosses and bookmarks and small purses and - for each place - a raffle item. It's not just a chance to raise some money for our program, though that's certainly an aim: what matters more is the opportunity to connect with people who've been on one of our health missions or are interested in signing up or are just interested in what we do. We get to talk about El Salvador and the people who've had their lives so damaged by the recent floods, about the water filters we hope to provide for each community we visit and about the essential extras - a replacement heart valve, medications, scholarships, even travel to schools - that are made possible by our donors' generosity. We get to advertise our new website, where, at long last, we can accept donations on-line.

This photo comes from St. John Hospital in Longview, Washington: Kathy is at right, Cindy next to her.

Hospital Bloom

Last week I drove Sandra, her grandmother and her uncle to a 6 AM appointment at Hospital Bloom, El Salvador's public pediatric hospital. In order to do that, I had to get up at 3:30 AM, meet Sandra and family at 5:00 in Ciudad Arce (they live in the municipality of San Juan Opico, but Ciudad Arce is closer to their very remote home in the hills). They were probably up even earlier to walk down long rough roads in the dark, but they were there on time, and we set off for the capital.

I'd already discovered that invariably appointments at Bloom are set for 6 AM, but I couldn't figure it out - surely the doctors didn't start their clinics that early? By 6 AM I'd found a parking place and we lined up outside the hospital, a commanding multi-story building, with a lot of other parents and children, a woman selling atole (a hot corn drink) and a clown selling balloons. The guard checked Sandra's appointment and let us in. We went down the hall, found the ophthalmology clinic, and sat down. And after quite a while we noticed that a long line was forming in front of the desk outside the clinic - ah yes, no one told us about that part of the ritual. I have to confess that we jumped the line - we really had been among the very first to enter the hospital, and it didn't seem fair to have to go to the very end. It may have helped that I was a gringa, because the secretary let us turn over Sandra's hospital card and appointment. And then we waited some more and after another time that seemed longer than it really was, the clinic secretary got us all lined up in chairs according to arrival time. An orderly procession had been created. This not-very-good photo gives some sense of the feeling of the corridor, full of mothers and some fathers, each tenderly carrying or watching over their child.

It was about 7:30 when we finally got in to see Dr. Dominguez, who checked Sandra's eyes (she has congenital cataracts), scheduled her for pre-tests and surgery, and told me the size of the interocular lens she will need. But those lenses won't be provided by Hospital Bloom, nor will the heart valve needed by Richard, a little boy we met in San Rafael Cedros. Unless the families can raise the money to buy the lenses, or heart valves, or tests that the hospital doesn't perform, or medications that the hospital pharmacy doesn't have in stock, health care gets stopped in its tracks.

This isn't the fault of the staff at Hospital Bloom or at any of the other hospitals. It happens because El Salvador is a poor country and in a poor country's health care system the extras - interocular lenses, heart valve replacements, expensive medications - just don't happen unless someone steps in to help. The children who can profit from ordinary care do well in this system - El Salvador has a good record of pre-natal care, vaccinations, and treatment of normal childhood diseases. And if the lenses or heart valves or medications can be purchased, all the surgery and hospital care and follow-up appointments are completely free. In El Salvador, the cost of health care is relatively inexpensive - doctors and nurses are not paid much at all by U.S. standards - but the cost of 1st world technology is prohibitive.

Children with costly or complicated illnesses are often, in effect, triaged out. Sandra and Richard who needs a heart valve replacement and Gema who needs medication Bloom doesn't carry are lucky to have encountered one of our PeaceHealth mission teams and found sponsors. But for too many children here and in every poor country in the world, the miracles of health care that we take for granted and see as any child's right in the United States are simply too costly and not available.

San Rafael Cedros

We had a wonderful week of clinics in San Rafael Cedros, and since a photo is definitely worth a thousand words in this case, I'll let a few photos tell the story. We were in the municipal kindergarten, a small building to hold our group of 28 plus our local volunteers and the patients we were seeing, but it worked beautifully - and coming up on the bus every morning we delighted in seeing Micky and Minnie and the crew.

The first photo shows Dr. Dale Heisinger, a great pediatrician, with Jen Cowan, his interpreter, and one of the many families they saw. While many of our providers needed interpreters, Trevor Moerkerke, a 4th year medical student working under the direction of Dr. Ron Stock, used his excellent Spanish to talk with this mother. Our pharmacists dispensed medications through the elaborate framed window - Moises Lucero, an ER nurse in his day job, patiently explained dosing instructions to each person. The last photo shows Iris Alas, our local coordinator (on right) with some of the great group of local volunteers who organized our patients and kept the lines moving smoothly every day.

We worked hard all day, and each night returned to the Santisima Trinidad Casa de Retiro, a retreat center (not retirement!) overlooking Lake Ilopango, where we enjoyed excellent and traditional Salvadoran food, followed by cribbage, bananagrams, dancing, and a good night's sleep. Today we're at the luxurious Hotel Novo in San Salvador, and I've been listening to our team talking about how important this week has been for them, and how it has recharged them for the work they'll soon be returning to. And that is the idea.

Ironing

My favorite get-ready-for-the-mission ritual is ironing: 10 shirts, a few pairs of pants. Korla, who's 23, told me she's maybe used an iron 5 times in her life. This is definitely one of those generational things, but I love the ritual and the smug satisfaction of having a clean shirt ready for every day of the team's visit. I have the additional advantage of not having to pack my ironed shirts - I can just take them over to the retreat house we're staying in on Saturday. Tonight the perfect accompaniment for ironing was a good episode of Law and Order, which runs just as often here as it does in the U.S.

But the best part of today was taking a copy of our franquisia to the customs office at the airport. This is the first time I've ever had it early enough to give them a head start, and we were all pleased. I don't know if this will mean less time standing around on Saturday night, but I'm hoping so.

Meanwhile, up in Oregon, Washington and Alaska, folk are packing up, ironing (or not), Kathy is checking over the tubs and duffel bags, car pools are assembling for the trip to Seattle. Tomorrow night (Friday) is packing night, when everything gets put together at the SeaTac hotel, and on Saturday our team will begin a very long day before the crack of dawn - a day that will end in Candelaria, El Salvador, probably close to midnight. We're all ready!

First day of school

Tomorrow is the first day of school for kids in El Salvador. They're at the end of the their summer vacations, which stretch from mid-November to mid-January; school packets are being handed out to parents for the second year, with uniforms, shoes and notebooks. Today after church we ran into a single mother who Margaret Jane has been helping. Her 12 and 15 year old daughters are entering 2nd grade - because, I imagine, last year was the first time she was able to send them to school properly clothed and with notebooks. This is one government program that's worth more than every penny.

Here's one more student on his way - Moises, a young man who our doctors helped to get successful surgery about 8 years ago is now ready to start university. He's going to be studying computer technology for a couple of years, on his way, we hope, to a good career and a happy life, with the aid of a scholarship from some of his friends in PeaceHealth.

Working together

It's been great this week to have Kathy Garcia here in Suchitoto and to spend a week working together on our coming missions. Usually Kathy is about 5,000 miles (an extremely rough estimate) north in the much colder regions of Eugene, Oregon, while I'm down here in the sunshine. We connect by e-mail and cell phone all the time, but it's not the same as being in the same place.

Most of our week together has been focused on our coming mission in San Rafael Cedros, a beautiful small town about 50 minutes to the southeast of Suchitoto. Yesterday we visited the beautiful La Santisima Trinidad retreat house in Candelaria, where our groups will stay, and the national hospital in the district capital, Cojutepeque, where our eye surgery group will work in May. Today we checked in with Iris Alas, our local coordinator for San Rafael Cedros, looked again at the municipal kindergarten we'll be using for the clinics, and tried to figure out how to fit all the docs and patients and helpers and translators and chairs and tables and exam tables and eye-screening equipment into a pretty small space. It's going to work, mostly because Kathy is so great at organizing space and flow, Iris is clearly an expert at organizing people, and I've gotten some good experience in organizing the permits. We hope to be a very well-organized group!

Bugs

Our PeaceHealth group visited Parque Cuscatlan in San Salvador last week to see the memorial wall which gives the names of more than 36,000 Salvadoran civilians - men, women and children, priests and sisters, trade unionists and sidewalk vendors - who were killed or disappeared in the Civil War (1977-1992). It's a sad and beautiful memorial, a fitting end to the group's week of experience and discovery in El Salvador.

We got distracted as we walked along by an amazingly colorful bug that was working hard to climb the wall by the names from 1989. I've never seen a creature like this, and when I showed the image to a Salvadoran friend he said that he hadn't, either. I can't quite imagine the evolutionary purposes of his flamboyant markings - I'll just have to say, with Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Glory be to God for dappled things."

Visions

Here are a few photos from the two very good days of our eye clinic in San Juan Opico on November 8th and 9th. We did vision screening and provided glasses, plus vitamins, tylenol, toothbrushes and hand lotion to 250 Opicans, who were pretty happy with the results as these photos show (top left, Dr. Denis Holmes and Andrea Garcia with a patient; top right, Terry Williams looks for just the right glasses for a small girl; bottom, Angie Wolle gets a thank-you handshake). Our two M.D.s, Dr. Jim Boschler and Dr. Steve Cabrales gave talks and answered questions - as well as running our small pharmacy. Dr. Gustavo Peña told Opico children and their moms about the importance of toothbrushing and a healthy diet - and then he cleaned the teeth of about 30 children. And we had demonstrations of the Sawyer water filter and the Ecocina, a wood stove that uses less wood and produces almost no smoke.

We are, as always, grateful to the Bellingham Lions - we had seven on this trip, headed by Ken and Janet Henderson - and the Lions Eyeglass Recycling Center which provides all the prescription glasses for our eye clinics. The Lions also brought walkers, canes for mobility for the blind, used hearing aids for recycling, and low vision magnifiers. Today they've visited the School for the Blind and School for the Deaf in San Salvador, and touched base with the San Salvador Lions Club.

Our PeaceHealth Mission Immersion Group came back to Suchitoto with me and are staying at the Centro Arte para la Paz, where they're learning more about El Salvador's past and present realities and making connections between those realities and their mission as PeaceHealth leaders. It may be a matter of seeing the world through different lenses.

Countdown

I'm doing my usual countdown to the arrival of a mission team: yesterday's meeting with the local volunteers; customs documents in hand; boxes of equipment and supplies assembled; snacks and water ready for the truck; shirts and pants ironed and packed. In half an hour Hernan will arrive with the truck, and we'll be on our way to the airport to meet our team.

In this case, it's two different groups coming together - 7 people from the Bellingham Lions Club, led by Ken and Janet Henderson and 7 people from a PeaceHealth organizational development group, led by Angie Wolle. Kathy Garcia's on the team to organize us and her daughter Andrea will be translating. Tomorrow we all head to San Juan Opico for Mass (for those who want to attend) and to Carmen Aviles' campo home for what is sure to be an amazingly delicious meal, and then we set up the eye clinics. Monday and Tuesday our optometrists will be giving eye exams to people we had to skip last February, and we'll be fitting them with glasses. Meanwhile, there'll be demonstrations of the Sawyer water filter and the ecocina smokeless cookstove, presentations from our PeaceHealth doctors, a tour of the local health clinic, dentist checks for kids, and donations of vitamins, toothbrushes, toothpaste, lotion and body wash. We come bearing gifts!

After Tuesday our group heads in two different directions - the Lions for meetings in San Salvador followed by a trip to Copan, Honduras, and the PeaceHealth group to Suchitoto, where we'll meet with Sister Peggy. I hope to be able to blog as the week unfolds, but that will depend on the timing of everything. It's going to be an amazing week!

Remembering Catherine

I'm safely back in Suchitoto, but was saddened to learn today that our dear Sister Catherine McInnes died very early this morning. Catherine was one of the grand sisters of our community. Born in Canada, she trained as a nurse before entering the community and for many years was the administrator of PeaceHealth's St. Joseph Medical Center, Bellingham, the first hospital built by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace in the northwest (the hospital's Sister Catherine Chapel was named in her honor). After "retiring" from hospital ministry, she was treasurer for the Western Province of the Sisters for eight years. Then she "retired" again, and promptly went to work at St. John Medical Center, where she was a patient advocate until a return of her esophageal cancer a few months ago. Here she is at our 2008 Congregational Chapter.

That tells you a little bit about Catherine, but doesn't begin to capture her. When I learned this summer that Catherine was to undergo a pharyngectomy and larnygectomy, which would mean loss of her natural speaking voice, I spent a long time in prayer, just remembering her voice, her totally distinctive voice and laugh that I knew I would never hear again. She was the best storyteller, always full of fun with a wit that was both dry and droll. She was always a complete lady, never a hair out of place, a great nurse, an excellent and caring administrator - and that laugh lit up every room she was ever in.

Catherine's last months have been voiceless as she endured many surgical procedures until just a couple of weeks ago, when she decided to put herself in hospice care. I was blessed to be able to visit her briefly during my time at home, though I doubt that she was really aware of me. Now we all will be saying goodbye to a dearly loved sister, knowing with relief that her long struggle is at an end, but sorrowed by all she had to endure, and missing her voice, her laugh, her stories.

A medley of friends

Today's odd and delightful mixture of meetings and meals reminds me why it's so essential to come back home. I had breakfast with the Sisters (my favorite cereal that Sr. Rose Anna gets for me when I'm back accompanied by a dish of glorious rhubarb sauce that Sr. Joan set out for me), then met with Sue Nies, co-director for our CSJP Associates on the west coast, to talk about ideas for the new Associate program - we opened the Constitutions and Bible and our new magazine, Living Peace, and had a grand time finding resources and making connections.

Then I dashed over to Seattle to have coffee with Lisa Dennison, a good friend from St. Patrick Parish. We talked joyfully over lattes about Ignatian spirituality, the enneagram, our families and a million other subjects. And I dashed back to Bellevue for the monthly lunch of women from the Queen Anne High School (Seattle) class of 1959 - great hugs from some dear lifelong friends and the puzzle of trying to remember what I ought to know about some classmates I haven't seen since we graduated.

Then I drove peacefully back to St. Mary-on-the-Lake where Sister Sukyi Hur treated me to a wonderful hour of acupuncture, massage, and reflexology, designed to strengthen my lungs and soothe an aching shoulder. Renewed, I stopped at PeaceHealth's System Office, in Bellevue, to pick up a reconstructed computer and connect with some fellow staffers. And then I took my nephew Dan Roben out to dinner at The King and I, a long-time Bellevue favorite Thai restaurant.

How could a day hold more than this? Time with friends, Sisters and Associates, family, my PeaceHealth community, food and coffee and conversation, and even acupuncture - what riches! Best of all, I didn't have to stop for a minute to wonder how to say something - I just opened my mouth and English naturally flowed out.

Don't get me wrong - I'm looking forward to going back to my other home in Suchitoto on Saturday, revisiting my Salvadoran friends, basking in the tropical sunshine and continuing the struggle to say it right in Spanish. But I'll go back strengthened and filled by the joys of friendship, community and connection.

Up and Down I-5

This week and next, Kathy Garcia and I are selling artesania from El Salvador at our PeaceHealth regions - yesterday at St. Joseph Hospital in Bellingham, today at St. John Hospital in Longview, tomorrow at the System Office in Bellevue, next week at the Riverbend and University District campuses of Sacred Heart Hospital, Eugene. It's been great to see many friends from mission teams, meet some folk who are eager to travel to El Salvador, and sell a few Christmas ornaments. We've been delighted as well to have many contributions to the fund for water filters and to our Support-a-Tub program that pays the cost of shipping our tubs of medications to El Salvador.

It's been fun, too, to travel up and down the I-5 corridor - especially with Kathy in the car, so we could sail along in the HOV lane. But after El Salvador travel, it's almost too peaceful - I've had to drink vast quantities of coffee to stay awake, which has never been a problem in El Salvador, where the many interruptions and potential catastrophes breed hyper-alertness. Not complaining, you understand!