Merry Christmas! from Guatemala with love

what a year

Dear Friends,

We are enjoying SO much these days between Christmas and New Years— bluebird skies, and blessedly quiet nights. The month of December is always, somehow, a whirlwind, and (for me at least) the actual day of Christmas is the finish line and I get a chance to catch my breath and slow down in the days that follow. We LOVE celebrating Advent here— it’s so different from the US. There’s no amazon or Target, and the gift giving is smaller, more sentimental. On Christmas Eve right at midnight, the sky absolutely explodes with fireworks… like, city-level sized bombas from all the houses around us. It’s really wild, and every year I think about how Guatemalans understand something crucial about the import of God-made-man, and how much the coming of the Christ-child rocked the world.

This year has been so good, and so hard in different ways. Here’s a picture-heavy recap:

Last winter our kids were still going to school in hybrid-mode and we were juggling getting people to school different days and driving into the city for clinic… we also had our first intern, Rachel, with us from January to May. Cora and I got to climb Acatenango over spring break, and it was unforgettably beautiful and exhilarating.

In the spring, we added Heidi to our team, wrapped up the school year and then had the great privilege of traveling to Spain for the Serge company conference. (below: all the Serge medical providers in one place, amazing.)

We had the first proper vacation we’ve had in many years and remembered why we like our organization so much. It nourished our souls to be with other people doing the same sorts of work for the same reasons, with kids the same ages etc, all over God’s big world.

We returned to a very rainy Guatemala in June and the next 3 months were marked by a lot of anxiety about Lucie’s health— we are still sorting out exactly what is going on, but the worst things we feared turned out to not be the case.

(seriously, worst rainy season ever: huge landslides causing all sorts of damage and delay. This one happened about 5 minutes after we drove through this stretch of road on our way home from church in June.)

In the fall, we added Chris and Holly to our team plus an intern— Halle— and suddenly our team life started to feel really full and, dare I say, functional. A big blessing— we do better work when we are linked up with other people, supporting and loving each other well and encouraging one another on in love and good deeds.

We closed out the year with a lot of serious reflection around our sense of calling to be here, as we are in the last months of our first five-year term. Next summer I will start a public health program at Johns Hopkins (virtually, from here—) and I really hope that will better equip me to tackle some of the community-level challenges I’m facing as I care for people with chronic diseases.

We are deepening our connection with the small Anglican mission church here in Antigua, and growing in depth of ministry work with our team in the city. It’s such good work and we are grateful to be apart of it.

The year has also been full of hard things. Contemplating whether one of our kids might have cancer. Financial stress. Working through some tough relationships in our school community. Watching patient after patient die painful, preventable deaths, and many others sitting with intolerable suffering. Pray for the world, for the healing and wholeness of Jesus to come. And soon. Pray for Guatemala. Pray for our corrupt government, for the children and women, in particular that suffer so much under the burdens of poverty, violence and corruption. Pray for light to shine in dark places and for us to keep having the wherewithal to get up every day and do the work that we have been so clearly called to do.

We are incredibly grateful for partnership, to know that the friendship, encouragement, prayers, financial support all add up to us not doing this work alone— I am grateful that we have been sent, and for the ways that God does his good, restorative work in the world. Hazel and I have been reading Tales of the Kingdom (David & Karen Mains, if you want to look it up) and the Rangers have this call back and forth:

“How goes the world?”

“The world goes not well.”

“But the Kingdom comes!”

And indeed it does. I hope we can call that back and forth a little bit as we head into the new year.

Merry Christmas, friends.

Love,

Abbie & Jeff

(and Cora, 14, Lucie, 11, and Hazel, 7)