Lá Thư Thứ Sáu

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

How everyone is doing?  I pray that everything is going well for you and yours.  I am going to die soon due to the hot hot hot weather here.  April, May, and June are the most terrible months here because it is very very very hot hot hot here.  But I will go to the Heaven much faster than I expected because I have been living in Hell (very hot) for the last 2 months!!!

Please allow me to share with all of you about the Mayan (?) the people at the villages/aldeas.  I am talking about the people who live on the mountains where we (Fr. Ricardo, Sr. Violeta, and I) have been having ministry there.

The villagers are very nice, kind, simple, and generous.  I fall in love with them on my second week here.

Whenever we come to a community, a community includes from 25-150 family, they always feed us.  They feed us breakfast, lunch, and dinner, if we stay overnight at the mountain.  For a small community, a few people voluntarily bring foods for us.  They cooked at home and brought the foods and drink for us.  They are so generous with the foods. They always make sure that we have enough foods to eat.  Besides that, they server us with ¨expensive meals such as boiled eggs or scramble eggs because egg is very expensive here.  They mostly server us with the ¨most expensive ¨ meals such as ¨chicken or pork.¨ the villagers rarely eat chicken or pork because they are extremely expensive here.  For a large community, the villagers cook at a center where people gather together.  Again, they are so generous that they always provide us with the expensive and most expensive foods.

Whenever we come to a community, ALL villagers will have a ¨day off, ¨ including the children because Fr. Ricardo and S. Violeta do not come there often.  So, in order to learn more about God or His Word, they need to gather all together.  Some have to walk for an hour or two to get to the center.

Since my Spanish is ¨improving, ¨ I can listen and understand more of their sharing, their faith, and their ¨thirst¨ for the Word.  Thus, I fall more in love with them.  Their thirst for the Word is one of the reasons that make my tiredness and challenges from hiking vanish when I get to the mountains.  One gentle man stood up and said:  ¨We read the Bible, we know that we need to help one another, but we do not do that.  We need to apply the Words of the Lord in our life.  How do we do that as a community/together? ¨ They can see their future, they know the path that they want to follow, they are on the right track, but they do not know how to start.  They need some guidance or someone who can push/pull them to do it, step by step.  Their thirst for the Word of the Lord ¨melt¨ my heart.  I know I would learn a lot more from them, but my limited Spanish is a gap for me to learn and know more about them and their culture.  That is about my ¨spiritual¨ ministry.  Now, I would like to share with you some of my nursing¨ stories with the villagers.

1.  A man asked me to give his son an injection.  After I gave his son an injection, he asked me how much he needs to pay me.  I told him that I do not charge anything at all and I told him to pray for me.  He came back to see us thirty minutes later.  He then gave each of us three bananas and said ¨thank you¨ in Q ´ebchi (?)  Is it cute!  I love it!  I love his way of expressing his thank you to us.  It is very simple-bananas, but it is from the bottom of his heart!  I hope that the bananas are from his banana tree because the market where he can buy the bananas is 3 1/2 hrs away from the mountain!

2.  We got a word late at night that a lady was very sick and she was not responsive at all.  Fr. Ricardo and I decided to see her.  When we got there, she was not that bad.  She was very weak.  After my assessment, I gave her some of my medications that I brought with me.  Of course, I gave them the instructions how to take the meds and how to prevent the problems that might happen to her again.  And if it happens again, they will know what to do.  Before we left her house, they thanked us by giving us coffee to drink and tamales (made by corn flour and sugar) to eat.  I love it.  They gave us whatever they had because it was 11:00 PM at that time.

3.  Again, we got a word that a lady (at a different village) was very sick.  Father and I went to see her.  She had palpitation, headache, back pain, etc.  After my assessment, her heart beat was within normal limit.  She did not have chest pain, no edema to her lower extremities.  it seems like she did not have any heart problems today. They said she had palpitation yesterday, but not today.  According to what they described about her symptoms, I know for sure that she did have high blood pressure yesterday, but not today.  Thus, I kept asking her more questions so I would know what caused her to have high blood pressure yesterday.  Finally, we found out that she was very angry and hurt yesterday because her son felt and badly fractured his arm.  He is in a critical condition and he is staying at a hospital which is 3 1/2 hrs away from her house.  Therefore, she worries about him and she does not have a cell phone; so she knows nothing about his condition.  This time, I take this opportunity to explain to her why she had palpitation, why she had high blood pressure and why she had a headache.  When I explained to her condition, I used my hand to show her how a normal heart beats and how a heart beats when it has high blood pressure so she could see it.

4.  We saw a young lady (not at the mountain) with an ulcer/deep wound to her calf.  I taught her how to cleanse the wound, how to put gauze over it, and how to put a tape over the dressing.  It is very simple, but she did not have any knowledge about it.  Instead of going to see a doctor which is about 3 1/2 hrs away by driving for an injection, I gave her an injection and her family asked us to stay and they fed us for an early lunch.

5.  She told me that her father suddenly could not walk and his right side is very weak and his speech is very slurred.  I know right away that he has a stroke to his left brain.  There is nothing that I can do about the stroke because he really needs to be admitted to a hospital for that.  So, to prevent him for having more strokes, I told them what to eat.  To prevent him from having contraction of his right arm, hand, and lower extremity due to weakness or not able to move well, I taught them what to do.   Instead of using a tennis ball to exercise his fingers and hand, I told them to use 2 lemons or a big onion because there is NO tennis ball around here at all!

In general, when I tell people what to do or how to do it, I always give them the reasons of doing it such as why she needs to cleanse the wound, why she needs to put a gauze over it, what causes that lady to have high blood pressure and palpitation so they can understand it.  I do it because I believe in the education.  I believe that education will save people´s life, and education will help people to have a better life.

Well, the above nursing stories are just some of the nursing stories that I have been doing here.

Have a blessed weekend, Sisters and Brothers.  See you soon.

With my love and prayers,

Phuong Linh, OP

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