Guatemala 2011 Mission Trip
From Dr. Renee Brown
After breakfast with Tony the Tiger the entire team headed for Tecpan, picking up the faculty from The University of Mariano Galvez on the way. The scenery was beautiful – including volcanoes, farm land, and indigenous people. We visited the JT foundation clinic in Tecpan.
The visit started with watching videos of the work that the foundation is doing with the children and families with disabilities. It was incredibly inspiring to see how they went into the communities and mountains to seek out those with disabilities as often these individuals are hidden by their families. We were impressed with the creativity and ingenuity of the staff to do so much with so little.

For example, they created different surfaces for ambulation training with natural resources such as sand and rocks and wood chips. We realized how spoiled we are at home. We had fabulous “horseshoe” cookies and coffee as we as a wonderful traditional Tecpan cookout. Our hosts then took us to the Mayan ruins. It was amazing to see how these structures are still standing after thousands of years. We had the opportunity to take pictures with a church group of indigenous Mayan women.

On the bus ride back,part of the team learned to play “Ve a pescar” (Go fish) in Spanish to try to improve our language skills. We also learned how to say Uno in Spanish. Thanks Jenna Lynn!! After a quick “Alrededor del Mundo- Round the World” of basketball – won by Sara, we had dinner and were treated to a presentation about Guatemalan coffee. The night ended with a fun and competitive round of games. We cannot believe that tomorrow is the last clinical day.