Children’s Hospital, Jesus, and Creative Presentations

Today was our last formal day on SEMILLA’s campus, with a morning field trip to Guatemala’s only hospital dedicated to serving children with cancer.

The hospital serves about 1,200 children with cancer each year, about 80 percent of whom are under age 10. About 150 children come for treatment each day — often chemotherapy — but the hospital also provides psychological and social work services, nutrition counseling, food and housing for families whose children are hospitalized, and transportation costs for families traveling to the city. The hospital, which was as clean and odor-free as any hospital we’ve seen elsewhere in the world, even provides dental services to fill all cavities prior to the children’s chemotherapy, to assure that tooth infections won’t harm the children’s weakened immune system. It was a markedly impressive, well staffed, highly organized operation. The hospital receives about a third of its 100-million quetzales budget each year from the Guatemalan government, and then AYUMI raises funds for the remaining costs. For its patients, all of these quality services are entirely free.

We went in two different groups to the hospital, just to not overwhelm the hospital staff. While one part of the smaller-sized group toured the facilities, the other part of that group colored with children, made paper airplanes with them, and created origami cranes or boxes. The intent was to provide entertainment and a distraction from the medical process they were undergoing. Our students seemed to love these interactions.

This afternoon we had our last session with Professor Flores on “Jesus and Vocation in the Contemporary Context.” In this session he focused on humility and integrity, with students breaking up into groups and reading an assigned text and reporting back to the larger group. He also had asked each student to write up a paragraph last night about what they had learned from these sessions. Diana wrote (quoted here with her permission): “During your class I learned that I am have been completely unaware of what is going on around me. All the time I have spent on useless stuff should have been spent on informing myself on what is going on around me – in my community, my country, and globally. I also learned how you can’t solve the world’s problems with the snap of your fingers, but what you can do is offer a smile, a greeting, open ears, a shoulder to cry on, or love to someone. As a human being I will give and receive all of these many times throughout my life. Understanding the Bible is a life-long journey, and it is never too late to start. The Bible is a great refuge from daily life stresses. It seems like human experiences are repeating themselves throughout time like in the Bible. If I do something, I should follow through. That includes all consequences involved! To be able to move into a new way of life, I should be submissive to God so I can be capable of learning what he has intended for me to do here on earth.”

Lena wrote, in response to Professor Flores’ request (quoted here with her permission): “Through these lectures I’ve been taught to embrace faith as a pilgrimage. That it’s a journey, not a destination. I’ve been encouraged to engage with my faith, to stay critical and curious, but have no fear in periods of un-learning and uncertainty. I’ve learned not to journey alone. I’ve learned the value of pursuing God alongside brothers and sisters. Pursuit of God is not abstract and removed from daily life, but rather intimately intertwined within the context of the world. I’ve been called back to the young, vivid nature of imagination, to respect vision and hope and pure feeling as a valid part of spiritual experience. So long I’ve been encouraged to think rationally, logically, with judgment. But something about spirituality transcends these things. Jesus was radical. He was full of stories and compassion, love and tears. Though he was a thinker, and a great one, we cannot forget he played with children and he wept. So let us be like him. Let us embrace the marriage between experiment and imagination, methodic and sporadic, mind and heart, learning and feeling. And in this new, crazy way of life let us walk, in the Spirit, alongside Jesus, with the church, towards God.”

Following the class session, SEMILLA/CASAS threw a farewell party for the group, complete with a piñata — which was a hoot — cake and ice cream. Although we still have two full days in Guatemala, we had the farewell event today since the remaining days will be spent on a field trip to nearby Antigua, the former capital of Guatemala and a favorite destination for travelers. Only Dori, who was stuffed with candy, was injured in the piñata event, though Jahari also was whacked once by a blindfolded Simon.

Immediately after the party the group did their creative presentations, which were an utter delight, incredibly inventive, wonderfully respectful, and exceedingly humorous. Five separate groups worked diligently to craft raps and songs and a puppet show identifying learnings on the Study-Service Theology Term. We couldn’t have been happier about these presentations.

We finished the structured part of the evening with a hymn sing (chorus sing), and students are now playing charades and other interactive games. We’re looking forward to tomorrow’s two-day trip to Antigua.