Busy, busy

Sorry!!! I realize it has been almost a month since my last blog entry! So, what's been going on? Well...

• The Kuyay Talpuy school is finally open. We opened on August 10th in San Juan de Iscos. For info on the school and to see photos, go to www.kuyayperu.org
• Today, Billy is in Iscos helping the little school move into it's permanent home. Yes, we spent three weeks in a temporary classroom awaiting the repairs and final construction of our "real" classroom.
• We went to Lima to pick up our new missionary team members at the airport. The McEuen family arrived here after spending a year in Costa Rica in language school. We are SOOOO happy that they have finally arrived!!!
• We began our homeschool curriculum with Sarah and have now completed 6 weeks. We are having a lot of fun with it and she is learning so much and so quickly!
• Billy has been working long-distance with Ron Phillips to get the kinks out of our medical database in the computer. The system is really awesome! When patients come to receive medical/dental/optical care, they put their finger on a fingerprint scanner and the computer finds them, enters their data, and they are tracked through the system of services. After the first medical campaign in July, we have beefed up the computer memory and worked on refining the system. As of today, we are ready to test-drive it again on the next medical campaign - beginning Saturday!
• Laurie has been studying and taking an online course through the Institute for International Medicine (INMED) to help further prepare for the medical missions. Medicine and Health practices are VERY different in other cultures and it is crucial to understand the culture and the language and the underlying ideas when dealing with medical issues in another country/culture.
• We have been preparing for the next two medical campaigns. One begins this weekend in Puerto Bermudez (jungle). The next will be in mid-September to Iscosazin (jungle). These will be very different from the last medical mission to the mountains in that they are in the jungle (different diseases, illnesses, climate, etc.) and that they are in completely different cultural groups (jungle cultures are NOT like mountain cultures).

So we have been busy! Sorry to have neglected the blog site... maybe I'll do better in September...