Mariela came into our clinic Friday and entered our hearts; she is just one year old. Her mother Laura requested our help so Mariela could walk normally. Her tiny foot has been badly crooked since birth. Laura took her to a Mexican hospital six months ago. Their idea for correction was to twist her little foot straight and put a hard cast on for three months and see what happened. As you can see in the photo, their idea didn’t work. A 17 year old girl from the Menlo Park team, Sarah, upon hearing about Mariela, immediately wanted to raise all the needed funds for corrective surgery in Mexico. We will start with x-rays this week, and return to the Mexican pediatric orthopedic surgeon that successfully performed foot surgery last December so Lilia could walk.

The Menlo Park team also built onto our library/computer lab. The library was almost doubled in size, it was originally 24’x 24’, and with the new addition it is now 24’x44’.  It was completely repainted with a very happy peach and green paint. The new expansion was needed, due to the expansion of the education program (Menlo Park Pres Church and Prestige Reality), giving full scholarships to ten Mexican children to graduate high school.  Last year, the program started with six children. Our Susie (Leo’s wife) oversees the children and monitors their complete progress. Susie and the ten students helped with the construction and painting.

A dentist and newly trained assistant from the team worked in the dental office in our clinic both days. Besides pulling bad teeth, they polished everyone’s teeth that came by, including even the Saturday morning before we left for El Paso. The polisher was left behind, and Jeff was trained in polishing skills! We tried to train Rosa, Jenny's sister, but she quickly lost interest at the sight of bleeding gums. Many sick also wanted to be seen with the clinic door open.

We also had an opportunity to visit a secondary school here last week. It has no government support and every one of the 18 windows was broken out.  The 120 students are squeezed into three 12’x 36’ school rooms that we built about four years ago. They don’t have a single chalk board and very few supplies. The power was never connected to the three rooms. The teachers are not paid, but still the children in school are the lucky ones. We replaced a broken toilet and repaired a major hole in a wall in the bano that day. Jeff addressed all of the students Tuesday, and the man in charge offered to have any group, any time, come and encourage, preach or just spend time with the school children - their door is always open.  The need for another classroom is very evident.

Blessings from Juarez,

jeff and jenny