So, I wrote this Tuesday, but then my card reader broke, and it's been a crazy week, so I'll post this now, and there's probably more to come this weekend.

Only 7 weeks left--time's passing pretty quickly.
Thanks to those of you who leave comments/send me e-mails about what I write here. It's nice to know that people read this and think about what I write here--even when what I write isn't all that interesting. I appreciate it.
This week there are 3 physical therapists here from the states. They're fitting people with prostheses that they brought down. (They were made by a prosthetis (sp?) who was here a couple of weeks ago.) They are doing exercises with those people to teach them to use their artificial limbs. Today went really well, and tomorrow we're going to be working with some kids who have difficulty walking. I'm translating for them this week, so that's pretty exciting. Usually groups just grab a couple of volunteers to take with them each day to translate, but apparently these people are really special, because I was assigned to them before they even got here, and I had to be here to meet them Saturday when they got in. Sunday I took them to Santiago and Panajachel (two of the more touristy towns on the lake) and had a pretty good time hanging out with them.
I've been doing a fair amount of medical translating lately, and it's been really enjoyable--and really challenging. I'm learning a lot of medical Spanish and a lot about medicine in general. It's always fun when I get words that I don't even know in English and I have to try translate them. I've never really had much interest in medicine, but now I find it fascinating. I don't think I'd go to med school or do anything with it, but I've done a lot of things in my life that I wouldn't have expected. I'm really glad to have great opportunities to keep learning, and I hope I always have that desire and I'm always doing something to keep learning. That was a really poorly written sentence, but you know what I mean.
The rainy season has started--time to start carrying an umbrella everywhere :)
Unfortunately not all the groups that come down are as great as some of the medical groups I've had the opportunity to work with. I wish everyone could go through some sort of cross cultural orientation before they came down here so that they what not to do. When kids come up to me and ask me for a dollar I know that someone has been giving dollars to kids...not such a great idea. There was one group here that was doing consults in some of the villages around here-which can be a pretty good thing, and some of the groups do a good job with it, but this group did not. It was a group of nursing students that comes every year, and every year they pass out clothes and toys to all the people that come. One problem with this is that people will come to get clothes and toys and not because they need medical help, so they are getting drugs that they don't need to be taking. When I went out with this group to translate, we had a couple people keep coming back with different symptoms, just so that they could get more clothes. Another problem is that it encourages people to wear "American" clothes rather than the traditional clothes that a lot of them still wear. Another problem is that it creates and reinforces the idea that "Americans" come down here to give things away, and that is not the best way to help the people here. If you want to give donations (which can be helpful if given in a good way), they should never go straight from your hands to the hands of the people who are going to use them. Some local person should be involved as an intermediary. Someone who can give the things out after the gringos leave, so people don't become dependent on gifts from gringos. And donations should never be given out in a medical setting-it gets in the way of doing good medicine. There's probably even more problems than these, but I'll stop venting for a little while and see if I can write about something a little more interesting.
I haven't done a lot of reading lately, and I haven't written in my journal in quite a while. I need to do more of those. I learn a lot from reading, and I'm realizing I can teach myself when I stop to reflect and write about what I'm experiencing and thinking. (I also learn a lot when people interact with these things, but there's not always people here who I feel like I can have good conversations with.
When I was volunteering in Mexico a couple weeks ago, a couple of people asked me how I was saved. I may have already blogged about this some, but that question really frustrates me, and if I end up back in Mexico this summer, I'm going to be honest with people when they ask me that question. I'm going to tell them that I don't think salvation is all about whether someone goes to heaven or hell. I'll also tell them that salvation isn't mainly an individual thing. Salvation is for communities and for nations. It's really a message for all of the human race, something that's better the more people embrace it, and not because it means one more person is going to heaven. The more people that embrace the true message of Christ, the more people are working to bring the kingdom (or as McLaren suggests may be a more appropriate term-revolution) of God about on the earth. It means more people in on bringing social justice and fair treatment to everyone. It means undoing the wrong that we have done, and the wrong that those who have gone before us have done. No one should be working for a dollar a day. No one should be starving to death, especially when so many people are dying from causes linked to eating too much food. No one should have to work in sweatshop conditions so that I can have a cheaper shirt to add to the dozens I have already. No one should have live in a cardboard house when so many people are living in mansions and have more than one house. So many things in our lives are so contrary to the revolution that Christ started, and yet we claim to follow him. I could go on for a while about related things, but I'm going to leave you with these words from Nickelback (interestingly enough) that I think speak to what I've been talking about.

"If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride,
Then we'd see the day when nobody died.

And as we lie beneath the stars
and realize how small we are,
If they could love like you and me,
imagine what the world could be"

Love.