Children's Aid Missions International, Inc.

It is with great hope and faith that we now embark upon the first stages of building a small surgical center in San Lucas Sacatapequez. Our vision is that we will start the building before this year is finished, and hopefully will be able to start working at the site as soon as possible. We have asked the people working on the design to make sure that it can be easily expanded as time goes by.

The initial building will house two operating rooms, pre and post operative areas, a small laboratory, and patient rooms. We hope to keep the OR's busy most of the year once they are in operation. We will have to build up as we have a limited amount of ground space to build on. The office building is also on the lot, as is the clinic area. This will mean that we will be able to house our visiting physicians, nurses and other volunteers on site during team stays. Our first goal is to be able to do cleft lip and palate patients using a team approach. With a bank of patients who will be called back for care as the specialists they need rotate through, we should be able to provide better care for these children. Eventually, we will add other surgical specialties to the visiting teams. Hopefully, our active orthopedic and neurosurgical programs can also work here in time.

Our needs: We hope to have volunteer teams rotate through to help with the actual building of the facility. The foundation will be started using a lot of Guatemalan professionals and volunteers. This has to be built in such a way as to be able to withstand the frequent seismic activity in the area. Once that is completed, we will need volunteer groups to start the actual block and mortar work on the building. If you have a group that is interested in doing some work on this project, please contact us so that we can start making a schedule.

Waste paper baskets to toilet seats/ Laboratory equipment for basic laboratory tests/Surgical specialty microscopes and lasers. Anything that you can think of that is needed in a hospital, we will need in this one. Because we do not have storage space yet in Guatemala, we are trying to collect as much of this as possible at the Kentucky office. If you have items that you can hold until we are ready for them, please do so, then maybe we will not have to transport them twice. Almost all of the heavier equipment will have to travel over land through Mexico. If you are a venturesome soul and would like to make the trip helping to drive some of the trucks or buses down that will be loaded with these items, please let us know. We will have several people that will be traveling to take all these items. You will travel with people who do this regularly and know what they are doing.

And, as always, we will need the money to help to fund all of this. We are going forward with faith and confidence that everything will happen as it is supposed to. Please pray for our effort to bring to fruition this surgical center, help us to provide total care to children with craniofacial problems, and eventually to children with a variety of medical and surgical problems in Guatemala and other countries in Central America.