Closing out 3 Years at Hillside

It’s hard to believe that we are nearing the end of our 3 years at Hillside. Our staff has grown along with our services. We started out with 3-6 students per month and we will soon be up to 13 with the advent of the arrival of PT students our next rotation. That’s a lot of activity going on all over the Toledo district by the Hillside team.

In June, Angela Thomas and Bill Brown will be arriving with their 3 children to take our places. They are both Family Practice MDs with OB/GYN experience and will be here for 2-3 years. We will spend 4-5 weeks working with them so that there is a good transition. Our Belizean staff can pretty well take care of the organizational details (which are many!). The family visited Hillside last September so are very familiar with what they will be taking on.

We are leaving behind the Student Loan Program and are still raising funds for that. We are hoping that when we return for a visit these students will then be helping to manage Hillside.

Dan and Maria at our former clinic.

Alfia, Jenny - loan students and Alva.Hillside Staff

Christmas Family Adventure and Wedding

This past Christmas time was quite extraordinary for our family. It marks the first time we have been together in Belize since 1994. This time we extended that family to include 2 grandchildren, 2 daughters in law, and a soon to be son in law. We had some real togetherness (13) when we all piled into our Land cruiser used for our mobile clinic and toured Belize for a few days before the big wedding. For the wedding in San Pedro we had a nice mix of all our families, plus U.S. and Belizean friends. We had music provided by our Jesuit International Volunteers who live just down the road from us in PG (plus Niki on the guitar). Fr. Smalls, our old time family friend from Belize City performed the ceremonies. The weather cooperated and was sunny but not too hot. Adam has passed the Thibault initiation test and now is officially a member of the clan.