Psalm 25:5
“Guide me in Your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in You all day long.”
Okay LORD. Now what?
I’ve just
returned from a medical mission trip to Guatemala. My husband and I have been going yearly for
the last seven years. The team includes
medical providers, a pharmacy, a dental team, nurses, van drivers, and
interpreters. The medical team, with all
the supplies, fits into four vans. We
stay at a church hostel in the city of Quetzaltenango and drive to five outlying
villages during the week of our mission.
The villages we visit
have been selected by a pastor/doctor in Quetzaltenango who is in contact with
our mission director. When we arrive at
the village, we often times set up our mobile clinic in an available school. In Guatemala, the schoolrooms are usually
arranged around an open courtyard.
During the
clinics, the people we serve go to various classrooms where they will
find: the Registration Station, the
Intake Station, Medical Providers, the Pharmacy, Nursing and then Dental. It can be challenging to channel hundreds of
local people to their needed stations and difficult for the stations to
coordinate services.
If there are
people with medical issues that cannot be aided by our team, they are referred
to a specialist. The pastor/doctor from
Quetzaltenango sets up the appointment with the specialist and arranges any
transportation needed by the patient.
This is all free of charge.
I am an
interpreter. I love speaking Spanish,
interacting with the local people and helping the team and the patients to
connect. I have worked with the nurses,
with the medical providers and even in crowd control.
This year, in
each of the five villages we visited, we did not need to set up the clinic in separate
classrooms. In each case, we were given
the use of a large auditorium-like room.
There was much less confusion for the people we served because they
could see their next station, be it Medical Providers, Nurses or Pharmacy. It was much easier for the stations to
communicate with each other, also.
While surveying
the action in the busy auditoriums, it struck me how the team was working
together as one. We weren’t puzzled,
exasperated, uninformed stations struggling on our own. Nursing or Pharmacy. Medical Provider or Registration. We were one.
It was a short mental leap for me to go on. Patient or Doctor. Guatemalan or North American. Old or young.
“Happy my blood sugar level is good” or “I need a referral for the lump
in my breast.” We are all one. All dependent on the Holy Spirit, the Lord,
the giver of Life. And I could clearly
see God is good.
I am one of the bloggers for the Joy International blog! That blog site can be found at http://www.joyintl.org/web/columnid/6412/articles.asp
