I had an incredible ministry day. I have so many emotions and feelings and thoughts and flashbacks and connections from what happened today. But those will have to come later after I can digest them a little more.
Right now I just want to tell you about Mina.
Mina lives in Los Piños. Los Piños is a very run down community. There is no running water; houses are merely wood nailed together with a dirt floor that you have to walk up a cliff to get to. Tony spends a lot of his time making relationships in this community. Herman (17) lived there before he came to Zion’s Gate to live with Tony, which is why we were there today. One of our projects for the month is to build an outhouse at the house where Herman’s family lives.
Our options for the day were to dig the holes for the future “Bathroom” at Herman’s house, or walk around to visit people. Because I wanted the opportunity to see some of the people I had prayed for last week, and because I hate poop, I chose to walk around and visit people. Tony wanted to first go visit Carlos and Fernando’s grandmother. Carlos and Fernando are brothers that live at Zion’s Gate.
We got there and she was lying in bed. Her name is Mina (only possibly spelled correctly, but that’s what it sounds like to my American ears.) She started talking to us about all sorts of things, and then mentioned how she has been sick. Bethany asked her if she had seen a doctor. This is where the story really starts.
We learned that she had seen a doctor in November and still hasn’t gotten better. She has constant pain in her abdomen. She has soreness throughout her entire body. She often gets headaches. Her skin is always itchy. She fatigues extremely easily.
So what had the doctors done when she went to see them? They told her she had some sort of bacterial infection. They gave her some medicine and sent her home. She is now out of medicine, so Tony offered to refill them for her.
She pulled out all of the empty packaging from her medications and Bethany began to look through them. She was trying to figure out what medications they were, what purpose they were serving based on Mina’s health problems, etc. As she was going through them, and asking more questions about Mina’s symptoms, Bethany began to cry.
Tony called a local doctor who speaks English to help Bethany better interpret what Mina was telling her about her pain and symptoms. After they hung up the phone, Bethany started looking through the medications again to see what Mina had been taking and what she wanted to go get from the pharmacy. This is when Bethany realized she had an empty IV bag.
“Was there anything in this?” (Many hand motions.)
“Si.”
“Que? Que en aqui?”
Mina took the bag from her and pulled out the full set of tubes and needles that were needed to administer the IV. It was in a completely sealed unopened package. Why did they give her this? With more charades, Mina told us that there had been liquid inside of it.
“Donde es liquido?”
“Yo bebo.”
She had been drinking the medicine that was supposed to be administered through an IV, medicine that her body needed but was not equipped to digest- it was supposed to go into the blood!
After a little more diagnosing and a phone call to a bilingual pharmacist to translate the prescriptions Bethany wanted to get her, she headed to the pharmacy. She purchased prescriptions and stayed behind with Cassie to give Mina her first doses and teach her how to take them. I don’t have any more information yet, but she should be back soon to tell me how that went.
Tomorrow we will be back in Los Piños, and I know the Lord has big plans for us to see her again. She might even be dancing around when we get there.
