For the past few days Team Abandon has been working alongside medical students, dentists and doctors from Lee University in Cleveland, TN. (I made a mistake on the University name in my last blog-oops!).
Every day our team and the doctors would load up a school bus with medical supplies and head out early in the morning (sometimes leaving as early as 6 am!) for a day of clinics. Each day would bring us to another city within the region.
As soon as we arrive, we unload the tubs of medical equipment and set up our makeshift clinic…we have a designated triage area where each person is evaluated by a med student and then is either prescribed the necessary medication at the triage area, or if the illnesses are rare or extremely severe, they would then continue on to see one of the doctors. In addition to the Triage area, we had exam areas for the doctors, a room for the dentists and a pharmacy.
When we weren’t taking turns helping with triage, we would direct traffic of the waiting lines, count out pills for prescriptions, pray with people, try to entertain the children with coloring books, crayons, stickers and balloon animals as well as pass out vitamins and pills to kill parasites to every person in attendance. “Este es un pastilla para parasites…necessita masticar es pastilla!”
I knew going into this trip that I would see a lot of hurting people and of course going into the medical clinics, I knew I would see a lot of sickness and disease. Something that surprised me the most, in retrospect of these past 7 clinics is that even though I have felt compassion for so many of the people, it only took one specific child to REALLY break my heart. It’s killing me right now that I can’t think of his name, but he is the most precious 7 year old ever. I had walked into one of the exam rooms where he was being seen. His mother was holding him in her lap and they were surrounded by the doctor, one of the translators and a team of medical students. I was curious as to what was wrong with the boy, so I stayed and listened in. It turns out that the boy had been born with a deformity to his legs and couldn’t walk. He also had problem with his eyes and local doctors had told the mother that her son was going blind. As I listened in, God started to burden me to pray over the child. I remember asking God to continue to burden me stronger and stronger. As soon as the mother carried her son out of the room, I stopped her and asked her if I could pray for her son. She said yes and sat down on one of the benches outside the exam room. I got down on my knees, put my hands on the boy, and as soon as I opened my mouth to pray, the tears flooded and I put my arms around the boy and cried out to God. AJ and Erin also joined in praying over the boy and his mother. It broke my heart to see this little boy in the condition in which he was and it also broke my heart to look up at his beautiful young mother and see both strength and fatigue over her face. We prayed for a miracle. We prayed for healing of his sight and of his crippled legs. I know Jesus has heard our prayers and He is working on the boy. I told my team that I don’t think I had every prayed such a faith filled prayer in my life…I walked away from the boy completely trusting in what Jesus was doing. Jesus told us to lay hands over the sick and to pray for healing. Jesus heals the blind and lame.
Please continue to keep Team Abandon, the medical missions team, Pastor Estaurdo and his ministry as well as the people of Guatemala in your prayers.
