My dear friend and teammate, Tauna, has a God given heart to help and protect the mistreated and starving animals. She knows that she has ministry with people through the animals. She desires to educate the locals in these developing countries on having their animals spaded and neutered and treating them for worms and ear mites.
There is a woman from the United States that has lived in Guatemala for 30 years who started a clinic, adoption, and education center for dogs and cats. The only problem was, the woman lived in a town called Antigua which was a 2 ½ hour drive from our village and Tauna would have to leave our team for this month if she choose to go and work with her. Tauna decided to take a visit to Antigua to visit the woman and her animals to see if God was calling her there.
We decided as a team that I would go along with Tauna on the 2 ½ hour drive for the visit. We were told that along the way there would be a few very sick locals from Panajachel making the journey with us to the hospital in Antigua. We found out that these indigenous people only go to the hospital when they are really sick. For some reason, I believe it is lack of education, when they go to the hospital they believe they will die.
The rest of our team went out to see what kind of needs there were with the hurricane victims. As we waved good-bye to our team, we told them we would see them in about 6 hours…..little did we know God had something else in store for us……
As Tauna and I hopped aboard a little bus to Antigua along with a young couple and there 2 month old baby with a severe cleft palette, a 23 year old woman who believed she was pregnant but having tremendous abdominal pain, and a 70 year lady running a fever with extreme kidney pains along with her adult son. Right before we left Panajachel, Tauna and I were informed that the lady with the animals would not be home that day. Oh no, we thought….now we don’t know where the rest of our team is!
Tauna and I felt that we would go along with our original plan and take these very sick people to the hospital to see the Canadian Doctors working there. Over many windy roads and steep mountains we arrived at the hospital only for our new friends to be turned away (for the 3rd time). Unfortunately, they usually get turned away because they don’t speak Spanish very well (they speak a native language), they are not well educated, and they lack money to pay at the hospital. Tauna and I were not satisfied that they were being turned away…we knew God had sent us there for a reason and we were ready to help!
