Exactly one month ago today, I was waking up in Fraijanes, Guatemala, for our Global Outreach team’s first day operating a medical clinic in town. Our team of 21 people was comprised of students, nurses, and doctors there for one week to work with Caring Partners International and a local church in Guatemala to provide physical and spiritual care to all who came to the clinic. Now that we have returned home, I’d love to share what we saw the Lord do!
The Desire to Go
I was supposed to go on a mission trip during my senior year of high school, but it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I do not fully understand why that was the Lord’s plan, but once it was canceled, my desire to seek out another mission trip grew immensely. During the spring GO Conference at Cedarville my freshmen year, my friend Caroline and I walked around to a lot of tables, and the one that I remembered most was the medical mission trip to Guatemala with Caring Partners. This trip stuck in my mind until the following fall semester, my sophomore year, when I decided to take the next step to apply, and I was accepted to be on the trip. But the full reality of what I was doing did not set in until the very first day in the clinic.
The Healer at Work
Let me take you through a tour of the clinic as I saw it. The patients were first guided to the eye screening tent, where we determined if they would need prescription glasses. They were then guided to the provider stations, where they talked with nurses and translators to get the help that they needed and got any prescriptions written for medicine. Meanwhile, children were running around with huge smiles on their faces and stickers all over their faces and hands. The patients would then continue to the chiropractor while expressing their gratefulness to everyone they saw.
The last station was one of the most difficult jobs at the clinic. We had hundreds of prescription glasses that patients would come to us for, and we would search and search for the closest prescription we could find.
After workers helped these patients see clearly for the first time, they would continue to the clinic of the soul, where members of the church shared the Gospel with every person who walked into the clinic. It was easy to see love pouring out from these church members. I enjoyed watching their facial expressions as they spoke because they could not hide their care and joy in sharing the Gospel.
Patients would continue on to get any prescriptions from the pharmacy and then be on their way. In one week, we saw 845 patients, and 86 of them came to Christ!
Answered Prayers
Going into this trip, I was a little worried since I do not know much Spanish. I asked the Lord that He would bless me with opportunities to have deeper conversations even despite this obstacle. The Lord blessed me with amazing conversations with my teammates and our translators. I got to have an incredible conversation with my friend Arleth, who I met on the very first day of the clinic. She was the translator for our chiropractic group. I got to ask her about what life was like in Guatemala and what she loves to do. But what meant the world to me was when she shared the journey the Lord had taken her on and why she wanted to go into the medical field. It blows my mind how the Lord is intentionally and uniquely working in the lives of His children all over the world.
You Can Still Go
Going into this trip, I had the mindset that a mission trip was something that I would do when I was in college and then never be able to do again. Once we got to Guatemala, I realized a lot of our team was not in college — they were parents and grandparents who were involved in churches and their families’ lives, and yet they purposely went out of their way to make time to keep going out to all nations. This trip did not feel like checking off an item on my bucket list, rather it increased my desire to keep going.
Remembering What the Lord Has Done
One of our leaders, Dr. Adam, challenged our team with the idea of remembrance. So often we forget what the Lord has done, and he encouraged us to tell of what we saw the Lord do because that helps us remember. At the end of every day, our team would talk about what we remembered from that day.
I know what I will remember. I will remember the pure joy and thankfulness on the face of every child that walked into the clinic. We would offer stickers to all the children, and they never looked for their favorite or asked for more than one. One was all they needed to put a huge smile on their faces.
I will remember the incredible conversations with my teammates about what the Lord has done in their lives. And I will remember what it was like to have a church service before opening the clinic on Sunday. That is what it will be like in heaven—people from every tribe, nation, and tongue who have served the same Lord all the days of their life with their own stories of what the Lord has done in their lives. But until that day, we go and serve genuinely, we love the Lord and others, and we tell of what He has done!
Tags: #experience, #globaloutreach, #studentlife
Posted in: College Life, Experience, Global Outreach, Uncategorized