Medical Mission

While one part of our team built schools and played with the kids (we liked to call it "family life ministry"),  the other part of our crew in Haiti was the medical team. An amazing group of people worked in very close quarters and with limited technology and supplies to treat approximately 800 people and pull over 400 teeth in four days. Praise God for their willingness to give of themselves to help the Haitian people!

The medical tent.

Hundreds of men, women and children waited in the terrible heat to see a doctor.

Because of the close quarters in the tent, the rest of us didn't spend a whole lot of time inside the medical tent. We did, however, get to enjoy the amazing stories over a yummy meal of beans and rice at the end of the day. This is the one that continues to both haunt and motivate me...

An older gentleman approached the work site one morning and asked to borrow one of the wheel barrows. With some skepticism and trepidation, he was allowed to take it. We all watched him take off across the field and many of us grumbled and mused that we'd probably never see that wheel barrow again. A little while later, we stood in humbled silence and awe. The man returned carrying his elderly friend in the wheel barrow who was unable to walk. The doctors believe the man had suffered a stroke several weeks prior to our arrival. 

I immediately thought of the story in the Bible of the friends who lowered their sick friend through the roof to have Jesus heal him (Mark 2:1-12). I was sickened at my own lack of commitment to help my suffering friends around me through whatever means possible...even if it meant pushing him or her miles in a wheel barrow or lowering him or her through a roof to receive the healing touch of God's grace and mercy. I realized how many of my friends are hurting and longing to be healed and how many times in my busyness and selfishness had simply just passed them by. 

That man - and the friends in Mark 2 - are the kind of friends I want to be...what about you?