The temperature dropped sharply as the seven-member missions team from Southside Baptist Church, Huntsville, snaked its way up the makeshift road leading into Canaguay, a remote Venezuelan village nestled in the Andes Mountains.
Clinging to the worn seat inside a dilapidated van, Huntsville audioprosthologist Janice Combs kept a close eye on the suitcase sitting next to her. Its contents were precious — 80 hearing aids and the equipment to fit them.
For the mountain people of Canaguay — where the average annual income is just under $2,000, according to the missionaries who work there — medical necessities such as hearing aids are a luxury. Until Combs’ visit, few — if any — of the Canaguay people would have had access to them.
This was unacceptable to Combs. She began her hearing-aid mission six years ago after traveling to two orphanages in central Asia.
Combs fit 27 donated hearing aids on her first visit there and will never forget the joy on the children’s faces when they heard their voices for the first time.
“I didn’t plan or pursue these trips,” said Combs, a grandmother of nine. “I’m just following God wherever He leads me.”
For three days in March, she and her grandsons Joshua Roy and Daniel Schindler, both 17, worked out of a broken-down medical clinic located on the outskirts of Canaguay, toiling fervently to screen, test, fit, mold and insert the hearing aids. During this time, the rest of the team led a sports camp and shared the gospel through drama.
Combs, who had to work through the constant blasting of a jackhammer in the distance, said, “Normally it would take over an hour to test one patient and then fit their [hearing aid] in my office.
“I don’t get near enough time to do it all. But every time I go on one of these trips, God makes it work.”
On the last day, as word spread that an American who could fix deaf ears was in the area, four young sisters silently entered the bleak clinic. The 16-year-old cradled her squalling baby, while her younger siblings clung to her.
“I know that mother had never heard her baby cry,” Combs said.
When she tested the sisters, none of them responded to the tones in the hearing test, but Combs fitted them with hearing aids anyway.
“My experience tells me that even though they don’t respond, the hearing aids still help,” Combs said.
As soon as she inserted the hearing aid into the young mother’s ear, a broad smile spread across her face as she heard her baby cry for the first time.
“All four of them had stopped speaking awhile ago, but I think they’ll start again,” Combs said. “Their world will not be vacant anymore.”
The three days she was allotted by the local government flashed by, yet so many still had not received the hearing aids they so desperately needed. “We left a lot of people disappointed,” Combs said. “I was already asking God to send me back.”
This past summer, she returned to La Azulita, a nearby village, with 90 more hearing aids, which she again fit in just three days.
The hearing aids, which include a year’s supply of batteries, come from the Starkey Hearing Foundation — the philanthropic arm of the world’s largest manufacturer of in-the-ear hearing aids. The foundation supplies the hearing-aid packs at a drastically reduced price that works out to be about $90 per aid.
Mark McCarthy, a corporate liaison for the foundation, said that although the organization has taken 100,000 hearing aids to impoverished children across the globe, they haven’t dared travel to some of the regions Combs has.
“The climate in some of those areas is dangerous,” McCarthy said. “Janice is going into unchartered areas and doing incredible things.”
Most of the money to pay for Combs’ kits comes from Southside Baptist members such as Eleanor Cockrell.
Cockrell, who has supported Combs from the beginning, said she is drawn to Combs’ cause because her mother was hard of hearing. “My father gave her a hearing aid right after they got married, and it completely changed her life,” Cockrell said, adding that she wants “those children to have the same chance my mother had.”
Combs said, “People tell me that I am the hands and feet of Jesus, but I say that Southside is the heart.”
She has fit 344 hearing aids during her five-year mission. Combs hopes to return to central Asia soon, where many children are still waiting for hearing aids at the orphanage she last visited in 2004.
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