Ask anyone who has ever participated in a medical missions trip and they will all tell you the same thing — it changes their life.
The moving experiences that missions team members encounter are as numerous as the ailments they go to treat.
For many, their first trip sparks a burning desire to continue volunteering on an ongoing basis.
Such is the case with Debbie Moss, a registered nurse and medical missions team volunteer who has participated in about a dozen trips since her first one to Nigeria in 1981.
A member of Dawson Memorial Baptist Church, Homewood, Moss donates her vacation time, and in most cases, pays her own expenses. She also recruits other volunteers by the sheer influence of her enthusiasm about the trip’s rewards.
One of her recruits is Ken Bush, a registered nurse who participated in a September missions trip to Romania that was jointly sponsored by several Birmingham Baptist churches including Dawson, Green Valley and Vestavia Hills.
“I was overwhelmed by the experience,” Bush said. “I was prepared for the medical side of the trip but not the emotional. The people we were ministering to were so poor, yet their faith in God was so strong. They had no money and little, if anything, to eat.”
Bush had many poignant moments during the 10-day trip including a gift of a crocheted doily that was given to him by a widow. “I tried to give her money, but she wouldn’t accept it. She told my interpreter that it was a gift. She had attached a handwritten note in Hungarian expressing her appreciation to us for helping them,” the Dawson member said.
“This trip was a life-changing experience for me. I want to go on another one, but I also want to get involved in local missions work as well,” he said. “I received so much more than I gave.”
Even though interpreters are present, language barriers can still present obstacles. Bush experienced this problem several times when his interpreter would tell him that a patient was complaining of chest pains. “I translated it to mean they were having heart problems. It turned out they were trying to convey emotional pain. They were telling me their heart was broken from the loss of a spouse or child,” he explained.
Medical missions team members from Brookwood Baptist Church, Birmingham, and First Baptist Church, Meridian, Miss., who were working in Junt’uma, a remote area of Bolivia where indigenous Aymarans (descendants of Inca Indians) live, encountered a double dose of language challenges. Not only were Spanish interpreters needed, but the Spanish interpreters required translators for the Aymara language as well.
Hobart Grooms, a Brookwood member who went on the trip, described the remoteness and poverty of Junt’uma. “It is lacking in modern conveniences like electricity and water. Many of the residents are squatters living in a tent city,” he said.
Grooms explained that the medical team operated out of tents instead of schools or churches. “The mayor allowed us to use the bottom floor of his house to do dentistry and to use his bathroom facilities,” he said.
One of Brookwood’s leaders in their aggressive medical missions efforts is physician Frank Page, who feels very strongly that ministering to a person’s physical needs opens the door to ministering to their spiritual needs.
“A medical and dental component provides a gateway for the core purpose of evangelism and discipleship,” he said. “We can cross the language and cultural barriers and share the gospel of Christ,” he said. Libby Barsfield, who worked in the eye clinic during the Junt’uma trip, was able to experience immediate gratification from the reactions she received from the Aymarans. “The most rewarding experiences for me were when I would place glasses on near-blind Aymarans and they could instantly see what they had not seen for years, if ever. One elderly lady only wanted enough sight to read her Bible. She read a short passage to me after I fitted her in some very strong lenses,” Barsfield said. Adding to this experience, Tom McKinnon, a Birmingham ophthamologist and member of Brookwood, said, “One of the children met us at the airport as we were leaving, wearing sunglasses that I had given him. He had not even taken the tags off the lenses, he was so proud of what he had,” he said.
Laurie Thompson recalled the joy she experienced when a 78-year-old woman came to the clinic complaining of hearing loss. “My first thought was that it was age-related,” said Thompson, a Brookwood member.“I looked into her ears and saw that she had an ear infection that was treatable.
Larry Dennis may have explained the blessings of serving on a medical missions team the best. “We provided glasses for an elderly man with extremely bad vision. He was poor and wore tattered clothes. After we finished with him he reached into a bag and pulled out two eggs wrapped in crumpled papers. He said he wanted me to have the eggs to show his appreciation. It was quite obvious he had almost nothing materially, so giving this gift was a sacrifice for him. His actions expressed the truest form of Christian love, for he gave all he had. This was one of the greatest gifts I have ever received and one of the most humbling experiences of my life.”
And Cindy Sampson, a physician’s assistant who recently returned from Brookwood’s medical missions trip to Honduras, expressed the unanimous sentiment of her fellow team members. “When we minister to these people’s physical needs we are affecting them for basically a short period of time,” said Sampson, a member of Westwood Baptist, Alabaster. “By taking care of their physical needs first, we are able to open the door to minister to their spiritual needs and that will last an eternity.”
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