Here I Am Lord, Send Me

Bart Perkey

Tegucigalpa, Honduras

 

Medical and dental mission trips like those sponsored by Luke 9:2 Ministries are possible because everyday Christians make the decision to leave their families and jobs for a week and travel to Honduras. During that week, they eat different foods, sleep in small bunk beds with snoring “strangers,” and take showers in a concrete stall that are often cold.  They will travel an hour or two one way to a day-long clinic on a mechanically fragile school bus with seats built for children.  They will stand or sit for long hours talking to people they do not know, who speak a different language, all while being careful not to ingest a drop of contaminated water when doing everyday tasks like brushing their teeth. 

For today’s blog, I asked four of this year’s team members why they do it.  

Pat Towrey, a computer specialist from a Kentucky big box discount store, came this year with his teenage daughter, Bekah.  He and Becka, along with a few of the medical people, left the Monday clinic for a short drive across town to treat a group of special needs children and adults.  Pat delighted in watching Becka’s when they arrived.  His heart filled with emotion as he watched Becka without hesitation “loving on these children.” A dad and his daughter got to creat a life-long memory of serving the Lord together.

 

Janet Gerard, an experienced RN from Oregon, flew all night via Houston to meet up with the team at the airport in Honduras.  Nearing the end of a very long day (692 patients!), a young mother with two children came to Janet’s medical station.  After she finished the medical screening, she sensed something else had brought this woman to the clinic.  She asked her, “Is something else going on at home?”   Through tears, she was able to tell this American stranger and her Honduran interrupter that her husband was cheating on her and she was scared of getting a disease and being left alone and destitute.  Janet talked with her about how to protect herself from venereal disease.  After translating Janet’s advice, the young Honduran translator kept talking.  Janet asked this 16 year-old, high school senior what he had said.  He told the woman that she first needed a relationship with God and then He would send her a good man.  This hurting, scared woman came seeking comfort and the gospel was shared.

 

Margaret Morford, a management consultant from Nashville, talked to me about learning a whole new level of gratitude on this trip.  As she tells it in her own words, “We had one dental patient – a ten-year-old girl, who needed two very infected molars removed.  We could only deaden her so much because severe infection makes the anesthetic less effective.  Despite the stress and pain she experienced and all the cotton I packed in her bleeding mouth, she got up out of the chair, put her arms around my waist and hugged me.  I need to focus more on the positive in my life and not the negative.”

Greg Schmidt, an automobile salesman from Nashville, works with the dental team as well, holding the flashlight for injections and extractions – doing whatever is needed to assist the dental professionals.  Greg says, “I absolutely love taking what is usually a nervous situation and turning it into a fun and pleasurable one.  Sometimes a simple touch on the arm or a hug around the neck makes all things better!  Even though we go away to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ to people in a foreign land, to somehow change their lives for the better, it seems that I am the one that comes away changed.  God convicts my heart to look at other people in a more caring and loving way.  He reminds me that we are ALL family and that He is all our Fathers.”

These are just a sample of the everyday Christians who come away from Honduras with joy in their hearts because they said “yes” when the opportunity came.

 

Notes from a Newbie: (Patty White)

The countryside is gorgeous with the mountains and beautiful wild flowers.  The people I encountered are loving, kind, and hard-working.  They don’t have the conveniences we have.  We saw them washing clothes by hand in a creek, plowing the fields with oxen and weeding with a hoe.

The Luke 9:2 Ministry is very organized and everything went smoothly.  It is amazing that we could see almost 3,000 patients with so little equipment.  Even though there were bumps in the road (literally and figuratively!), God took care of all of our needs.  Our loving God is the same everywhere.

At the end of the third day (our longest clinic), my back was tired and I was tired.  I stood to stretch and shouted out, “Glory!”  Raising my hands high in the air, I then shouted “Hallelujah!”  Several of the Honduran people, who had finished getting their glasses, gave me a hug, a kiss and a “God bless you.”  Then one said, “I hope I will see you again.”  I told her, “You will.  I’ll see you in heaven.”  This started a chain of events with the next four or five telling me, “I’ll see you in heaven, too!”  What a beautiful picture that will be!

God is everywhere when you least expect Him to give me strength and He shows up just when I need Him.