Always Being Stretched

Well, I had intended to take advantage of this nifty blog much sooner but couldn't figure out how to write a new post for a while and then...well, neuro happened. The last nine weeks since Christmas break were certainly academically intense - although not so bad as to exclude weekend trips to Florida and NYC and plenty of playing in the snow. :-)

The main reason I thought to post at this exact moment is because just yesterday I returned from the Dominican Republic. As you all know, my long-term dream is to serve as a doctor overseas someday, and these little short-term trips are weak foretastes, at best. In fact, my dissatisfaction with one-week trips is growing as I go on more and more of them. (This one was, if you count all mission trips I've done of any nature, my tenth.)

For one thing, I've become used to many of the typical culture-shock triggers - different food, architecture, standards of dress/cleanliness, animals running around the road, four people on a motorcycle, etc. Bugs, dirt, outhouses, etc. no longer phase me. In a sense, I don't find such experiences psychologically or even spiritually stretching anymore. But God never never leaves us where we are. As soon as one element of service becomes comfortable he demands that we grow in other areas.

This trip's big "first" for me was the role of team leader. I didn't exactly mean to get myself into that position, but found myself there along the way. Last year, ten of us went on mission trips with different groups and one girl (now a third-year) did most of the coordinating with the organizations we went with. I was essentially supposed to take over that role. All along we talked about forming an all-Penn State team if there was enough interest, but I was really thinking that we'd send half a dozen students along on the Nicaragua team I went with last year, and I'd just be the point-person at Penn State. Once we surveyed for interest, we found that it was overwhelming. There was obviously no way we could all go and just tag along with another group. After checking out a few dead-end options, we found an organization (SCORE Int'l) that would let us form our own team as long as we had had at least one attending physician with us. We soon had one lined up and formed a team that gradually grew until we numbered 20 in all.

I was definitely NOT planning to lead 20 people on a trip. Eeks! But the reality of it didn't set in while I was still doing the behind-the-scenes paperwork and administrative stuff. Last Saturday, though, when the team all gathered to leave and everyone was looking at me, the weight of responsibility set in. I tried to stay calm and collected but I really never understood before how much oversight is required to get a whole crowd from one place to another. By Sunday afternoon after getting everyone there and all of our meds unpacked, sorted and repacked for the week, I was mentally exhausted and, frankly, didn't want to be there. I wanted to be back in Nicaragua, just another team member doing my part, without 19 people looking at me for what to do next.

I'm thankful to say, though, that my attitude improved as the week went on and, by the grace of God, we had a fantastic week. I've never been on a trip that went so smoothly (I guess God knew how much I could handle). The team was great - everyone had a wonderful attitude about whatever needed to be done. There were no quarrels or even testy moments. We saw far more patients that we had guessed we would. And we prayed with almost every one of them.

The second stretching experience of this trip was that on Thursday instead of going to rural village to hold clinic we went to the local prison instead. The prisoners are not provided with much in the way of medical care and so we found quite a mess on ours hands when we got there - lots of skin infections, one very severe asthmatic whose inhaler had run out, several interesting old wounds (from street fights), etc. One of my patients had shattered his tibia from gunshot wounds years ago and had a poorly-done operation to fix it. The screw that anchored the pin in his leg had begun to screw out and was poking through the skin just under the knee, causing a chronic infection in the skin, at least, and probably the bone as well. Ok...I'll hold the rest of my graphic medical stories for my med student friends. ;-) Really the most challenging part of the day for me was that we set up an "evangelism station" - something we hadn't done before. In the villages, clinic was held in the local churches so that our patients were under the spiritual oversight of the local pastor. At the prison, that wasn't the case. When I asked for volunteers to talk to prisoners after they had their medical consult at this station, everyone was rather intimidated (understandably). I swallowed hard and, as the leader, decided to take the first shift. It was humbling to realize that, though I've been a Christian for 20 years, I've rarely if ever had to succinctly give the gospel to complete strangers in just a few minutes - with no leading-up or follow-through conversations. Picture it like evangelism speed-dating. I was sitting at a table and four or five guys would sit down who'd just had their medical exams. I had about five minutes before another bunch of guys would be there to talk to this crew about why we had come. I started of by making sure we all agreed that there was a God. I told we came to help with their physical ailments in whatever way we could, but that we are all dying and even the medications we gave them will not ultimately save them from death. And then tried to explain that because of the things we've done we are all sinners and separated from God (and emphasized that this was true for me as well as them). And then I got to the wonderful news that makes life worth living - that though we are absolutely unable to come to God on our own, he made a way by giving his son to pay the penalty for us and now we are able to draw near to God. (I love the Spanish verb acercarse). Nothing is required of us but faith and surrender. So...telling the compact version of the gospel over a dozen times in Spanish to a bunch of hardened criminals was...stretching. But also...renewing. We're in this season of Lent right now and I think that's exactly what I needed to prepare my heart to worship at the foot of the cross once again. By the way, "hardened criminals" isn't exactly fair. The power of the gospel can change anyone's heart and I met quite a few Christians that day who, with true joy in their eyes, told me at the end of my little talk that they had already surrendered to Christ. They echoed eager "Amen"s when I spoke of redemption in Christ. And, when I got tongue-tied and breathless from so much rapid Spanish, they prayed for me.

Ok, this got a lot longer than I had intended. call or email me if you want more stories, but those are the highlights.

Glory to God for what He had done and is doing even now. I'm also thankful that many of the team members said it was an experience that will shape their medical futures.

Love and miss you all!