Costa Rica: Day 4, Clinic

Today we wrapped up the clinic. However, this morning, some people woke up really, really sick. Grace, Jeff, and Avery all woke up vomiting. For our last day doing the clinic, due to the loss of help because of the sickness, I got to work in the pharmacy with McKanie and Sarah, Joey and Josh. We had a lot of fun counting, separating, and recounting pills and speaking Spanish to each other. Then, Jose called me into the dentist office and I got to watch him pull 3 molars. With the first molar, he was able to use the root detacher and forceps to remove the tooth, even though it broke. The second one went smoothly as well, but underneath it was a nasty infection, which he pointed out to me and explained. Finally, the third molar, the wisdom tooth, was extracted. He had trouble pulling it out in one piece, but he eventually was able to extract the whole tooth, revealing an enormous root and huge tooth. He showed me how to do continuous stitches, and how to close up an oral wound. We worked hard through lunch to see all the patients, and to leave Alto Cuen on time.

Alto Cuen

The Clinic

the church in Alto Cuen

The day before, Victoria began turning people away, because the amount of people that came was too great for the supplies we had, and the time we had in Alto Cuen was extremely limited. She was completely heartbroken to have to tell mothers and fathers that we were unable to see them, because they came too late and we already had too many people at the clinic. All of our hearts went out to the families we had to send away, and we knew that we could only help so many people, but the people we did help would have the hope of the Cross and the love of Jesus within their hearts. As we left Alto Cuen, our hearts were hopeful for the discipleship of the people living in there, that they would share the love of Jesus with everyone they encounter outside of their village.

Costa Rica: Day 3, Clinic (Continued)

After lunch, I got the opportunity to spend time shadowing Juan, the doctor that came to run the clinic. We saw many, many families, and checked all of their symptoms. Many of the people coming into the doctor’s room complained of stomach and head pain, which Juan told me, is usually from parasites that live in the water they drink or in the animals they eat. Juan willingly answered all of my questions, and taught me many, many things that would help me if I chose to go to medical school after college. He taught me how to identify an ear infection and how to test for pneumonia. I also learned how to give injections (I almost had to give one, but chickened out!) in both the arm and buttocks.

Later in the day, right before sunset, a family with a baby came into Juan’s office. The mother told Juan that her baby had a parasite on his abdomen. Juan looked at the ‘parasite’ and called me over to the baby. He lifted up the baby boy’s shirt and showed me what looked like a very large tumor. The baby had an abdominal hernia. Juan explained that when a baby is formed in the womb, it comes together like a puzzle, pieces all coming to fit together. Sometimes there are holes left that sometimes close before birth, but in this case the hole was too big and during the development of the digestive system, allowed the small intestine to come out of the abdomen. Skin forms around the intestines, cutting off blood flow, and causing lots of pain. Juan told me, and the mother, that her baby would die unless she takes him to the hospital for surgery, the only thing that would save the baby. Going to the hospital is almost impossible because of how expensive it is, and the closest hospital is very far away. We don’t know if the mother will actually take the baby to the hospital to have life-saving surgery, which is heartbreaking.

At that point, I knew God had succeeded in breaking my heart. He had opened my eyes to the real world around me, the world our American culture shields us from. Rarely do we hear of babies dying, and I witnessed Juan tell two mothers that their babies might not survive, within 24 hours. I began to see the Infant Mortality Rate statistics come to life before my eyes. We so often dehumanize the suffering people in our world because they are so far away. We’re so disconnected and naïve about how life really works for them, and we find it hard to imagine that mothers and fathers lose their babies to diseases that we simply call a ‘hindrance’. The real world came to life before my eyes and I became humbled.

Costa Rica: Day 3, Clinic

Today we all woke up to a rooster crowing. The crowing sounded nice at first, like we were at a farm, but it was barely sunrise. The rooster crows for maybe 10 minutes before I start to get very, very annoyed. By the light coming in my tent, I reached for my clock, and lo and behold, 3 in the morning. There are a couple of things wrong with that.

1: a rooster crows about 2 hours before sunrise.

2: that means sunrise is at 5am.

3: that means the day is going to be super long.

I fell back asleep and woke about 2 hours later around 5:30. For about an hour, we all stood in a circle talking about the Cabecar words we had learned, Michael Byrd’s mustache, and Baylor green & gold. McKanie, Victoria, and I continued to do intake, and my first check in was a woman with a baby girl. I struggled to hear the name because of how soft spoken the Cabecar women are, and she handed me some paperwork that had to do with the birth of her baby. As I read the paper, my heart jumped into my throat. The baby seemed very ill, her skin was very red, her eyes were swollen shut, and she was very small for her age. I thought the baby was a couple days old, but was actually more than 2 weeks old. As soon as I signed the mother and her baby in, I continued to sign in other people. At lunch time, I heard an update about the baby girl I checked in. She had RSV, respiratory syncytial virus, which is dangerous in America with all the medical technology we have, and is almost a death sentence in the jungle. We all prayed for the little girl and her mother, and my heart began to change as I felt God tugging on it to open my eyes to the real world around me.

Costa Rica: Day 2, Fellowship

After wrapping up the clinic for the day, after all the families had begun their hikes home for the night, the youth all went down to the river to unwind from the day and share our experiences. As Victoria, McKanie, and I worked intake, the other students played games with the children, some from Alto Cuen, some from surrounding villages. Hearing the other students laugh and joyfully talk about how much fun they had playing ‘Caballo’, or Horse in English, by putting the tiny kids on their shoulders and running around, made me treasure the couple of minutes I got to spend with those joyful children. As most of the youth headed back to Alto Cuen to wait for dinner, Victoria and I stayed back with the dentists: Pablo, his wife Karina, and Lucy. They joked, taunted, and jeered with us, trying to pressure us into sitting down in the freezing cold river. We both finally gave in, and laughed and shrieked as we dunked our heads under the swift water. Karina had brought down some shampoo and conditioner to the river, and after Victoria and I gave her a hard time for bringing those, we all washed our hair and got to know each other a little better through a group of Pablo’s naming: The Costa Rican River Club. Around dinner time, the five of us headed back to Alto Cuen to eat. We all gathered under the tarp in front of the church because it was raining to eat, and we enjoyed some good music and a time of worship from Caleb, who brought his guitar into the jungle with him. Our youth pastor, Kurt, shared his heart with us from the things he had seen during the day at the clinic, and encouraged us to love on the Cabecar people, because the demand for medical help is so great, but our supplies are so few. He challenged us to share the love of Jesus and the hope He offers us through the cross, because the medicine would eventually run out, but the hope of the cross and the love Jesus has for us and them will remain.

After our little powwow broke up, Kai, Victoria, Avery, Caleb, and I all stayed back to have a lovely and warming conversation with Karina and Pablo. We talked about and shared our testimonies. All of us found out that we all shared similar stories, growing up in Christian and Catholic homes, and how the Gospel of Jesus became boring to us. We talked about how seeing the Gospel in action in the jungle helped renew the meaning of the Church and the Body of Christ, and how God had been working in our hearts to open a place where we would hold the Cabecar people forever.

Costa Rica: Day 2, Clinic

On our second day in Costa Rica, Victoria, McKanie, and I were put on intake, to speak to the people we were going to be seeing in the clinic. Because McKanie and I were able to speak a little bit of Spanish, and because Victoria is fluent, we filled out the medical history paperwork for the patients. We faced several challenges with intake: the generator was in the room next to the porch where we had a makeshift waiting room, making it almost impossible to hear. The Cabecar people are extremely soft-spoken, which made hearing them very, very hard. However, even though the generator was putting off extreme amounts of sound, even though we struggled to understand their language, and even though we had to keep asking them to speak louder and repeat their words, they never lost their patience. The demand for the clinic was so high, and we were unable to serve everyone who came in a day. Near the end of the daylight hours, some families had been waiting to see the doctor all day, and we had to send some home to come back the next day. Even though some had been waiting for hours just to find out that they would have to walk for hours upon hours to return home, we never once heard a single complaint from the mouths of the mothers or fathers, or from the children. The great need for doctors and dentists that these people had, and the patience they had to see them, changed the way I looked at necessity and how we treat that necessity in America. These people would hike, with children, some just a few days old, for hours over many miles just to be seen and to get the medicine they need to help their children and themselves. Their need for simple things, such as ibuprofen for pain, mebendezole for parasites, and albuterol for asthma is so great and the sacrifices they would make to obtain those simple drugs surpasses my comprehension.

That great need for medicine reminded me of my responsibility to love on and do everything in my power to help my brothers and sisters in Christ, to show them the love of Christ and to show them the hope they can find through Him. The song All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons and Daughters was the sing that God laid heavy on my heart while I served my brothers and sisters through the clinic, and my understanding of why I was sent to serve them evolved through the rest of the days there.

Costa Rica: Day 1

I got the amazing opportunity to travel to Costa Rica over my spring break for a medical mission trip to serve the Cabecar people with the youth and college ministries at my church. Our mission team consisted of 30 people, made up by high school and college students, adults, doctors and dentists. We had been preparing for this trip since December, meeting once a week, reading Radical by David Platt (which I highly recommend!) and praying together. We had physically prepared for weeks, so when the day came for us to depart for Costa Rica, we would be physically ready for the hike we would make into the jungle of Talamanca for our week of medical missions.

We had flown into San Jose the day prior, and were able to rest well in the hotel the night before our day of travelling into the jungle. We woke up at 4:45, all prayed before we left, and loaded all of our packs onto the top of the buses that would transport us from San Jose to Limon. On that 6 hour ride, I had the opportunity to sit and talk with my friend Victoria. We talked about our expectations for this trip, how we wanted to see God work through our lives, and how we wanted to be humbled by the things we would see in the jungle, a place that was completely foreign to both of us. As we got off the bus in Limon, we loaded all of our packs onto a cattle truck. We drove, and got thrown around on the truck, for maybe thirty minutes before the truck dropped us off in a little village. From the village, we all loaded onto a trailer pulled by a tractor, and rode on that tractor until we could travel no farther. The tractor dropped us off in Alto Haboi, about 6 miles from our destination, Alto Cuen.

As we hiked, my friend Kai said something that changed the way, in hindsight, I thought about the attitudes of the Cabecar people:  “The weight of carrying these packs does not even compare to the weight of my sin that Jesus carried up to Calvary.”

Making Disciples

“Have you no wish for others to be saved? Then you’re not saved yourself, be sure of that!”

-Charles Spurgeon

In my opinion, I would beg to say that evangelism is the most important aspect of Christianity. we usually get a bad rep from non believers around the world, and I don’t really blame the convictions we get as a result from evangelizing too much. there is a such thing! if we’re so overbearing about our religion that we’re suffocating the people we are evangelizing to, they’re not going to want to join Christianity and follow Jesus. Christianity, if approached in the wrong light, looks like a bunch of rules and regulations. the sinful things we do in our lives are fun… they’re very fun. everyone enjoys breaking a rule here and there, and we get a high from breaking them. Having someone tell me that I need to stop breaking those rules and clean up my act isn’t my idea of a good day. that’s why it’s so very important to learn how to teach someone to be a Christian. it’s not just “believe in Jesus, repeat this prayer, and sign this card” and then you’re a follower of Jesus. That definitely was not the case for me. You see, when I became a Christian, I was 7. At that point, I was too young to really study the Bible or spend lots of time in prayer. But as I got older, nobody taught me how to study, how to pray, or how to pursue God. I was simply a Christian, not the result of over-evangelizing, but as the result of not being taught how to be a disciple. Instead of evangelizing, we need to be making disciples. As humans, it is impossible for us to reach all the corners of the earth alone; making disciples is a sure way to share the Gospel and to keep the Word spreading and saving lost people. Instead of preaching, we should be teaching.

Growing Deeper Part 2

Turns out, the Israelites had an issue pretty similar to the one I had with Toby, except I never had anyone plotting against me taking care of that horse. Now, we jump forward 22 books of the Bible to Haggai. Haggai was a prophet, and this is his message from the Lord to the Remnant of Israel regarding their quitting on a commitment they made to rebuild the Lord’s temple. We will start in Haggai 1:1-15.

In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest: This is what the Lord Almighty says: “These people say, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’” Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?” Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways.You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough.You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.” This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build my house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,” says the Lord. “You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the Lord Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with your own house. Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the olive oil and everything else the ground produces, on people and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.” Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and the whole remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the message of the prophet Haggai, because the Lord their God had sent him. And the people feared the Lord. Then Haggai, the Lord’s messenger, gave this message of the Lord to the people: “I am with you,” declares the Lord. So the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of the whole remnant of the people. They came and began to work on the house of the Lord Almighty, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month.

Now, on a side note, there is one unique thing about the word of God in the book of Haggai. Did any of y’all pick up on that one thing?? I know that all of yall are thinking, “YES MK, I know! The unique thing about Haggai is that the Israelites actually listened to the Lord this time!” and that would be a first, and probably last for the Israelites.

What I found extremely interesting, if you look past the text and into the lives of the Israelites, just from the physical act of rebuilding the temple, the people began to indicate a shift in their spiritual lives: from devotion to self toward devotion to God. And just like we often do, after their exile, the Israelites had seemingly forgotten about God after the opposition of rebuilding the temple halted their progress. Instead of focusing on rebuilding the temple, they chose instead to focus on their own interests, so it was time for them to “give careful thought about their ways”, as the Lord said in Haggai 1:5. According to Haggai’s message, if the people would place God at the center of their lives, and continued to grow deeper in their relationship with Him, they would realize the future blessings that God had in store for His people.

I eventually got over my opposition of laziness to take care of Toby again. I decided that by changing where my priorities were placed, I actually had all the time in the world to spend time with Toby, to groom him, play with him and keep him company. As it turns out, I also have all the time AND FREEDOM in the world to read my Bible and spend time in prayer, to grow deeper in my personal relationship with the father. However, I often find myself indulging in worthless things that do nothing but waste precious minutes of the unpromised amount of time I have here on earth. This brings to mind Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 3:10-17.

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid afoundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid,which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

If this message is important enough for the rebellious and stubborn Israelites to listen and heed the words of Haggai, I want to encourage you, and myself, to take his advice; to not focus so much on making our lives center around ourselves, but in making our lives center around God.

Growing Deeper Part 1

I know that a lot of us have never taken the time to really read the Old Testament books. Let’s be honest, some of the Old Testament books are extremely boring. If you’re trying to read the whole Bible in order, the first five books of the Law, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are the worst. The only story that I found interesting was the story of Korah rebelling and being swallowed up by the earth, but that’s beside the point.

I found the text for this in one of the books of History (cue groans) Ezra and from the minor prophet Haggai (hag-eye or hag-e-eye, I pronounce it hag-e-eye). Before I get started, I need to give y’all a little bit of historical background (cues groans again). Personally this drives me crazy: the books of the Old Testament are NOT in chronological order, so though we’ll be jumping between a gap of 22 books, we’re talking about an overlapping time period. And, like most all of the Old Testament, we’re following the journey of the Israelites in the Promised Land. At this point in history, the Israelites have been in the Promised Land for a while; a significant amount of time had passed since the exodus from Egypt and the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. And, not surprisingly, the Israelites were being sinful, wicked, and worshipped idols. You would think after all the things God did to them to get them to stop; they would finally get a clue… but I digress. So God sent the Prophet Jeremiah to warn the Israelites to turn from their evil ways; and not surprisingly, AGAIN, they didn’t listen, and in 586BC, Babylon overtook Jerusalem and exiled the Israelites. Almost 50 years later, in 537BC in the account of Ezra, the first group of exiles returns to Jerusalem. In 535BC, the Israelites begin the reconstruction of the temple. An unsure amount of time passes before they quit rebuilding the temple, and in 520BC, the prophecy of Haggai is given to the Israelites.  Are you still with me?

Have any of you ever committed to doing a favor for someone that was an extremely hard task? When I ask this question, I think of the offer I made at the beginning of my sophomore year to my much older (they’re maybe in their late 60’s early 70’s) next door neighbors to take care of their horse, which had been left in a fairly large paddock for almost 6 years alone. I know some of you have horses & those of you who personally own the horses and don’t board them; it’s a heck of a lot of work. And this horse, named Toby, had been grazing and doing nothing else for the past 6 years when I started taking care of him. He was so fat and so grumpy, and I’ll be completely honest with you all, I got very tired of taking care of the 1000 pound, sassy ball of fur and dirt after maybe a month. It was a lot of work that I didn’t want to do. It was a commitment I wanted to have so I could attempt to ‘relive’ the days I spent riding horses before I moved to Georgia. But it wasn’t at all what I had planned it to be, so at the end of my first semester of sophomore year, I told my neighbors that “I didn’t have the time with my school work load”.

I also think this has a lot of relation to the temporary “Jesus Highs” that I get after a great D-Now weekend or youth camp, and I’m pretty sure we have all experienced one of those at some time in our lives.

In Ezra 1, God Moved the heart of Cyrus, king of Persia, and in order to fulfill the word of Jeremiah, allowed the remnant of Israel to return to Jerusalem in Judah to rebuild the Lord’s temple.  In Ezra 2, everyone who returned to Jerusalem in the remnant is listed. In all, about 50,000 people returned to Jerusalem. In the beginning of Ezra 3, the Israelites settled into their towns and built an altar to the Lord and began to offer burnt offerings, even though the foundation for the temple hasn’t been laid yet. We pick up the story in Ezra 3.

When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments and with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of Asaph) with cymbals, took their places to praise the Lord, as prescribed by David king of Israel. With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the Lord:

“He is good;
    his love toward Israel endures forever.”

And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away. (v.10-13)

However, the joy of the Israelites was relatively short-lived. The reign of Xerxes had just started, and he started a plan to stop the reconstruction, and his plan to discourage and oppose the building of the temple was successful.

Proverbs

Located between the books of Psalm and Ecclesiastes, Proverbs is a book written by Solomon around 900BC. Solomon is the son of David, and is known as the wisest man ever to live, and I agree.

The past 31 days, I’ve been reading through and studying the Book of Proverbs with my wonderful friend and accountability partner, Malone. The two of us decided to set alarms on our phones for 10pm every night to assure that we stayed on track with the reading. For maybe the first twelve nights, we followed through. However, after those twelve nights of holding each other accountable and actually following through with our plan, we both got off track. Real life hits hard when we try to stay in the Word and meditate on it, the sinfulness of the world wants to try to tear us out of the Word. Those distractions were found in very real things for the two of us. I had just recently come back to school after sustaining a concussion, and I was getting very distracted by homework and my phone. Malone had started struggling with a pet sin that recently came back into her life after a long time without it. We were getting days behind, with little contact with each other or our Bibles. Finally, however, after maybe eight days without reading or speaking to each other, not purposely, of course, we finally admitted to each other that we had been slacking off. We tried our hardest to catch up, and eventually got back on track.

We had both heard about other people who have read through Proverbs, and every person we heard reviews from told us “Proverbs rocked my world. It completely changed the way I spoke, acted, and thought.” After Malone and I neared the end of our reading, we could not find anything more true. Proverbs completely turned our worlds around. Solomon makes it very clear how we should live: without gossiping, being idle, or giving our possessions over to fools. Proverbs taught us about the dangers of folly, harsh language, and foolishness. Proverbs taught us the riches in having friends closer than brothers, wisdom and discernment, and the love available to a woman of faith and joy.