Be His Hands

How is it March already?? Sometimes life just continues on without many speed bumps or big news and suddenly 2 months have lapsed since we last updated our blog.  I sat down to think about writing a blog several times but sometimes we are just living our life here. This life has become so normal to us that we don't even realize what amazing things we experience on a daily basis that can be/should be shared.  Or sometimes I feel that we've shared the stories before. Each patient that we encounter is an individual and is unique but many of the stories are similar.  I want to be better about sharing our life with you who are so far away. I will work on that.

A couple weeks ago I had some pretty amazing patient-encounters that I wanted to share.  They both happened on the same day, actually.  The majority of the patients we see have very rarely, if ever, seen a health care provider.  They are not used to the experience.  Add on top of that that we are foreigners living in a very strange ship and they don't usually open up during their initial medical interview about their lives. ..apart from answering the questions asked of them.  They are all respectful and courteous but it is a rare day that I get a patient to be more personable and engaging. It's just not the culture to do this with a stranger in this strange setting.

But this week I had 2 patients open up with me and the result was an eye-opening and very touching experience.  The first was a 30 year old man who has a huge tumor growing off the back of his head.  It is most likely a simple cyst but it has been growing for about 20 years and it is now about the size of a grapefruit.  He shared with me about how nervous he was to come to the ship and how he had been having heart palpitations and anxiety, mostly because of the "rumors he had heard". I asked him if he would mind sharing what the rumors were and what gave him the courage to actually make the trip and come.  He told me that the rumors he had heard were that we were harvesting organs. . .not actually doing surgeries.  This is a common rumor we hear in the different countries we enter.  This is actually a real risk to them in their own country and they don't understand that we are different.

Can you imagine having the fear that you may enter a hospital and never return home again because you were used for your organs that were then going to be sold on the black market? How terrifying.  So what changed this man's mind? He said first off was that at the screening site the "foreigners" (AKA: our staff) were so kind and that they touched him and cared for him.  He said, "foreigners are not usually like that to us." A human touch is powerful.  Our smiles and kindness are so powerful.  This, I feel, is a beautiful picture of how we can be Jesus to people.  Jesus touched the untouchable. He associated himself with the lowly.  We can do that for others wherever we are. We can change peoples' minds about who Jesus is. We can so easily love others with very simple gestures. This was so powerful to me.

The second was that he was seeing people return to villages near him healed. Our chief surgeon, Gary Parker, often says; "for hope to be credible for  the future it must be tangible in the present". He saw the possibility of hope and could cling to that to ease his anxiety.

The second man was about 60. He had a huge tumor growing off his L cheek. It had been there for many years. Most of the people we see with large tumors don't have good jobs and are a bit downcast. They are cast out of society a bit and it shows when they arrive. But this man was different. He was smiling and so joyful the entire visit.  He said, "God has led me to this place and I am so grateful to have this tumor removed."  After his exam he told me that he was just so happy and thankful for all Mercy Ships was doing in this country. He said that he felt that 60% of people's healing happened before they even entered the ship. Patients have to go through screening and, in his case, he had been living at the HOPE center (a place where we house patients waiting for surgery or coming back for rehab).  He could feel the love from the staff and he said he knew people's hearts were being cared for and that was more important than their physical healing. 

These are the things we talk about WANTING to do as an organization, but here are patients who are actually  SEEING the fruit of this themselves.  These patients came to these conclusions before ever seeing me so I take zero credit . I am so thankful that we are surrounded by people in every aspect of this ministry that are loving people and it is not going unnoticed.  So keep up the good work!! It was such a good reminder of the impact we can have (no matter where we live) just by loving those in front of us.  Who is God bringing into your life today? How can you love them? How can you show them Jesus?