Back in early 2005, a call from our friend, Dick Kurtz,  was life changing.  Seems his church in Pennsylvania was poised to send a “medical mission” to Honduras and was just missing one ingredient:  medical personnel.  Trinity Presbyterian Church in Berwyn had the missional spirit, and even the funding, but had been unable to find any doctors or nurses to go along.  Little did I know when I said, “Why not?” that life would never be the same.

     The trip to Honduras was arranged through a retired stockbroker in Lancaster who had seen the tremendous need in the southern part of that third-poorest-in-the-Western-Hemisphere nation, the size of Virginia with a population that is comparable to our Commonwealth.  In five days, we were transported on life-threatening highways (there are few paved roads in the country, but one stretches from the capital city of Tegucigalpa south to the Pacific coast) and unpaved mountain roads that had been recently washed out by torrential rains.  We visited four rural hamlets and one big-city slum.  We saw poverty on a scale we never believed could exist only a two-and-a-half hour flight from Miami.  We had some memorable “snapshot” moments, but mostly the incredible experience of feeling totally culture-shocked.  And so, we did what American doctors do, and thanked our lucky stars that our usual world was not “like that.”  But we were transformed.

     The following year, when the same opportunity presented itself, we signed on again, believing (hope against hope?) that we could feel more competent this time.  Same group organizer, five more different clinics in five more cinderblock one-room Presbyterian churches in the stretch south from Teguc toward San Lorenzo.   Then one of our translators made a casual comment at dinner.  She said she didn’t believe short-term mission groups (and she had worked with many) accomplished anything.  Our reaction was to become defensive.  Surely we were doing some good.  She agreed that we might feel good about ourselves for being there, and that we would certainly get affirmation from friends at home as we regaled them with tales of deprivation and hopelessness, but that the people of Honduras wouldn’t even remember us once their twenty tablets of Tylenol were gone.  For the record, they lined up in the hot sun for three hours and went through the motions of a cursory physical exam, to be given twenty Tylenol, then walked home a couple of hours.  What had we accomplished?  Another joyless handout, remembered perhaps with more resentment than gratitude.  We were challenged.

     We planned the 2007 mission trip ourselves.  It didn’t look that difficult.  We made one crucial change, after discussing our shared experiences:  we decided to choose two communities and to concentrate our efforts on them.  For the past five years, we have visited Moropocay and Puerto Grande, and tried to learn how God wants to use us as we come to know a few thousand people, seeing the same faces, hearing the same names, again and again.  We also are learning the joy of being able to say that we are working WITH good friends in rural Honduras.  Dr. Adolfo Moreno is a family physician whose “day job” is running a clinic for the very poor in Tegucigalpa, funded by the Presbytery of Tampa Bay.  He has accompanied us, without fail, on every clinic day for the past seven years.  He probably understands more English than he could ever say (and he never tries to speak English), but manages to give us a tutorial in tropical medicine every time.  He faithfully keeps our (now) thousands of medical records, and adds to them when he holds quarterly clinics in these same two villages, funded by the Presbyterian church in Berwyn, in Port Jefferson, and on Monument Avenue. His family has been growing up before our eyes.  We met his daughter Stephanie when she was fifteen, son Jorge when he was thirteen, Alejandra as a gawky ten year old, “Rosanita” before she was born.  Now Stephanie is a university student studying architecture, Jorge studying biomechanical engineering, Alejandra a very savvy high-school future businesswoman, Rosanita an engaging kindergartener.  Beatriz is the owner of a roadside restaurant who never ceases to amaze us with the quality of her cooking, enjoyed with conversations occasionally interrupted by a semi flying by on the highway only feet from where we are seated beneath slowly-turning ceiling fans in the open air. Immanuel Episcopal Church in Old Church has sent their Rector and half a dozen members (including my husband), along with generous funding and oodles of baby blankets.  Our colleague from Centro Cristiano de Servicios Humanitario de Honduras, Melvin Tejada, is a Mennonite.   Richard (AKA the Rev. Dr. Richard Graugh) is our “spiritual advisor” from the First Presbyterian Church of Port Jefferson, NY.  Ken, one of his parishioners, is a soft-spoken man in his late sixties who was one of the very first crop of Peace Corps volunteers in South America in the 1960s.  Len is a Professor of Dentistry from the University of Pennsylvania.  He is Jewish, as is Renee, the newborn nursery head nurse from Congregation Or Ami in Richmond.  Her congregants collect sunglasses for all the Hondurans who have cataract surgery through our Project Vision Honduras/San Lorenzo.  There are 46 people who can see now, thanks to the skills of Dr. Jim Wheatley from North Carolina and Dr. Carlos Martinez from California.  These same gifted surgeons have committed to doing 100 surgeries in January 2012, along with Dr. Angelo Murcia, the Honduran ophthalmology resident who shared his countrywoman’s misgivings about the wisdom and the usefulness of American mission groups.  He confided at the end of a week with Project Vision that HIS life had been changed.  When his residency is completed in December, he will take a position in Melvin’s eye clinic for the poor.

     What an ecumenical group!  I thank God for the wonderful support that I have been given by Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church and my fellow members who have accompanied me.  Thank you, everyone.  We look forward to coming years with NEW friends.

     If you are interested in taking part in our January mission trip, or in supporting our efforts, please see our website (www.KHISH.org) and the youtube video of Project Vision (www.youtube.com/watch?v=plH8TB31Zn0).  Susan Pillsbury David, MD (clwturtle@aol.com)