Medical Clinic

This weekend we made the 12-hour trek to the neighboring state in Mexico to participate in a medical outreach. We were accompanying around 60 others from various parts of Mexico and Spain. The outreach took place in one of the poorest areas of Mexico, as well as one of the most spiritually needy. The village was about 4 hours away from the nearest town, on roads that more closely resemble a dry river bed. In addition to medical and dental consults the group did clowns and sports for the kids, haircuts, provided meals, provided transportation to/from the ‘local’ villages (up to 3 hours away), showed the Jesus video, and gave a small bag of imperishable foods and clothing/ diapers to each family.

Almost everyone who came spoke the local dialect and little to no Spanish (much less English!). We had some believers from the larger town come along to interpret. After the first day of the clinic they invited us down to the river to bathe, which we gladly did after being in the heat all day. We thought it a bit interesting that it was only our team and the local interpreters who decided to go. Maybe we’re fitting in to the culture more than we realize :)

One woman brought her 8-year-old daughter to the clinic with parasites and a fever of 101. She asked if she could have medicine for her other children at home. The doctor said he needed to be able to see them to know what to give and asked why she didn't bring them along. She replied that it was a 3 hour walk (one-way) and she could not carry them that far as they were sick and couldn't make the journey. We gave her the medicine!

Another family brought their 6-month-old daughter who was blind from congenital cataracts. With a simple operation, she would be able to see, but the family would have to travel 4 hours to the nearest hospital to have it done, and it didn’t seem that they were too inclined to do so.

One family came with their 4 children and asked the doctor for some form of birth control. The doctor looked at their 4 kids and said that would probably be good since they have so many children. They responded, “Oh, we left 4 more at home!”

One the way there we got to meet a family who is translating the Bible into the dialect of these people. Hopefully soon they will be able to hear the Word of God in their own language. Please pray for the Kingdom of God to continue advancing into the areas of darkness in southern Mexico.

Enjoy some pics from the weekend!

Here's the town nestled in the mountains. There were many little villages like this along the way.

This is what these vehicles were made for!

This was a typical sight

Here's the town we did the clinics in

On the job IV training! Got it in 1st try!

Travels

Tomorrow we head out to do a medical outreach in the neighboring state to the west. It is considered to be the poorest area in all of Mexico as well as one of the spiritually least-reached areas. It will be a long drive there- 2 full days, of which the last 35 miles drops about 6,000 feet in elevation and takes about 5 hours. We should arrive to the village late Friday night, have clinics Saturday and Sunday, then return home late Monday night or Tuesday. Please join us in prayer that God would reveal His power and salvation to the people of this remote village.

Chicken!!!

Last Friday Rhonda decided to kill her 2 roosters that wake her up at 3am (I thought roosters were supposed to wait until the sunrise!) and make a meal for her neighbors. Living overseas, I decided that knowing how to kill and clean a chicken is probably a good skill to know, so I offered to come and help. Susana killed the first one to show us how it was done then handed the knife to me. (Rhonda conveniently disappeared during this time and stood as far away as possible to still take pictures.)

Here’s the step by step process!

Always a bit of a challenge to catch them, even in a small cage!

Susana, the master, teaching us how it's done

This one's next!

My turn. I'm going to be brave!

Maybe not!

Ok, if the 11-year-old can do it, so can I!

Don't mind the blood on your hands!

Mission accomplished!

The chicken was some of the best we’ve had down here, by the way!

Medical Outreach

The last 3 days we have spent in 3 different villages in the surrounding area doing medical outreaches. An ophthalmologist came down, so we were able to not only provide for basic health needs, but also do eye exams and supply glasses for those who needed them. We saw more than 200 patients in the 3 days, starting around 9 or 10 AM and going until 6 or later in the evening.

Doing medical clinics in the villages always has its special challenges. First of all, many of the people speak an indigenous language, so they would have a son or daughter translate into Spanish, which we would then translate into English for the eye doctor or nurse practitioner. I had one older woman who had her 8-year-old granddaughter translating for her. I had to hope that everything was getting communicated correctly and that the woman really understood how to take her medications, as I could not directly communicate with her.

Apart from the language differences, there are also the cultural beliefs that have to be deciphered. Here are some examples:
• “I make tortillas a lot. One time my arm was really hot from making tortillas and I put my hand in cold water. Now I have pain in my arm all the time.”
• “I have fear a lot. When I have fear, I feel a ball rise in my chest and my head hurts.”
• “I get angry and my stomach burns.”

Many of the people also have chronic problems as a result of their lifestyles. Most of the women complain of back and shoulder pain. It’s not hard to imagine why when they carry large baskets of firewood down from the mountain on their backs. They also have eye problems, as most still cook over an open fire in little wood shacks where the smoke billows around them for hours at a time. It’s frustrating to give them a small bag of Tylenol or Ibuprofen for the pain, knowing that their lifestyle isn’t likely to change and when the medicine is gone they will be right back to where they started from. We did teach them some exercises and stretches to do as well as how to make a heat pack for their sore muscles, which we hope they will put into practice.

One of the biggest blessings for a lot of the women was our massage therapist that came along the last two days. For many women, it was probably the first massage they had ever received, and they were so grateful for the 20 minutes of relaxation and enjoyment. Word spread quickly, and many came just for a massage.

We hope to be going to various villages two days a week for clinics and hopefully will come up with some answers to these various cultural challenges!

Spiritual Mapping

An attempt to see our communities the way God sees them; that is the definition of spiritual mapping provided by the book Breaking Strongholds in Your City, the resource that has most influenced my view on the subject.

The technique seeks to reveal the spiritual forces at work in a community so that they can be accurately addressed in prayer. Ephesians 5:11 tells us to expose the deeds of darkness. Spiritual mapping uses spiritual discernment and the observation of historical and geographical factors (such as the location of centers of occult activity in an area) to reveal the invisible forces that are interacting with our visible world. Endemic sins, such as the communal practice of idolatry, can give demonic forces greater power to keep a people blind to the truth, thus challenging the spread of the Gospel. Spiritual mapping, seeks to discern these factors so that they can be confessed and repented of (see Daniel 9:16-21 for an example of one man interceding in this way for a whole people) and so that the powers behind them can be bound so that God’s work can advance unhindered.

2 Corinthians 4:4 tells us, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” The ultimate goal of this kind of work is that God would make “his light shine in (their) hearts to give (them) the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

Why do we feel this will be helpful in our area? Nearly all of the villages around us have annual festivals in which they rededicate themselves and their land to the spiritual power which they perceive as being over their region. This, and similar practices, as mentioned above, darken the veil that Satan is using to deceive these people. By better understanding the working of such evil forces, we plan to cut their power at the root through intercessory prayer for our area and thus “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

The Newest Addition to the Family

Nope, not ours! Sarah just got to meet little Wesley James Cramer today, our nephew (the first son of David and Ann). He's precious!

Medical Team Strategy

We’ve had several meetings this past week to plan out our ongoing medical ministry. We’re working with the Director of Health in town to contact villages that have no medical care and set up two days a week to go visit and provide basic health care. Ideally, we would like to find people in the villages who have diseases such as diabetes and return once a month to do blood sugar checks, diet teaching, etc. We feel this will give us a more measurable goal and a chance to impact individual lives, rather than just do blitz clinics every once in a while. Diabetes runs rampant in Mexico, and often times is undetected or very uncontrolled. It was not uncommon for us to have people with a fasting blood sugar in the 400s or higher at the clinics this summer. Many of the more isolated villages don’t have any doctors present, nor do nurses come and visit, as they do in some of the villages closer to town. By us going and visiting the villages, this will allow us to provide a much needed service to the communities, as well as hopefully open doors for the Gospel to enter.

We still plan to do large scale outreaches several times a year when doctors come down from the States, but this plan will be more of our day-to-day ministry. The team will consist of us, Rhonda (RN), Joni (RN), and JoLynne (NP) for now, then will scale back to just us and Rhonda in April. We would also love to take some local believers along with us, whom we can train to check blood sugars and do the teaching, so that they could continue doing visits even after we leave someday.