About 5 years ago I had a dream that I was on a medical mission trip. God used that to call me to medicine, which started my journey to go to PA school. But even as I am in the process of getting to where I feel called to be, God has given me the opportunity to go on medical mission trips.

Last week, I took my last medical mission trip before I become a PA, or at least a PA student, and it was incredibly eye-opening and reconfirmed my calling. Even though Spanish is my first language, I struggled to understand Honduran’s medical problems. This was partly due to the use of different words to describe things between Spanish-speaking countries (and even communities), partly due to the lack of access to healthcare in the area, and partly due to a lack of resources, mainly education. But in spite of the differences, at least I was able to have a direct line of communication with people. I have never been so grateful for the God-given gift of being bilingual.

Side note: I was able to interpret for two of our team members who were invited to preach on Sunday. A daunting task, but one that I was excited to be a part of.

The first two days if clinic were rough. The lack of resources was stark. It was hard to believe we were making a difference. The number of patients was overwhelming. But following the example of Jesus, we saw, assessed, treated, educated, prescribed, and prayed for one patient at a time. While we may not be able to do much for chronic problems (we did offer patient education), we were able to help many with simple, urgent care type complaints. We were also able to emphasize the need to get care for serious, not-severe-yet problems that people otherwise would ignore because they’re currently asymptomatic.

More importantly, we worked with and through local churches. Our hope os that these churches had the opportunity to be a light in their community through hosting our team, and that God used us to both draw the community into local bodies of believers, and draw these local churches into the community.

of the people will be watered by the churches we worked through, and eventually be grown by God.