Stories
Name

Jessica
 
Willis
RN

Location

Mexico

Organization
Medical Missions Outreach
Date
August 2022

“I heard the voice of the Lord say, ‘Who’m shall we send? Who will go for us?’ And I replied, ‘Here am I Lord, send me.” Isaiah 6:8 has been a prayer of mine for as long as I can remember. Going on medical mission trips has always been my dream. Finally getting to go after the COVID set back was surreal and felt like a dream (come true). I literally boarded a plane to travel to another country with people I had never met before! The one thing that connected us all: our love for Jesus and our desire to follow His call to go. Getting to Mexico was interesting. We made it to Mexico City where we had one more flight to go on. We arrived Friday night. To make a long story short, we didn’t catch a flight out of Mexico City until Sunday. We were stuck at the airport for 2 days due to cancelled flights! Nothing like hanging out with people you just met and all of you wearing the same clothes for 2 days! (Except the few that packed a change of clothes in their carry on). It was really a great bonding time and It was evident to everyone that God had big plans for this trip and there was a lot of spiritual opposition. I’ll never forget the bus pulling up to the first day of clinic. I felt almost awkward and unworthy to be there. I knew coming from America how blessed and privileged we are. I had no idea what they thought of us. I felt guilty that I have so much and these people I was looking at had so little… materialistically speaking at least. Hundreds of people stood in line for hours in the hot sun to be seen. The optical clinic was a big hit… talk about life changing!! These people went from not seeing clearly, to seeing clearly! We take for granted in America how easy it is for us to get our vision corrected. I would love one day to go on a trip where I could work in the optical clinic and see the immediate results. I worked as a provider in the medical clinic. Being an ER nurse, I’m really good at triaging and asking questions about symptoms. I tried really hard to wrap my head around how it would work because I’m use to having access to radiology results and lab work. Again, I felt guilty that we have access to so much health care in America, but simply because of where these people were born, they don’t. What shocked me though was how little they wanted. Most of them just wanted Tylenol for their pain! Again, something we take so for granted. There were a few people each day in clinic that we couldn’t really give a good answer as to what was wrong or a good solution and seeing the disappointment was really heartbreaking. But it also served as a reminder as to why we traveled all those miles and hours to get there. The ultimate reason was to tell people about Jesus and point them to the One who has the answer to all of their needs. After going through the optical and/or medical clinic, everybody went through an evangelism station. In our 3 days of clinic over 80 people got saved, and hundreds of others heard the gospel. Since we worked with a local church and missionary, those people all get to be plugged into the local church and be discipled. On the last day of clinic we were set up at a police station where the jail cells were outside. There was l somebody in one of the cells who we found out was in there for murder. A couple people from our group were given permission to give him something to eat and drink and also got to share the Gospel with him as well. I still look at a picture I took of them talking with that man and can’t think of a better image of Jesus. The trip was definitely life changing and has given me such a new appreciation for the many blessings I take for granted. I can’t wait until it’s time for another trip!