Today was day 3 of clinic, perhaps day 4 if you include the half day of serving the church staff and families. We welcomed residents of the local community to be served and to hear the Word of God. I personally had the opportunity to go out on a return home visit with 3 amazing and wonderful women from the team. Yesterday Alexis, Debbie, and I went to see a 32-year-old gentleman, Victor, who had a stroke 2 months ago. He has severe right-sided weakness and seems to spend the majority of time lying in bed. We were humbled to see the devotion of his wife and the love that she showed in her care. The first visit seemed somewhat discouraging to us all in that the situation felt almost hopeless. We decided to return today to take some extra items to his wife and vitamins for his 3 children. Today Victoria went with us to offer some massage therapy and exercises. To our surprise Victor was much more interactive and appeared to have more strength in his right side than we thought. Victoria asked what we did yesterday and all I could say is that we prayed, which now that I reflect was the most powerful thing we could have done. Alexis, Debbie, and Victoria were wonderful working with Victor and his wife and I just ended up getting out of their way. He actually did some exercises on his right side for about 20 minutes. The ladies brilliantly involved Victor’s children in participating his exercises. Today’s visit proved to be much more encouraging. As I reflect on the day I’m reminded that what we brought to that home is much more important than medical knowledge or pharmaceuticals. It was love. And that might actually be an inflated view of our work after seeing what Victor’s wife has done for the last 2 months. Perhaps we are just amplifying the love that already exists in the homes and families of this community. Or more importantly we are serving as living examples of Christ’s love in this broken world. I was truly humbled today and will do more to get myself out of the way.
This post written by Adam on July 31, 2017 and originally posted at https://www.hungryforlife.org/partners/medical-missions/july-2017/day-five-keep-on-keepin-on and used by permission of Hungry For Life International.
