Serving With No Strings Attached

I’ve been on several medical mission trips and each time I am stretched, educated, and blessed in some great fashion. More often than not all three of those happen at the same time and it is a priceless thing.

Every missions trip it seems can be likened to standing on a safe and solid deck and then suddenly stepping into the deep end of a pool. Sometimes the only thing that keeps one afloat and safe is God’s provision and protection. Seemingly, the giant leap of faith that often has to happen to change our minds and our mindset is the very thing that we need most to see things from His perspective, and even from the perspective of the people that we’re trying to reach, minister to, or help with medicine. We are not them and they are not us. Our languages and linguistics differ. They know things and we may know different things. Mostly, their cultures and customs are not our culture and customs. We have to recognize all of these differences and more. But the beautiful thing is that these differences can be overcome with caring, love, and compassion.

By going to provide medical care, the targeted people recognize and acknowledge that we care about them, their loved ones, and their families. And they’re so thankful for that, for it seems that these are the very people who have been disenfranchised, disrespected, and disengaged; the unlovely and the lowly in the eyes of society. They are thankful beyond belief that someone actually cares about them and for their well-being. Go and you’ll see it in their eyes. I have.

While interviewing and talking with them, and then examining them, we develop a relationship that both parties can feel and appreciate. We show them that we love them and have love for them just the way they are, right now, with no strings attached.

Helping them, and even sometimes being able to use our medical knowledge and skills to heal them, shows them our compassion. They can feel it with their senses – old or young, they see it – even if blind, they touch it with a disfigured hand at times, and if the medicine is a liquid, they even taste it. All of this stems from the concept of compassion which is defined by dictionary.com as “a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.” It is synonymous with mercy, tenderness, and heart; and the very opposite of indifference and mercilessness with which many of them tend to know all too well.

Unbeknownst to many, the people that are being helped are in many cases actually doing the helping and healing back to the physicians that have come many miles to be there. The physicians may or may not even know that it’s happening to them. Go and see for yourself.

These three enduring attributes, values, and qualities have been present and effective from the beginning of time. Medical mission trips provide the opportunity to use these time tested ways to reach people and minister to them right where they’re at. And they most definitely do that, even in the most trying of circumstances. Go!

Bruce Hedgepeth, MD