Mexico Day 18 - Sickness or Solution?

What a week, what a week. The entire week we've had a medical team of doctors, nurses, medical students, etc. down prescribing medications, doing work projects, and doing general check ups for almost all of the casa hogares and some of the people in the extremely impoverished areas we serve. I saw everything from an unidentifiable skin diseases to extremely bad arthritis in the hands and feet and I am mad proud of these dudes for sticking it out because I could not be a doctor by any stretch of the imagination.

The week started off with a trip to Río Tres which is one of the extremely impoverished areas that we have come to serve over the years. I’ve been to the Río numerous times before so unfortunately it came as no shock to me when I saw people’s houses made out of nothing more than corrugated siding and cinderblocks. But despite all the terrible things that I’m sure occur every single night there, there is a certain beauty that, I believe, only a Christ-Follower can see.

In America we have very little to trust the Lord with. We have family, friends, money, houses, cars, and the list goes on and on, but here that is not the case. When you walk inside someone’s one bed-kitch-living room, no bathroom house you almost feel like a terrible person for everything bad you’ve ever done ever and everything bad you will ever do in the future. Here I am wondering when I can get new gear for my longboard or a new pair of shoes to rock and it makes me think: “Do I really know what it’s like to depend on God?” People in the Río depend on the Lord for EVERYTHING. They know not where their next meal may come from or when the next flood will come and literally wipe away their entire house. And so they pray. Pray to God, lifting up all they have in reverence for him because they know that they literally cannot do it alone. And that’ll preach.

I was thoroughly impressed with how smooth things went and how prepared we were for the crowds of people. The entire process from intake to vitals to actually seeing a doctor to getting medication at the pharmacy was efficient beyond anything I could have ever dreamed of doing. We also had volunteer students from a tech university in Monterrey come and help as well which made things even smoother. My job for the day was just to be a floater and help out wherever I was needed which included anything from translating dosage amounts to checking people in to attempting to keep the wailing children from scaring the other kids.

The rest of the week was very similar just in different places at different times. Finally on Monday…THE SUN CAME OUT! Oh, what a glorious day that was and it’s still out right now so I am mad st0ked! I have had quite a lot of local cuisine in the past week and it had all been delicious. Tacos, burritos, tamales, the lot. I feel as though I am some what starting to fit into the staff and starting to “get” people. I recognize the people I get along with great and people who I do not. Having groups is also fun because I use my leadership skills in a very real way. I delegate group members to do different things and they answer back to me if there’s a problem or any question.

My favorite part of the entire past week or so has been the fact that some of the kids are starting to recognize me at some of the homes and that has been my goal. I feel like a part of the crew and that  I am helping the long term rather than the short. According to one of the American staff who has a masters in psychology, contrary to popular belief, it is actually destructive to a child’s mental state of mind when they meet hundreds and hundreds of new people ever year all there for the same reason…”because I’m an orphan”. It is a vicious cycle of strangers that all want to be a child’s new best friend, who all have what they think is a “personal connection” with the kids, and who all seem to be different when they go home. I feel as though it is not as simple as that. Coming down on a mission trip for one week and thinking you have a very personal connection with a kid? How many people have you spent about five total hours with throughout a week and had a real connection with?

In my experience it is the long-term staff here that is really doing the long-lasting good that we seek to achieve. They are the ones who leave their homes, friends, families, countries, jobs to serve something bigger than themselves. They are the ones that the kids run to when something bad has happened and they need a shoulder to cry on or voice to pray with. They are the ones spending the nights at the children’s homes and just being with the kids. Waking up at 6:00am in the morning to go get the kids up and ready for school, preparing them for school, bringing them to and from school, feeding them lunch, helping them with their homework, feeding them dinner, bathing them, and eventually putting them to bed at night around 9:00pm (which is a real schedule that some of the staff do every week just to help out the encargadas). Don’t get me wrong, groups are a great and a very necessary part of the entire missionary field but consider this world: Next time you go on a mission trip ready to pour, pour, pour into kids who have had everything taken away from them, kids who, in our minds, spend all their time crying and in turmoil because they can’t enjoy the same excesses and privileges that we do, be prepared, because ten times out of ten they are the ones who end up helping you because you’d be surprised at how strong some of these niños can be.

-N8