My First Mobile Clinic

This past Saturday, Meg, Brooke, Dr. Rodney, Kate, and I all packed up into a truck and drove into town to Cap Haitien.

We didn't know at all what to expect. We were expecting 200 people, we had Pastor Migueloson and Pastor James as Meg and Brooke's interpreters. Kate and I had no interpreter. We weren't positive that we had enough medication. But we were trusting God because he knew better than us.

At 8 AM we stopped at a familiar, yet unfamiliar church named Sion. We climbed up the stairs with our boxes to the church. We entered the room filled with people and began setting up. The sanctuary was split into two rooms using blackboards. The front room was the waiting room, the back was two examination rooms and the make-shift pharmacy. There were elderly women, young mothers with babies, and every age in between. We quickly began setting up the pharmacy and making sure that the three rooms were equipped with extra chairs for the interpreters.

Pastor Migueloson told us that Pastor James wouldn't be arriving until 10 AM. We continued on, unpacking the box and sorting the medications into piles. Soon Pastor Migueloson spoke to the crowd that had gathered, instructing them that they needed to be patient with Brooke and Meg for they would be using an interpreter and also to tell them exactly what their problems were, for that was the only way that they could properly treat them. All of the blancos and Dr. Rodney were introduced, Meg spoke, then Brooke. Meanwhile Kate and I continued preparing the pharmacy.

At 9:30 AM, the clinic was in full swing. Kate and I began distributing the toothbrushes that Brooke brought and the proper medications. Things were a little slow and bumpy at first, considering that Meg was without a translator and Kate is limited in her medical Creole. So we chugged along. Soon enough things began picking up. Junior came and began translating for Meg, and one of Kate's old English students, Willy, started translating for Kate and I. This made things much, much easier. Soon our stack of dossiers was growing. We were handing out many, many medications. I can remember at one point looking at Kate and saying how I felt like were were taking part in the story where Jesus feeds 5,000. Our toothbrushes still had not run out, even with giving one to every adult, and our bags of medications were still heavy.

Around 11 AM Pastor James finally arrived, he took pictures, talked with some of the people waiting and then translated for Meg. Around 2 PM is when we started getting low on certain medications. By 2:00 PM we were finishing up seeing patients. God provided. Every patient that we saw was able to walk away with something, whether it be a toothbrush, or medication, or a prescription to receive the medication that they needed. By the end, if we had the medication, every patient got as much of what they needed as we had.

God knew better than us.

We saw 123 people that day. We got home at 3:30 PM covered in dust, liquid chloroquine, Amoxicillin powder, exhausted, yet completely overwhelmed by God's provision.

Our prayer is to be able to do one more medical clinic with Sion before we leave. More lives brought to the Lord, and more bodies healed to do His will.