I don't have the words to accurately pour out the way my heart felt after returning from a medical mission to Gonaives, Haiti last Friday.
My plan before we left was to write every night once we returned to the hotel, then compile it all when we made it back to the states. However, each night I found myself sitting on my bed with my laptop in the empty space beside me not being able to type a single thing.
I still can't find the words to quite describe the way it felt to have a woman stand in front of me with four small children who all need antibiotics for stomach worms. My senior seminar didn't prepare me to vividly illustrate the way people smiled as I handed them the rare medications they so desperately needed, but couldn't afford or didn't have easy access to. You know, things like over-the-counter pain pills, cough syrup and allergy medicine. None of my writing courses in undergrad taught me how to paint a portrait of children playing and taking baths in a polluted river under a bridge, or decaying concrete walls in a church bathroom.
But I can invite you into one moment.
We toured a hospital before leaving Gonaives. I'd managed to keep from crying this entire trip, then we walked into the hospital room where they cared for the malnourished children. There was only one child in there. She was so tiny that I'm not even sure how old she was. My eyes filled up with tears so fast I just had to walk away.
I thought about my own children and how I feel when they just have a simple cold, and could only imagine how her mother might feel. I remember holding my daughter to my chest in the back of an ambulance when she had RSV and could hardly breathe. I felt so helpless and just kept praying and praying. When we were being discharged the doctor told me I did the right thing by following my mother's intuition and bringing her in because she was moments from going into respiratory distress.
Then, I wondered where her mother was.
Had she been abandoned?
Did her mother have other children she couldn't leave so she couldn't stay in the hospital with her? Was she even alive?
I will never know why God chose for me to be born in the country I was, and to experience the privileges I have. My children have never known hunger. Not only was #FelicityGrace able to get the care she needed quickly, my insurance paid for it and I didn't have to question for a second if she was getting the best care available.
The people of Gonaives don't have that.
I understand that not everyone reading this is in a position to take two weeks off work to serve abroad, but I want to encourage each of you take action in two simple yet powerful ways: pray and give.
Pray for people around the world who live a life of poverty that most of us could never imagine, and pray for those who have committed to serving them. Give to The Luke 9 Project, the organization I travelled with, by clicking here to help us prepare for our next trip to care for the people of Gonaives.
God has given us a mission "to proclaim the kingdom of heaven and to heal". The Luke 9 Project has taken on the task of sending medical missionaries to the front lines of this fight. Please pray for our team, and donate whatever you can to fight alongside us.
xoxo,
Ashley Danielle