wherever it may lead: Transcending languages

I'm in Las Terrenas with Sowers of the Kingdom!!!!!

me and Dr. Vanesa, dentista on our way to LT to meet up with the NY team!!

Dr. Fernando, me, Dr. Vanesa and Toni Viau!

Dr. Fernando leading worship with our patients

Semana

Clinic number 2

Lourdes, Dr. Fernando, Ellen and Esther

Ok. We all know the passion I have for community health clinics. The feeling of being able to treat a patient covered in scabies, fungus and bacterial infections is entirely incomparable. Until now.

Add to that the ability to FINALLY communicate with my patients. To use the skills I share with my American patients to place them at ease. To joke with a child. To gently prod an elderly gentleman to lift his legs. And to tell them, myself, their diagnosis and treatment.

To connect with. Con mis palabras.

This was further enforced when I compare this week to last.

I spent wed, thurs and fri in a Haitian church, where once again I found myself in a situation where I could not connect with my patients short of a greeting and a smile. A frustration I have endured for the past three years.

Especially as I'm delivering difficult news.

A 27 year old man with an irregular heart beat, probable cardiomegaly and hypertensive who desperately needs to see a cardiologist. As I relayed my recommendation to a man who could scarcely afford 75 cents to see me that he needs to see an expensive specialist I'm sure compassion was lost in translation. Scare him I did. For good reason. But how do u comfort without words and in a culture where a touch or a smile may be wrongly perceived?

Will he receive care? I hope so. We involved the Haitian pastor who will take a collection in church and go with him as a Spanish translator. But hopeless I felt.

You see. Love and compassion is my gift. Not medicine. And once again to have my gift blocked? A challenge.

But, this week, to have the ability of speech once again with my Dominican patients was a sweet gift.

So what's the solution? Become trilingual while I'm not even close to bilingual?

And then if God calls me to Africa, learn other languages? For those of you who know my past struggles with French, you know the impracticality of that.

It truly only makes sense to rely completely and wholly on the Ultimate Healer. The Healer who can transcend all languages. Who can provide comfort that surely a human hand cannot. To trust that my knowledge will be relayed. That my heart will show. And if it doesn't, that's ok, because it isn't about me anyways.

And so, I will continue to chase after the Holy Spirit. And pray that each hand I lay on a patient, each heart I listen to and every medicine I give will not be from me.

A snap shot of my first team of students last week in Jarabacoa