Dear Ministry Partner, August/September 2015

this month’s update written by Magdalena Kertscher, Mercer PA student and Nicaragua Mission team member

When I found out that Megan and I were going on a house call I was ecstatic. We were taking silly pictures together and joked around about trying to look "cool" while giggling like school girls. We were thrilled to asses another UTI or pneumonia or maybe an interesting looking ulcer. The truth of the matter is we were not equipped for What we saw! Not in the slightest.

We walk into a shack. Step over a ledge and enter a room. There was no flooring, only clay. In one corner a hammock with a young male in it snoring comfortably. On the other side a dark area with a table and a free-standing fridge that couldn't have been more than 40 yrs old. There were people all around and I wish I remembered them too but my focus was elsewhere.

We walked over to the next room; small, dark and eery. Musky smell lived there full-time. On the left side of the room was a bed fashioned out of mismatched pieces of wood covered with old sheets. Suspended above was a hammock-looking thing jerry rigged out of pieces of tarp and foil patched together; "this is probably where the kids sleep" I thought to myself. The walls made of pieces of wood with inch thick gaps in between. I heard the rain cut through air and land on wooden planks inside the room with a deafening sound of extreme poverty. Those planks were covered with scraps of cardboard. On top of it laid a man in his 80s. Extremely cachectic and not moving. He weighed maybe 75lbs soaking wet. His chest hardly lifted as air entered his frail lungs. Sofia, our translator introduced a young female named Maria Clara who could only have been his daughter...except she wasn't. She was his wife and the man was not 80, he was 38.

Leonardo Antonio had been brought down from the mountains due to illness he succumbed to several days earlier. He lost his appetite and strength. He was vomiting blood and soiling himself. I leaned down to listen to his heart and I got nothing. The excruciating sound of silence rang louder and louder as I moved my stethoscope around his prominent ribs. He was barely breathing. I've seen plenty of dead people. Cut into their flesh to explore my passion for learning. Never have I seen a soul itching to get out of one. And for that I will never be the same again. A part of my innocence died today.

Read the rest of this compelling and moving story online at www.CMDAatlanta.org/blog - click on the August 17th post “FEELING CRIPPLED BY OUR LIMITATIONS”

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Atlanta Area DirectorBill Reichart

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Give online at www.CMDAdonate.org Contact me @ 678.350.8539 * billreichart@CMDAatlanta.org

Bill Reichart - CMDA Atlanta Area Director

During our two weeks in Nicaragua we saw 2319 patients and 120 patients indicated decisions for Jesus.