Mission Team Preparation
Wednesday night
Feb 23, 2011
I have been on the job for this mission trip since April of 2010. The real planning began informally, like most great ideas in our congregation. I passed one of our medical team leaders in the hallway during the Sunday school hour and was asked how many had an interest in going this year. This is just 2 -3 months after our return in early February. “Let’s get together and see what we can come up with.” She and her husband, a retired OB-GYN surgeon, were unable to go with us in 2010, which was our sixth trip to Barahona in the Dominican Republic. This couple has extensive experience in setting up medical clinics in Africa and Asia and helped put together the first medical missions from our church over fifteen years ago.
Over the spring and summer the call went out for medical volunteers, educators, and construction hands. We now have at least twenty of us ready to leave this weekend from the local airport for 8 days in the agricultural heart of one of the most impoverished areas of Republica Dominica. Many are going on their third, fourth, and fifth mission trips. It is only my second trip. I cannot wait to return. We are going into the bateys: work camps established for the workers of the sugar cane fields in the heart of the island nation. Most of the workers and their families are Haitian, looking for a better life. They do not escape poverty and privation in the shanty villages that house their families as they work for the equivalent of a few U.S. dollars each day, when work is available.
One of our team members had this entry earlier in our preparation:
Our construction teams have worked on a variety of projects. Some are simple, such as constructing latrines in areas where they are desperately needed for adequate sanitation. Larger projects have included assisting with building a school and church, and constructing church pews and cabinets. A recent highly successful water project is providing safe drinking water for an entire area. Special construction skills are not needed.
The medical team usually consists of 3-5 doctors, and we generally see a hundred walk-in patients a day. Nurses and pharmacists are very helpful, but anyone can participate, since we need help to manage patient flow, find medicines, take temps, blood pressures, etc.
We also have an education team that visits the kindergarten that we support there.
We have teachers from our church, who assist the Dominican teachers, and also volunteers that interact (play) with the kids. The only pre-requisite for this is a love of children.
All of this work is highly rewarding, as we strive to help “the least of these”.
We have met formally and informally as a team now. We know each other pretty well and have done a little bonding. Several hours of work have been spent in packaging and packing our medical, educational, and construction supplies. So far the planning and implementation have gone very well. We have a great group of folks on the trip with talents drawn from many backgrounds. As in years past, all will contribute in their own unique way to make this mission a success.
I will add some of the content of a brief presentation about the people of the bateys, while we were presenting our plans last year:
… (They).. live daily, almost hourly, with hardly a complaint, in conditions that are far worse than anything that can be envisioned in the continental US.
The really important question … is this:
What else can we, both individually and as a congregation, do for the most underprivileged people that any of us will ever meet face-to-face?
Once you have seen these people, their faith and their courage, it is most difficult to turn away.
Stan Reid
Adult Mission Team Leader
Westminster Presbyterian Church (USA)
