Thursday, June 18

Thank you to everyone who prayed for our medicine needs. As usual, God showed up and blew us all away.

(Have you ever thought about this: We acknowledge with our lips that God is sovereign and omnipotent and yet when He answers our prayers in ways that only He can, we are continually amazed. Is that because we don't fully believe what we say or because His power, might and glory is far greater than we can fathom? Or maybe a little bit of both? Discuss among yourselves...)

As you know the overwhelming response - for us, not for God - at our clinic on Wednesday left us drastically short on some medicines. We prayed and you prayed and we made plans to hopefully purchase more meds on Thursday morning in Pena Blanca. We had conficence that God would provide and that everything would work out. But to be honest, we did not know what that would look like.

For the first three days of our clinic we had been in poor communities. Lomas del Aguila on Wednesday was the poorest of the poor. But on Thursday we were in the community of Zapaca which is more affluent than any other community we have ever been in. As a result of their higher standard of living the people that came to our clinic had different maladies and therefore needed some of the medication that we had not been dispensing at our previous clinics.

We had taken with us an ample supply of medicines for heart conditions, high blood pressure and diabetes but to this point we had not used hardly any of it. Well, that all changed on Thursday as those became the most needed pharmacuticals. Once again, God provided. Plus, the volume of patients we saw on Thursday dropped dramatically back down to around 100. God knew what we could handle and He worked everything out perfectly.

I do not want to give you the mistaken impression that this trip has been all about meeting physical needs. At our very core we are committed to being used for Kingdom growth and for drawing people closer to God. If in our medical clinic we treat physical needs but leave them spiritually untouched have we truly honored God and brought glory to His name? This is why we take the opportunity to pray specifically for and with each patient that we see in our clinic. This is why we ask them questions about their spiritual needs as well as their physical needs and this is why we had the opportunity to lead two of our clinic patients to Christ on Thursday! We have connected them to the local church where they will have the opportunity to grow spiritually and discipled as followers of Christ.

As a team we are spent physically. We have worked hard and poured our lives into the Honduran people this week. We have seen the face of God in them and in each other. Sacrifices were made by ourselves and others to make this trip a reality and some of us endures hardships while in Honduras. But to a person we would willingly do it all over again for the opportunity to serve the Savior. My prayer is that we will look more intently for those everyday opportunities to serve Him wherever we are.


Soli Deo gloria,
Michael