De la Montaña al Mar

De la Montaña al Mar: June 2012  - Medical Aspects

On a recent mission to Honduras, I was struck by the difference in each team that goes out of AHMEN.  We have feeding kitchens, construction, evangelism, medical clinics, Bible Study, seminars, eye clinics - the list seems to go on and on.

Our medical team consist of:

Dr. Delmer Montanya - a seasoned Honduran doctor who goes with any lucky AHMEN team that can “recruit” him.

Two RN’s from Alabama - one ER and one Pediatric cardiology

One navy corpsman

One premed student

One American Doc

good interpreters

A clown for the kids

Photographer

Our esteemed team leader

An unbelievable support team from our private, for profit, partner - more about this later.

We set up a very efficient pharmacy system with Doris Brady talking to each and every patient family group giving detailed instructions re. the medication, safety, etc.

The uniqueness of this particular team is, once again, unique.

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Some 5 years ago a father, son, daughter, grandfather team moved from Canada to the mountains of Honduras to set up an electricity generating plant.  During the initial construction phase, the family noticed the men they hired from local villages could only work about 3 or 4 hours before they simply gave out of energy.  Were the people simply lazy, or was their another explanation?  What they discovered was they were hungry and didn’t have enough protein in their diet.  By simply feeding the workers a wholesome, Honduran diet the workers began to perform much better.

So, what does that have to do with our medical mission?  The entrepreneurs from Canada became intimately associate with the village most of their workers come from, and notice lots of medical problems with little assess to health care.  While La Esperanza is a good size town and has significant medical delivery system, go 30 minutes up any dirt road to surrounding villages and you find poverty, poor water systems, and poor access to health care.

Ron and Ernesto, the father/son Canadian team, became friends with Brent and Doris Brady and knew they participate in AHMEN and medical mission teams.  You can see where this is going.  Once De la Montaña al Mar went to La Espernaza one time, we were “hooked”.   The people are “Indios”, nice, welcoming, and in need of medical help.

What is unique about this particular mission is the amalgamation of an AHMEN Medical team with a  private, for profit business and the Honduran people that were a tremendous support and Dr. Delmer Montanya.

The medical part of the mission is pretty much like other missions I have been on - lots of kids, dirty drinking water leading to need for parasite medication, education, and development of clean water systems, men with machete injuries, women with arthritis, need for vitamins, etc.

Next year we have plans to expand the medical mission to other villages further “out from the main town” and expect the medical needs to increase.  

I look forward to seeing the change in the long term health of these villages as this relationship between our AHMEN mission team and this private, for profit business continues to grow.

If this is something you might like to participate in, contact:

Michael Franklin: frank42@gmail.com

Kyle Grooms: kyle.grooms@yahoo.com

Magan Hamrick:  magan.hamrick@yahoo.com

Limon Nurture Center: Feb. 2012: Fund Raising

An act of Compassion

An act of Trust

And act of Faith

February 24, 2012

An Act of Compassion

The Limon Feeding Kitchen was started about 10 years afoe after a visit to Limon, Honduras by Danny and Brenda Arnold of AHMEN and Christ UMC of Jasper, Al., and a conversation with the citizens of the rural Grifina village of Limon.  Cruzadas del Evangelico, a evangelical protestant church with a church in Limon had a bunch of hungry orphans. Then Danny and Brenda met with Cristina and Pastor David Ventura and began feeding 50 to 60 orphans and widows five days a week.

An Act of Trust:  

Anna Capron, wife of the pastor of Christ UMC of Jasper, Al. visited the feeding kitchen 5 years ago and wanted to turn it into a nurture center.  She works in the area of  child development and nutrition.   She and husband Rev. Dale began the financing of the expanded Nurture Center.  They held a” fund raising”
i n 2011 to expand the finances to cove the extra money.  The next year Dale met with Pastor Ventura and they committed  to expand, with the help of the local church of Limon, to nurture, mentor, “father”, “mother”, tudor, and much more.

Dale came home and raised the necessary money thru an interesting system.  He had the food either donated or purchases himself.  Officered the food for free if a person would come to the meeting to hear what he had to say about the kids.

And by Jeminy he did it.

An Act of FAITH:  

When I am in charge of anything, I tend to micromanager every detail.  I hustle, call, worry, work, re check, stay up, etc, etc., and then, oh yeh, I say a little prayer.

I think tonight I saw a little different priority.  This is not to say Rev. Dale didn’t work - he did.  But I think he spent a lot more time in prayer than I usually do.

Tonight was our annual fund raiser for the Limon Nurture Center.  Even before we started, he had raised more than 1/2 of the money.  Then at the meeting, he gave away the food we had to purchase with the money raised last year, and only 33 people showed up.  During his presentation, you could see his Compassion, his Trust, and most of all his Faith in God that His will would be done.

I guess you know what happened.  by the time the night was over we had lots of folks interested in the program, in addition to other programs orchestrated by AHMEN (and GOD).

Thanks Dale for showing us the power of Faith and prayer  and, once again, demonstrating for us the potential power of trust and compassion.

If you would like to know more about the Limon Nurture Center contact:

Rev. Dale Capron

Christ UMC

Jasper, Al.

dale.capron@yahoo.com