As I mentioned before, we recently had our first ever medical campaign here in Lima. We invited groups down from our supporting churches back in The States and had a fantastic response.
We focused our efforts in a community in a part of Lima called Villa Maria del Triunfo and more specifically in an area known as “Paraiso” or “Paradise.” In this, our first medical campaign, we were really just shooting in the dark on a lot of things. Sometimes inexperience can be a blessing as well as a curse. We decided that we wanted to have a traditional medical campaign like most people imagine when they think about such a thing. We talked with a local government run preschool and were able to use their facilities, which turned out to be ideal. We had several rooms with doctors, dentists and nurses seeing patients. Plus another room for vision checks and passing out eyeglasses. All of this enclosed in a fence with a playground for the kids and space for the adults. It was perfect and we invited the community to come receive free exams and, if we had what they needed, free medicine. We saw hundreds of people over the three days we were there.
Also, though, we wanted to do something a little different. Our ministry here has been one that is not a massive, shotgun approach. We haven’t plastered signs on billboards and played ads on the tv or radio. While those certainly have their place, our ministry has all along been intentionally very relational. We have gotten to know our neighbors and the people that work in our communities. We talk on the street corners and in our kids schools and play soccer on the local “canchas.” We do a lot of talking over lunch and generally sharing life with our new friends in a one to one kind of way. So, we decided we would try something similar with our medical campaign as well.
We formed two small teams with a medical doctor and a few helpers that traveled on foot through the surrounding neighborhoods. We primarily worked by word of mouth and through many of our relationships in the community, going to visit people in their homes that we knew to be sick and need help. One of the great things about this approach is that we were able to visit many that were unable to get out of their house and come to the clinic we had set up. Equally as great though, was that we simply had the opportunity to sit down in these peoples very humble homes and talk with about their troubles, pray with them about their concerns and their health, sometimes drink some tea… we were able to go to them and meet them where they were.
I just put up a post on our team ministry website as well… www.twentyeight19.org. Go check it out.
Also, John Mark made a fantastic video of our weekend. Take a few minutes and get some better insight into the kind of neighborhood I’ve been talking about and see some of the faces… of our Peruvian neighbors and our American volunteers.
Medical Campaign 2010 – Paraiso from Twentyeight19 Ministries on Vimeo.
