With the roosters crowing in the background at 5:30am, the MMF San Lucas team of nearly 40 people rolled suitcases down rock paths to the truck, grabbed boxed breakfasts and hopped into three vans for the 4-hour drive back from San Lucas to the airport in Guatemala City. It was a glorious sunny morning and we could see smoke rising from three different Lake Atitlan area volcanoes.
Flights back were incredibly smooth, the navigation through customs equally painless and we all arrived back in our respective cities (mostly KC) around midnight Sunday night.
Throughout the day Sunday, each of us began to reflect on the San Lucas mission trip, sharing our thoughts with one another here and there.
Hearing all of the different perspectives and remembering the variety of roles and talents included in the trip reminded me of the “Bones Song”. Remember it? “With the leg bone connected to the knee bone, and the knee bone connected to the thigh bone, and the thigh bone connected to the hip bone…”
It took an incredible amount of coordination, collaboration diversity of talents and willingness to loan them to the cause to make this trip as successful and productive as it was. The OR team performed 86 surgical procedures. The clinic team saw roughly 600 patients throughout the week. The dental team saw more than 100 patients, and provided dental health education to hundreds more, most of them children and moms. The clinic team had the opportunity to share with San Lucas families about proper hydration, proper nutrition and other important health education topics. The art team made nearly a dozen different art projects with the children and played games until we were all totally worn out, building relationships with San Lucas children and their families.
During the trip one of the translators, Erin, a Minnesota native college student who is staying and serving at the San Lucas Mission for a year, commented on what she was learning during her week translating for MMF at the Parish clinic, “I hadn’t had any previous medical team exposure,” Erin said. “It’s so complex, and you all have to have tremendous trust in one another that each person is going to do their individual job to the best of their ability. Because none of you can afford to take your attention off what you’re doing to pick up the slack for someone else. I’m amazed that it works as smoothly as it does. It’s incredible to watch.”
Erin summed up my own sentiments, as a non-medical person serving on my first MMF trip. The MMF team working together to be the hands and feet serving the global community includes all of our in-country partners who continue to care for patients long after we board the plane to go home. It also includes you who serve from your offices and homes in the US. Without the support and focused dedication of our MMF staff, MMF board, donors, families, friends and other supporters throughout the US and the world, MMF could not possibly accomplish what it did this past week, or on any other mission.
The San Lucas trip concludes. The work continues, is just beginning really, and will go on and on for as long as we have our team of “bones” to make it happen. Thank you for being a critical part of the team to make it happen.
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