La Esperanza
Sh-h-h ninito, no llores. Dios te ama. Sh-h- Little
one, don't cry. God loves
you. Over and over
I whispered these
words to the frail, emaciated little Honduran boy
as I gently stroked his thin,
black hair. I didn't know his name or even his age,
though I estimated him to be around
a year and a half old. So frail, so sad, so frightened - my heart
ached to comfort him.
I first
met him an hour before. I was on a medical
mission trip to the
tiny town of La Esperanza in the mountains west of Tegucigalpa. I was there as
an internal medicine specialist with a team of others to provide basic medical
care in an underserved region. This was my fourth medical
mission trip to Central America.
The mission trips were a catharsis for my soul,
cleansing me of the built-up
frustrations and pressures from years in clinical medicine. Not
even 50 years old, I was beginning to "burn out" and more and more I wondered if I had made a mistake going
into medicine. My heart was hardening and my passion
for medicine and compassion for people were eroding.
These mission trips enabled me to experience
medicine in its purest form unencumbered by paperwork, managed care and a
litigious society. I felt joy again in ministering to the beautiful people
of
Honduras. Little did I know
that God, instead, would use a
tiny child to minister to me. La Esperanza, which
means hope in Spanish, would
restore hope in me.
As I was seeing patients
each day, several
women on the
team saw the need for the
children to be bathed, deloused, and dressed in clean
clothes. They scoured the small town's stores
and bought all the children's clothes and shoes
they could find. An area was
set up for bathing using
large trashcans-each child
was washed, had his or her hair deloused and was then
given new clothes
and shoes. The laughter and delight of the
children reverberated throughout the site. The word spread
and more children
camel As I witnessed this, I , too,
wanted to be part of this special
ministry. I decided to take a half-day from seeing patients and instead spend
the time helping
wherever I could
with the children.
He was the
first . He cried
and cried ever so weakly, his black
eyes brimming with tears. His thin arms
and legs covered
with dirt, too weak to really
resist the help
we offered. As carefully as I could, I cleaned
him. He left dressed in fresh, new
clothes and shoes, no longer
crying-but not smiling
either. An hour later
he was back, his new
clothes completely soiled and a feeble cry again on his thin, trembling
lips. As he stood weeping, I carefully removed his clothes
and shoes. I laid
him down on the sun-drenched walkway and began cleaning
him again. Thoughts of my own
boys, now nearly
grown, came to mind, and I was overwhelmed with
a need to show this
little one the love and caring that was missing in his life-a
life of poverty
compounded by physical
and emotional neglect. His crying continued, barely audible at times. He laid lifeless, hardly moving, head
turned to the side where
he continued to stare as if looking
for someone. Suddenly, memories
of rocking my boys as infants came
flooding into my mind.
I began to whisper a soft, soothing sh-h-h-h in his ear just as I had done with my sons
telling him again and again "No llores, ninito, no llores. Dios te
ama". His soft sobs eased and he looked at me with his ebony
eyes. He calmly lay there as I finished cleaning him, all the while continuing to whisper to him as lovingly as I could.
Once he was dressed, he was taken away-to where I do not know.
In that brief
encounter with this Honduran
boy, I was reminded again of why I went into medicine - to
serve others. The years of demanding work, long nights on call, administrative headaches and managed care
had slowly hardened my heart. God used
this little one to begin a softening, one which continues today.
Andy Lamb,
MD
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