It’s around 5:00 in the evening, and we have just come back from our first day in clinic. Yesterday was a day filled with worship with the people of La Iglesia Bautista de Nazaret. Tommy, one of the leaders on our trip, preached the gospel to the local congregation in both the morning and evening worship services with the help of a translator named Asten. It’s amazing to see that God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit transcend language and culture. It was a reminder that we are all children of God, and that the power of Christ is capable of changing all of us. The Spanish language has been an interest of mine since learning it in high school, and the ability to sing to God in this language was a very moving experience.
This morning before heading back to the church to begin our clinic, I was filled with both excitement and some nerves. Would I be limited in my ability to remember skills learned in PT school this semester? Would I be able to communicate in an effective way? Each day during this trip, we are given a devotional to meditate on for that particular day. Today’s Bible study looked at 1 Timothy 1:1-7. In this passage, we are reminded that, “God gave us not a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control.” God is bigger than any limitation or weakness that I may have, and his Spirit is able to strengthen us in such a way to help glorify His name. Once arriving to clinic, we divided into five teams with one therapist paired with one or two PT students. Patients arrived and went through triage and were then assigned to a treatment team. A unique aspect of being a physical therapist is the ability to spend a large amount of time with your patients. On this trip in particular, it allows us the opportunity to evangelize to our patients. Our aim is to address more than the physical needs of the patients; it is also to “diagnose” if our patients have a walk with Christ and if they understand the magnitude of that relationship. We praise God for the many of our patients who already are believers, but we also ask that you pray for those patients that we saw today who do not know Christ or who are lukewarm in their faith. We pray that any seeds planted today will continue to grow and that God will reveal himself to these people. We prayed over each patient before they left, for their physical needs but also for their spiritual needs and their concerns over their families or friends. For those who were already followers of Christ, we were able to encourage them, and I also found the encouragement they gave us had a big impact. It was a reminder of 1 Thessalonians 5:11, “Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” -James Crockett Comments are closed.
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