(March 14, 2014 - by Ruth Pike)  It was the same elderly man again. Lorenzo’s* face was now familiar to Dr. Francisco, a Bolivian physician. Lorenzo had become a regular patient at the family medicine clinic in Potosí, Bolivia, where Dr. Francisco and another missionary doctor treat local Quechua people.

On each visit, Lorenzo would complain of pain in different parts of his body, but his pain remained undiagnosed.

“What’s wrong with you?” Dr. Francisco finally asked him. “Why do you think you are always in so much pain?”

Eventually Lorenzo told him the truth. “In my home, I always feel like an object, thrown away, forgotten. I live with my daughter, but it’s like I’m an animal that she has to provide with food and a little clothing. And that’s why I came to visit you so that you would listen to me and give me something for my pain.”

“It wasn’t physical pain,” related Dr. Francisco. “It was a pain within the heart. In the end I told him I’m a Christian doctor, and the best tool I can offer is to pray for him ... so he might remember that he has a heavenly Father who will never throw him out as though he were an object, who will never forget him.”

Lorenzo told him, “Oh, I’m a Christian too. I know the Lord as well, but nobody ever told me that doctors could pray for their patients.”

The two prayed together, and Dr. Francisco hopes that Lorenzo will join him in Hospicio (Hospice), a new ministry to be launched this year, focusing on providing support for terminally ill patients and lonely elderly people, and sharing Bible stories with them through home visits.

Dr. Francisco has worked in the family medicine clinic since 2012 when he and his wife, Teresa, a lab technician, returned to their hometown of Potosí, Bolivia, following three years of training in Quito, Ecuador.

Their time in Quito helped prepare them for their current cross-cultural ministry among the Quechuas. (They are both from the indigenous Aymara people group but speak Spanish as their first language.) Dr. Francisco completed a residency program in family medicine at Hospital Vozandes-Quito, a ministry of Reach Beyond (formerly HCJB Global).

“[The hospital] demonstrated all of the tools that a Christian doctor needs to be a good doctor,” said Dr. Francisco. “A doctor who is not just concerned about physical healing but also spiritual healing.”

While Dr. Francisco went through the residency program, Teresa looked after their three daughters, volunteered at the hospital and participated in Corrientes, Reach Beyond’s mentorship program for Latin American missionaries. The program covers topics such as using your profession in missions, serving in a cross-cultural context, language acquisition and spiritual formation.

“Since I was a child, I wanted to be a missionary, but I didn’t know how,” said Teresa. “My husband and I knew that we should serve but we didn’t have the tools. And Corrientes actually gives you these tools and ways of using them.”

Teresa now works part-time in a laboratory to help finance their ministry in Potosí, but she also helps out in human resources in the clinic and with home visits. Often young women come to visit her with questions or asking for help—women such as Anita.*

Anita is a young Quechua girl from a rural community who is studying in Potosí, a city of 200,000 people high in the Andes at an altitude of 13,420 feet. One evening she was traveling back to her village to visit her parents. She had to walk the last hour of her journey on foot. On the way she was raped. It was dark and she couldn’t even see the perpetrator.

“She was very sad and very worried, thinking she had become pregnant,” said Teresa. “She came to the [doctor’s office], so I consoled her and helped her. We prayed with her.”

It turned out that Anita wasn’t pregnant; nonetheless, she suffered a sense of deep loneliness.

“She couldn’t rely on anyone. She couldn’t trust anyone,” added Teresa. “She was scared about telling her parents because in the village where she lived it was very ‘normal’ for such situations to occur. She wanted to study and not end up with a child from a father she didn’t even know. Cases like this are very common.”

Since the beginning of the family medicine clinic, insights into the lives of people like Lorenzo and Anita have confirmed Dr. Francisco and Teresa’s sense of the value of expanding their ministry to include youth work and a ministry among the elderly. In the future, they are also considering expanding into community development work such as clean water projects.

With this in mind, the couple is close to completing the legal process for setting up a Bolivia-based nonprofit organization called Allinta Ruwana, a Quechua phrase that means “let’s do good.”

“Our dream is that Allinta Ruwana would be like the new airport in Quito,” said Dr. Francisco. “Like a platform for different projects to take off from and become established so that they can keep blessing many families in Potosí.”

*Names changed to protect the identity of the individuals.

Source: Reach Beyond