A Perfectly Good Plan

Photos by Joe Walenciak

Sometimes you have a perfectly good plan and you have to throw it out the window. We started today with an impressive itinerary. We met at Cristo es el Camino (the church) and helped feed breakfast to kids who live in neighborhoods around the garbage dump. After a vigorous playtime, we had Sunday school and a worship service, and then we went to lunch. So far, so good! The perfectly good plan was working!

After lunch, we went to the settlements outside of the garbage dump to walk around, meet people, pray, and promote our free medical clinic. That was supposed to last until 4:30, at which time our perfectly good plan said that we were going to have a meeting to finalize the details of our projects.  

That is when my phone rang and Katie Allen told me that her group found a young lady who needed urgent medical attention. That is when we met Cristina. 

Cristina is a 25-year-old woman who lives in a shanty at the dump with her 6-month-old baby. Last Friday, Cristina spilled boiling water on her legs. Family took her to the government hospital where she was given some really greasy cream designed to prevent scars...not what she needed. He had been sitting in her home in pain for two days with open, second-degree burns coated stuff that was actually making the problem worse.

So much for the perfectly good plan.

We gathered our medical people who evaluated Cristina and decided she needed help today, so we loaded her up in the van and made her our very first patient in our clinic which is set up at the church. Thanks to Isaac Daugherty, Katie Allen, Suyen Espinoza, Lori Allen, and Layla de Perez for all you did today. They had to literally scrub the "scar cream" off of the open sores before they could treat her properly. I was the designated hand holder...about the only thing I was qualified to do. She needed something to squeeze during the ordeal.

Isaac, Katie, Suyen, and Lori probably prevented a serious infection today, and I know that their love and care toward Cristina touched her heart. Toward the end, Ellie Jones came in and gave Cristina a rose, which really, REALLY made her happy. We helped her home, and she has promised to come back to the clinic tomorrow. She was telling us that she had not been going to church, and that maybe this was some kind of punishment or reminder from God. We had a great opportunity to remind her that God loves her regardless of what has happened and that this whole day was proof of that.

Cristina never realized that she disrupted my perfectly good plan. I'm glad she did, though. You can call it coincidence if you like, but I believe that God loves this woman so much that He brought 40 north Americans to her shack at the garbage dump just to make she that she knows she is loved. That truly is a perfectly good plan.