A Human Touch

Posted by Contributing source on Feb 02, 2012 at 04:41 pm

The following is an excerpt from a blog written by Catherine Schwebel, one of our Chaplains onboard the Africa Mercy. Reposted with permission.

Today at our Monday morning community meeting, our head surgeon, Dr. Gary Parker, spoke a little bit about what to expect at the huge mass screening we will do on February 1st to look for potential surgical candidates. There will be anywhere between 3000-5000 people lining up (probably the night before) at the giant sports stadium where the screening will be, each hoping for some relief from aliments they have been suffering from. Unfortunately there are only certain kinds of surgeries that we can perform on the ship, so many will be turned away.

Each person that we can't help will get prayed for before they leave. He asked us to pray that God would bring the right people that we have the expertise to help and that the others would not be lead to come but would find the help they need from other sources. We hope you will join us in that prayer.

Dr. Parker also told a very poignant story about how important each of the crew is that helps with screening, and since almost everyone comes to help, from every department on the ship, there will be several hundred crew there. Even the Academy kids come and help by playing with some of the children who have to wait to see the screening doctors.

He remembered a particular screening where a woman waited alone, away from the other potential patients, her head covered with a giant scarf to hide the huge, oozing, smelly tumor extending out of her head.

None of the other people waiting wanted to be near her. Then a Mercy Ships crew member came and sat down next her and put their arm around her to comfort and encourage her while she waited. Later, when she did indeed get a surgery appointment and was telling a translator on the ship how scared she was to not only see the ocean for the first time in her life, but to get on a huge piece of floating steel to get her surgery, she said what made it possible for her to overcome her fear of the unknown was the fact that a crew member had shown her love and touched her, despite her condition.

She had had the tumor for 10 years, and not once during that time had she received any human touch from anyone in her small village up in the north. She knew if she was shown this kind of love from a stranger, that she didn't need to fear coming on the ship for surgery.

I was so touched by this story and that fact that we never know how our actions towards a stranger, wherever we are, can impact another person's life.  I wanted to share this story with you and encourage each of you to reach out to others around you with compassion and love. Maybe you too will change a life in a small but significant way.

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