A mobile medical unit travels along the winding roads of the Baja peninsula in Mexico. A church elder and translator accompany five Lipscomb students and two medical providers. They stop at an impoverished neighborhood where a man lies bedridden, with no way of getting to the clinic. The group assesses the man, provides him with the medicine he needs and then prays for him.
A group of 26 Lipscomb students along with a team of medical providers (including certified doctors and nurse practioners) went to Baja California, Mexico for missions this spring break. They saw 536 medical and dental visits in two small, rural communities: Manaedero and El Zorillo.
The team set up a clinic in one of the local churches to offer medical aid to the surrounding, impoverished communities from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. most days. The clinic included registration, triage (the allocation of medicine to patients), doctor medical bays and a dentist bay, and a pharmacy to fill prescriptions.
Pre-med, pre-nursing and pharmacy majors had the opportunity to work in the clinic and gain a hands-on understanding of the medical industry, travel to the homes of people who could not visit the clinic and take care and form relationships with local children at the clinic and also at vacation bible school.
Medical leader James Parnell works at Sumner Medical Center as an emergency physician and is also a clinical instructor of emergency medicine at Vanderbilt University. He said he has lost count of how many times he has been to Baja – 17 or 18 times now.
“I always joke that its infectious and you go down there once and you’re like well when do I get to come back,” Parnell said. “Once you taste it and once you’re down there, you can’t help but want to go back and love on those people and serve them.”
Nursing senior Ally Johnson went on the trip this year and the last. She said she hopes to see the people of Baja again soon.
“I continue to pray for an opportunity to go back more frequently and for longer amounts of time,” Johnson said.
Parnell pointed out that students take away two main things from the trip: Both a love for the people there and for missions as well as an appreciation of what God has blessed them with back home and how they can share that with others.
“There are just no words that can fully describe the experience I have on this trip,” said biochemistry junior Nicole Northcutt. “My heart is full and happy to have to chance to serve the people of Baja.
“The people that I get to serve and provide medication to are what steal my heart,” Northcutt said. “The look in their eyes and their smiles from our help and my broken Spanish is what I remember. I love to love people. That is what I remember when I think about beautiful Baja.”
Parnell also plans on going back to Baja again next year and hopes to see the trip continue to grow.
“Sharing my passion for helping those people in Mexico with the students is certainly a fun and rewarding industry,” he said.
For more information, visit http://www.lipscomb.edu/missions/baja-med.
Photo courtesy of Parnell