By Sarah Wang | Staff Writer
On May 14, a group of 10 Baylor students and two faculty members will be traveling from Waco to Kenya, Africa, to bring medical services and ministries to a local hospital.
The May mission trip is hosted by CURE International, a nonprofit Christian organization that operates charitable hospitals and programs in 29 countries worldwide. The destination for the service team will be the CURE Hospital in Kenya, an affiliated hospital that performs over 1,500 life-changing reconstructive and orthopedic surgeries for children suffering from treatable disabilities.
As an accredited chapter of CURE International, CURE BU is going to be volunteering and holding a vacation Bible school for the children.
Yakima, Wash., senior Elizabeth John, vice president and mission chair of CURE BU, said the organization aims to explore the “intersections between Christianity and healthcare” in this mission trip.
“We get to observe surgeries, visit patients in their homes and experience chapel services that are held by the healthcare personnel,” John said. “We will be exploring how this [mission trip] will impact our future careers and how we can impact the children in Kenya as well.”
Dr. Maricel Demesa, adviser for CURE BU, said the organization will be playing the role of being the “hands and feet of Christ” at the African hospitals where the local people can receive a service from another culture.
“We will serve, share our love and gospel with the patients,” Demesa said. “We’ve blessed them by our presence. They also bless us by their smile, culture and just being kids.”
Demesa said the medical part will be done by the hospital, and the mission of the volunteers is to give the patients a sense of acceptance. According to Demesa, deformity is considered as a curse in some of the countries, and even some parents treat their children with deformity differently.
“It is really encouraging when the help is coming from somebody they don’t know or they don’t know yet, so that they don’t feel they are not liked,” Demesa said.
CURE has been preparing for its mission trip for nearly a month. John said members have been doing trainings for the entire semester, and every single mission trip attendee has been in prayer since, to get ready for the trip while socially bonded with each other.
Preparing for departure and experiencing a different culture amidst final exams and can be a challenge for the volunteers, Demesa said.
“Not everybody in the group has been to an international mission trip,” Demesa said. “One of the challenge is of mindset, and how to get out of that idea of being in your comfort zone and going to a place where you don’t know.”
With most of the members who are going on the mission trip being in the pre-med track or health field, John said it is important to show these students there is a way to practice medicine and serve people at the same time.
“This is not purely a medical mission trip,” John said. “It is a medical ministry mission trip. We are going to learn the interdisciplinary nature of medicine and ministry in a different culture.”
