The medical mission trip to the small village of El Pino, Honduras and the Belizean jungle village of Dolores is now a fond memory. Along with twenty five other members of the Saint Mark United Methodist Church, I left for Honduras on July 07, 2007. We consisted of a medical team with two physicians, a nurse and a pharmacist, a dental team with a portable dental chair, two construction teams and an educational team.

One of the construction teams worked on constructing a Habitat-style house which they built from scratch to almost ready to move in during the week we were in Honduras…I even helped mix concrete one afternoon after I had finished seeing patients in the clinic! The other construction team worked on several educational buildings in El Pino and on fixing up a run-down church in La Ceiba, Honduras that will re-open in September.

The educational team held summer Bible school for approximately 250 children every day. They had to travel down a dusty dirt road from El Pino to the village of Nueve de Julio.

Aside from that first day when I helped the construction team by mixing concrete, the medical and dental teams went into the outlying countryside to small villages to bring doctors and a dentist to people who otherwise would never see a doctor or a dentist. Most of the ailments we saw were related to malnutrition diseases and parasites. In that first week in Honduras, Dr. Laura L. Weakland, M. D. (a cancer specialist from Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta who joined me on this trip to Honduras) and I saw over 400 people. We were able to give them much needed medicines that your gift purchased. With the many donations I received, I was able to take four thousand doses of worm medicine and many other medications such as antibiotics, blood pressure medications, heart medicines, medications for diabetes mellitus, vitamins and much more.

One of the most interesting and exciting findings of the entire trip was finding little Nicole Rodriguez. On one of our trips to a remote bush village at the end of an exhausting day, we found this little four year-old. At birth this child’s sex was indistinct, having neither male nor female characteristics. Nicole’s father left the family of six children and their mother because “this is a disgrace to me”, he said. So the mother and her six children moved in with an uncle. The uncle had just put them all out of his house the same week we were holding clinic in their village. Fortunately, this family qualified to move into the house we built while in Honduras that week! Dr. Weakland and I are committed to bringing Nicole to the United States for a proper evaluation and corrective surgery. In that way, this child can grow up to have a proper sexual identity.

Click here to view a couple more pictures of Nicole so that you may have a good idea of what she looks like.

You may contribute to this worthy, tax deductible cause online or make your checks payable to: Saint Mark United Methodist Church 781 Peachtree Street N.E. Atlanta, Georgia 30308 Attn: The Nicole Rodriguez Fund *If making a donation online, be sure to enter the amount in the box labeled “The Nicole Rodriguez Fund”.

The second week I alone went into the Belizean jungle to Dolores. There in that remote setting where electricity and running water are not, the Quekchi Indians live as they have for millennia…stone age. I conducted clinic daily in a vacant health facility. I saw over 250 sick people during the three days that I was there. The first day was spent just getting settled. Not having the luxuries of home such as a shower, or a nice restaurant to eat my meals, I became as one of the Quekchi. I even learned to speak some much needed sentences of their language. There was a clear, cold, swiftly running stream through the village where everybody bathed daily, yours truly not excepted! I, of course, went upstream where I could not easily be seen! At night I entertained the inquisitive Quekchi by candle light. They had rarely seen a white man before and thought that my attempts to speak their language was hilarious.

I cannot begin to express my gratitude for your being a part of my mission to these two places in need. I was able to leave a sufficient quantity of medicines in both El Pino and in Dolores with instructions on how to use them. I am sure that the beneficiaries of your good will are grateful for you generosity as well.

 

Gratefully yours,

Richard Kauffman, M.D.