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China Medical Missions Sharing
American Medical and Dental Services (AMDS)
Dali, Yunnan, China
June 28-July 15, 2006
By Janet Ma (3rd Year Medical Student)
Dear brothers and sisters,
Thanks so much for all of your prayers and support for our team, both spiritually and/or financially! Your partnership was invaluable to the success of our trip this year. We faced numerous challenges throughout our trip, but God proved again and again His faithfulness when we placed our complete trust and faith in Him. He is truly the Great Provider and Great Physician!
Humble Beginnings
The American Medical and Dental Services (AMDS) is a newly formed faith-based non-profit organization with a vision of reaching out to China through a healing ministry by providing state of the art health care through education and annual medical-dental mission trips. Though the team had originally met for the first time back in January with fewer than 20 people, God had graciously grown our team to the current number of 45 brothers and sisters. The members of AMDS met in Riverside, CA on June 28th to attend orientation, pack medications and equipment, and get to know each other better. The team consisted of people of various backgrounds, from high school students to practicing health professionals, from Californians to people from Florida and Iowa, from physicians to others completely unrelated to the health care field.
The AMDS team in Riverside
The Need is Real
The AMDS had partnered with the medical school in Dali (one of the major cities of the Yunnan province of China). The school had arranged for us to work in four of the hospitals in the surrounding counties, staying two days at each hospital. We would arrive at the hospital each morning to find hundreds of patients already waiting for us, some having traveled many miles on foot, bike, or moto-taxi. We were able to offer free medical, dental, physical therapy, and counseling services, plus labs, blood tests, EKG’s, audiograms and medicines for patients who needed them. We also had a surgery team consisting of a pediatric surgeon, anesthesiologist, and surgery nurse who performed surgeries throughout our stay in China. We saw a total of about 3000 patients over two weeks; by God’s grace at one particular clinic we saw more than 400 patients in one day with only seven physicians!
Patients waiting for clinics
Our Heavenly Father knew that we needed 45 people in order to effectively serve our patients, and there was always a job for everyone on the team, sometimes more than one! The non-professionals on the team rotated between taking medical histories, doing vital signs, translating for the health professionals, being receptionists, escorting patients, and helping out in lab. This allowed us to maximize our time with the patients demonstrating Jesus’ love to them and silently praying for their healing (both physically and spiritually)!
A typical mini-clinic with physician, two translators, and patients
Dr. Wendy Su examining a young patient with local surgeons prior to surgery
Being a Fool for Christ
I had seen the clouds roll in. But it wasn’t until I stepped out of the radiology room that the sound of the pelting rain on the roof hit my ears, and I saw the pouring rain outside. Since I didn’t have an umbrella, and the main clinic was about 100 feet away, I decided to wait out the rain before bringing my patient back to see our doctor for interpretations. As we waited, my patient suddenly asked me, “So how much money did our government pay for you guys to come?” When I told him that we had raised our own support to come, he was incredulous, “You mean you paid so much money by yourselves to come give us medical services? Wow…” And he was speechless.
Perhaps the World may think, who but a fool would pay so much money to volunteer medical and dental services to random strangers? Who would travel across the world to serve people they’ve never met before? Who would keep exuberating joyful smiles even after a long work day, or keep pouring out love to the poor? And yet that’s what we’ve been called to do, to be fools for Christ (1 Cor. 4:10), and to shine brightly as lights in the darkness so that all who see the light will be attracted to our Lord Jesus Christ.
One Body in Christ
In the past seven weeks I have had the privilege to visit six different churches, from Baptist to Pentecostal to a government-run Three-Self church, from Virginia to California to Asia, and I come away amazed each time realizing that all Christians are unified as one body in Christ, no matter where they worship, what language they worship in, or what their style of worship is. Our God is one that transcends all boundaries, traditions, and languages. Even though our team faced some differences of opinions in the middle of our trip, the power of prayer was able to unify us back together immediately.
Our team was also privileged to work with CHARIS while we were in Dali, a Christian charity organization who is working long-term with the local villagers, teaching them basic public health measures and education techniques. It was hugely inspiring to hear their testimonies of how many of them gave up their comfortable lives in the United States to heed the call of God to come work full-time in China. Their members partnered with us during our trip to help us especially with translation. Though most of our team members know Mandarin, the main dialect spoken in China, most of the local patients actually spoke a local dialect of Yunnan. So for each patient, the words must be translated from Yunnanese to Mandarin to English and then back to Mandarin to Yunnanese! Though my Mandarin is poor, God was still able to use me as one of the translators for the doctors!
The Three-Self government- run church in Old Dali
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Since the Chinese government is very strict on religious activities, we were warned not to openly evangelize to our patients, which at first was a blow to me spiritually. It was hard for me to comprehend being on a missions trip and not being able to directly evangelize to the people we meet, though we were allowed to share about our own personal experiences if people asked. We were “accompanied” by officials of the Dali medical school everywhere we go, and we learned that we had to build the trust and relationship between the two groups before they would allow our group to act freely on our own.
At the end of our trip, Edwin, the leader of CHARIS came to speak to our group. He shared that despite the fact that many of us needed translators for the Yunnan dialect, despite many of us feeling like we hadn’t been able to do much spiritually with our patients, that our actions had spoken louder than our words. The feedback from every hospital had been very positive. The patients had been extremely touched by our clinics and reflected that they had felt much love from our group. The doctors and nurses in the hospital were amazed at how consistent and efficient we were able to work from morning till evening. Even the local news stations and newspapers came to report on these “Americans” who came to operate a free clinic in their town.
This is only the beginning for our group. Though we only had a few opportunities to secretly share the gospel, we know that our actions are not in vain. We pray for opportunities for our group or other groups to return and openly share with these people our motivations for coming. We are reminded that we are the hands and feet of Christ, and this verse: “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” Romans 10:14-15. We can only pray that God will send more people to bring the good news to China!
Doing EKG’s with local doctors and nurses
A God of Miracles
The patient God miraculously healed
It is often in times of need that we turn to our Lord, especially when there is nothing else humanly possible for us to do. And it is during these times of faith and trust that God provides abundantly to those He loves. Above is a picture of an elderly woman that I will never forget. When she first walked into our clinic, her back was bent almost 90 degrees horizontally, and she had said that she had been unable to straighten up for about ten years time. She had tearfully told about her tough life to some of our team members, and our pastor and a CHARIS translator had taken her aside to a private corner. After asking her if she would like to pray, the three prayed together. As the pastor was praying, the patient started to pray with him, and he suddenly felt some sort of heat coming from the patient’s hand. After they had finished praying, the pastor and translator stared in amazement as the patient slowly straightened her back all the way up! God had miraculously healed her! The patient couldn’t stop thanking Jesus, and accepted Christ at the spot. That evening, the pastor shared with the rest of the team what had happened, and we all gave thanks to God together that night.
Turning tears of sorrow into tears of joy
There were many times of discouragement and trials throughout this trip: many of our members suffered from GI infections and other sicknesses, our medications that we had brought were not allowed to be used in China, throughout the trip we had to work longer hours and sleep less hours which led some people to physical and emotional exhaustion, there was some temporary disunity amongst the leadership as they discussed important decisions, a large amount of money that belonged to our team was lost/stolen; these are just to name a few major events.
For me, my lowest point on the trip came only a few days before the missions ended. I was already feeling a bit burnout from the trip, when I found out by e-mail that my 100-year old grandfather had just passed away. This was a blow to me as I was looking forward to visiting him in Hong Kong just a few days later. Later that night I asked God to give me the strength and grace to finish the trip, and to glorify Himself in some way. The next day, on our last clinic day, as Anneta and I were performing an EKG on a patient, she started to tearfully tell us that her life was very difficult. Touched by the Spirit, Anneta and I decided to pray for her. Later, as I took her downstairs, I walked around with her outside and asked if she wanted to know a Best Friend that lives up in the sky. She said yes, and afterwards, the pastor, the patient, and I went into a quiet room and prayed for her salvation. She couldn’t stop saying “thank you Jesus” after the prayer, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. I had learned a powerful lesson, that even through times of disappointment and sorrow God can still do great works, if we only allow Him to. All honor and glory be to our God forever and ever!
The patient who also accepted Christ
The God Who Never Changes
We had learned the Mandarin song below during our missions trip, and somehow it became like a theme song for our team. Though we faced numerous challenges throughout our trip, we learned that the Lord is a God that never changes.
雲上太陽 (讚美之泉)
無論是住在，美麗的高山
或是躺臥在，陰暗的幽谷
當你抬起頭，你將會發現
主已為你我而預備
副歌：
雲上太陽，它總不改變
雖然小雨灑在臉上，雲上太陽它總不改變
哈，它不改變
Sun Above the Clouds
by Streams of Praise
(In loose translation)
It doesn’t matter, if you’re in the beautiful mountains,
Or laying in the dark valleys.
When you lift your head, you will find
That the Lord has already prepared
Sun above the clouds, it never changes.
Even though the rain touches your face,
The sun above the clouds never changes,
It never changes.
The team at the Chon Mountain
Random Stats
Number of hospitals visited: 5
Number of patients (including dental) seen: ~3000
Number of EKG’s performed: ~300
Number of dishes eaten per meal (on average): 12
Number of fried bees eaten (by me): 1
Number of fried worms eaten (by me): 0
Delicacy of Dali: Fried bees and worms…
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