This is a night view of the millions of lights of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, which I recently visited. My friend Gayle Davidson, who her friends call her “an angel of God,” runs the Clinica de Esperanza, where she spreads “light” to needy Hondurans!
My (Shannon Siebert) eyes were continually opened while I visited and worked with my friend Gayle Davidson, who is the founder and medical director of Clinica de Esperanza (Clinic of Hope) in Santa Ana, Honduras. She is a retired nurse practitioner who lives and works in Honduras about nine months a year with a heart for missions.
Our mutual friend Michelle Ford and I witnessed firsthand on our trip how Gayle, through her ministry, is meeting the needs of many Hondurans, not only medically and physically but also spiritually. (Here is the link for part one about my trip if you missed it.)
During our stay, we assisted the clinic staff with a mobile clinic they set up for one day in a Kindergarten school room in a nearby community. Gayle prepares well before arranging a mobile clinic. She scopes out the location and visits it to make sure it will work ahead of time. Her staff worked for a week, packaging the most used pharmaceuticals they would be prescribing.
The morning we left for the clinic, Gayles’ car was jam-packed with plastic tubs filled to the brim with supplies, food bags, and prepackaged drugs with folding chairs strapped on top of the car. As we arrived at the schoolyard, a crowd of families were already waiting for us to set up the clinic. I could see it was going to be a busy day.
One area was organized for the pharmacy, another area with chairs for triage, and the third area had three healthcare practitioners to see patients. They also brought Beatriz, the new dentist, who worked all day swabbing mouths with fluoride. There were many not-so-happy, puckered mouths plastered with fluoride leaving the mobile clinic.
Carolina, the pharmacist, and Veronica, her assistant, worked non-stop all day, filling the medications prescriptions. About 20 people at a time waited their turn to see the medical care providers.
There was no let up in the patients who kept coming all day with no one taking a lunch break. By 1:40 p.m., they had already seen 143 patients.
Some of the common ailments were colds, fever, congestion, headaches, parasites, rashes, and nose bleeds. By 3:30, the pharmacy was out of Benadryl and many of the other commonly prescribed drugs, so it was time to close down.
Beatriz, the dentist at the Clinic of Hope, applies fluoride, and Doc Jimmy examines a patient at the mobile clinic.
After shutting down the clinic, we still had food to deliver. We drove up the mountain and handed out more of our remaining food bags filled with beans, rice, other staples, and a Bible. It was a joy to share these bags and see the smiles on the recipients’ faces.
I had befriended a young girl outside the school earlier and met her on the road when we handed out food. She frantically tried to tell me she lived up the mountain and ran to get her family so they could receive a bag of food. We held a few back, and eventually, they arrived with her whole crew!
When Michelle hands out another food bag, everyone is smiling! This little guy was a charmer while waiting his turn at the clinic, and Maria, a sweet elderly lady who received some needed care at the mobile clinic.
Our last outing on the trip was the most heartwrenching. We had spent one evening filling baby bags with diapers and receiving blankets, bottles, and other baby gear. About an hour away, we were going to the Hospital Escuela (teaching) in Tegucigalpa to distribute the bags in the maternity ward.
There are about 90 babies born a day in this particular hospital, and we brought about 50 bags to give away. It is located in the heart of the city, and it’s not the safest area. The conditions in the hospital were nothing I was prepared for—open corridors facing an outside courtyard with laundry strung out, trash everywhere, no air conditioning, crowded patient rooms, and heavily armed police in random areas.
When we arrived in the maternity ward, each room was lined with 6-8 small beds with no privacy for the women who had just had their babies. Many of them had family members with them, and some had their babies there, but some babies were still in the nursery. We began distributing the bags to the new mothers.
A new baby and mother in the maternity ward we gave baby bags to, and on the right was the ward where sick babies were being treated.
Gladys, a nurse from the clinic who came with us, gathered us around a young girl near the back of the room who lay alone on her bed. Mothers and babies surrounded her, but when Gladys had gone over to give her a baby bag, she learned she had just lost her baby.
She was clearly distraught and shaking. We were all heartbroken for her and gathered around arm in arm while Gladys prayed fervently in Spanish, hoping to offer some glimmer of hope for her loss.
This was the most powerful moment of my trip. I felt God’s spirit working amidst such awful conditions, pain, and loss.
Our job at the hospital wasn’t over after we distributed all our baby bags. Next, we rendezvoused with the rest of the clinic staff, who had driven a pickup over with prepackaged meals of rice and bread.
Here’s one of the families outside the hospital who enjoyed the meal we gave them. Some of the Clinic of Hope staff hand out the meals from the coolers. (L to R Carolina, Joel, and Gladys)
Gayle told us how the hospital makes all family members leave at 5 p.m. each day. As I said, it’s a bad part of the city, so most of them simply stay on the hospital grounds and sleep outside, waiting to enter the hospital the next morning. Given the conditions of the hospital, I can see how necessary it is for patients to have someone with them during their stay.
We distributed around 150 meals to these folks who were facing a long night outside the hospital with nowhere to go. With each meal, we handed out a small piece of paper with a QR code directing them to a website where they could submit prayer requests that a team of volunteers would answer. According to Gayle, they receive many responses and work hard to answer their prayer requests.
Our last stop that day was an outing to a unique statue of Christ sitting high above Tegucigalpa giving us fantastic views at sunset of this sprawling capital city of over one million people. The monument is called Christ of the Picacho and is built of concrete and is 4,353 feet high.
Looking at the city lights and the lit-up statue of Jesus reminded me of the light Gayle’s ministry shares daily in Honduras. I don’t know if I’ll get to return to Honduras, but I now know its immediate needs and hope to find ways to help.
Please visit Clinca de Esperanza’s website to learn more about how you can assist this ministry. If you’re interested, contact me about the baby bag supplies (receiving blankets, bottles, diapers, pacifiers, onesies, and hats) I’m gathering to send to Honduras later this summer!
The awesome Clinic de Esperanza staff!
