(Written by Kristine Diggins with help from David Ramsdale)
What began for me as a childhood fascination sparked a lifelong passion. As a kid, I watched mesmerized as my mother provided medical care for the indigenous people group for whom my Bible translation parents were working. Recognizing that caring for the physical body was an all-important link to reaching the human heart, she joyfully sutured wounds and dispensed medication with only a meager knowledge of first aid. Her example was Jesus, who continually met, not only spiritual, but also physical needs.
Intent on following my parents’ footsteps, I pursued a college education in the medical field and became a nurse practitioner. After marriage, my husband and I joined Wycliffe, eager to serve unreached people groups.
We were assigned to Brazil, and shortly after arriving there, I opened a small clinic in our home in order to meet the medical needs of translators as well as indigenous peoples. This ministry flourished. Before long I was accompanying translators to their villages and making “house calls” on weekends with my husband, a JAARS pilot.
We frequently made emergency trips to treat snakebites, which usually required evacuating victims from their villages in order to administer antivenin in time. Sometimes perspiration would stream down my forehead, but the exhilaration of knowing I was assisting someone who had nowhere else to turn always invigorated me. I would return home from these trips physically exhausted but spiritually energized.
Although my training in dental procedures was minimal, I was approached one day by a man with a decaying tooth. Wracked with agonizing pain, he was desperate. There was also the risk of infection. Gathering courage, I began extracting the tooth, which to my surprise popped out easily.
This spawned a whole new ministry for me. Soon pleas for help inundated me. I began flying to villages for the sole purpose of performing extractions—hundreds at a time. The joy on people’s faces as the pain stopped was something I will never forget. While in the developed world we spend all our energies attempting to save our teeth, the opposite is often true for people in developing countries. They’re eager to have problem teeth removed in order to prevent the pain of toothaches. This, unfortunately, is usually their only option.
Several times a week, a villager would appear at my door with a fresh machete wound. Often it would be a child injured while working in the field. Suturing lacerations and witnessing these children’s tolerance for pain developed by too much experience of it always humbled me. It was clear they led much less comfortable lives than my children.
Eventually the Lord prompted me to form a health education class of women from many different language groups. The course was integrated into Bible translation workshops and the local Bible seminary for Brazilian Indians. The challenge was twofold: the need to teach people in Portuguese—a second language to them and to me—and to validate proper treatments, while addressing unhealthy practices such as stuffing a wound with dirt and leaves to stop bleeding.
In times of discouragement, when supplies were low or exhaustion threatened, the Lord renewed my focus through the patients He placed in my path. I remember Socorro, a 16-year-old girl whose body was ravaged with ovarian cancer. Although her prognosis was grim, her spirit was vibrant because of her new-found faith in Christ. Being from an isolated people group in the Amazonian rain forest, she had only recently heard the name of Jesus and accepted Him as her Savior. It was only a few weeks later that Socorro learned her life hung in the balance. But her trust in the Lord never wavered.
She yearned for truth and nurtured a growing desire to serve her Master. Five years have now passed since her last surgery, and Socorro has now miraculously been issued a clean bill of health. She has been a significant help in translating the Scriptures and leading her people toward the truth of the Word.
It’s a joy to minister to the whole person—mind, body and spirit. To follow His call and witness the life-changing power of the Word of God has been a blessing worth more than I could ever have imagined.