Students for International Mission Service (SIMS)

Outlook 2001

Mexico
Karmaine Millington
School of Medicine sophomore

Observing a new Creation

I have to write down specific reasons for why I enjoyed my mission experience so much this
summer. I liked it because many good things happened in unexpected ways.

I don’t remember another church that fit me so snugly. The patience of the children, their desire to help one another, and their eagerness to wait long and help me come up with the Spanish words I wanted to use. I have not seen this anywhere else. In the four full Sabbaths I spent with them, I never saw them disgruntled with each other or misbehave. They walked to the church, but all their clothes were clean. None was educated past the third grade, but they ran Sabbath School well and conducted Adventist Youth meetings well. They flipped through their Bibles as fast as me during the Bible games.

I felt loved. I found myself fortunate to have this church to go to as early as I wished on Sabbath mornings, that always had lots of singing and a Biblical sermon, that fed me lunch, that had members to welcome me into their company all Sabbath afternoon, that always had an interesting AY program, and that had kids who would walk me to the bus stop when I left to get home before dark.

My first Friday evening, a worrisome-looking man came to my wide-open door and said he and his wife needed a doctor because she was having her baby. The man explained that no one else was in sight and he’d heard voices and seen light from my trailer. Her cervix wasn’t dilated much, so we told her that it would take many hours, being her first birth, and that she should come back after the contractions had become much closer.

Sabbath morning I went to church and didn’t come back until the evening. Bob and Sarah had just arrived when I got home. It was good to see them. Sunday morning I went to the dining room an hour before I was supposed to for breakfast. One of the cooks told me there was something going on at the clinic because she had just sent a couple over there to have a baby. So I went to the clinic and was there even before Dr. Cammack arrived. I stayed all day.

I learned how to measure the dilation of the cervix between my fingers. At first the mother, who was 18 years old, spoke too fast for me to catch much of what she said, but as the hours went by I picked up more. At the end, she was exasperated with the baby: “Only the head?” A few pushes later, “Still just the hair? Not even his neck by now?” Just before the head came out, she told us she couldn’t push anymore and started crying. I didn’t notice how involved I was until I heard myself immediately reply in Spanish, “Yes, you CAN!!” After the baby came out, I got a thrill from his cry and then from watching as he took note of his environment. His fingernails were long and looked carefully manicured. In his little fist he held some strands of his mother’s hair. He touched her ear. He yawned. The expressions on his face were very real.

I felt as though I had observed Creation. Wow! To think how Creation must have been!

[Outlook 2001]

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