The World Race: Blessings in Bolivia

This month we had a team that was participating World Race work with Hospitals of Hope in Bolivia. The World Race takes teams to 11 countries in 11 months to serve in ministries located in each country. The following post is from Amanda who was part of the team who served with us in Bolivia. Check back for more post from other World Racers describing life in Bolivia.

Never did I ever think I would live at a hospital, but Bolivia proved to be a month of firsts. My team was partnered with an American organization called Hospitals of Hope which runs a Hospital in the Bolivian countryside just outside of Cochabamba.

From the second we arrived we knew God had beyond blessed us. The house we lived in behind the hospital was enormous and beautiful, and our contact for the month, Leta, was American and spoke English! This was huge for us, after struggling with elementary amounts of Spanish and contacts that spoke no English for two months our brains were ready for a rest.

Our first night in the house Leta told us the hospital was going to be in a parade for the festival the next morning and they wanted us to be in it too - wearing scrubs. So that night we went through the hall closet filled with scrubs and each picked out the scrubs that fit us best. They didn't typically match, but that was ok. At the parade, the ambulance went first, followed by the med-students/interns and then us, a rainbow blob of white faces with no idea what to do. So we marched on, and when we finished marching we piled into the ambulance and drove back to the hospital.

The hospital itself is made up of two sections, Emergencias, and general medicine. Doctors take appointments every morning from 8 A.M. to noon in specialties such a pediatrics, internal medicine and cardiology. In the US these same doctors would typically work in their own office, in a building far away from a hospital, but in Bolivia, everything is different, and doctors only work half days.

On of my ministries for the month was working at the hospitals' coffee shop, Xelda, serving coffee to the patients as they waited in the waiting room …. Tea or drip coffee was free and occasionally patients would take advantage of it but we also made drinks such as lattes and cappuccinos, often for the doctors or interns, so many mornings I was able to have good, although choppy conversations with the interns and I found that my ministry was really on both sides of the spectrum, both patients and doctors.

My most interesting moment in the hospital however happened when I became the patient. We were conveniently at the hospital all month, so I figured it was the perfect opportunity to get more medication for my hyperthyroidism. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Leta came to the appointment with me because, well, she is fluent in Spanish and I am not. From the second we walked into the room I knew it was going to be an interesting experience, why? Because of the six med students staring at me. We sat down and Dr. Oquendo, the internal medicine doctor, asked me some questions, then he asked me to get up on the examination table. The sea of med students had to part to let me through. He asked me to lie down and I soon figured out I was the teaching subject. Three med students held my right arm, another was listening to my heart, yet another was taking my blood pressure and the last one was poking at my stomach and the whole time the doctor lectured them on the differences between hyper and hypo thyroidism. It was the most awkward five minutes of my life. Even more awkward because these were people I would see and interact with on a daily basis.

But as awkward as some of the moments were at the hospital, I really enjoyed my time there. I loved riding in the ambulance, walking the long, white, hallway between the waiting room and the ER, and how the ER doctors and nurses all jumped in anticipation every time we would open the door late at night to go in the hospital and use the internet.

Hospitals of Hope is the first ministry I've worked with on the World Race that I could really see myself going back and partnering with again, in fact I plan to, but you know how plans go... there's still 8 months left in the race, so I guess I'll see what God has in store.