Short-Term Volunteers Have Long-Term Impact

Can short-term missions work? Jonathan Flesher firmly believes that the answer to that question is “yes,” after his experiences volunteering with Hospitals of Hope this past summer.

Jonathan was one of over 60 volunteers who passed through the Hospitals of Hope guest house between April and August of this year, working at the hospital and in the community to meet people’s physical and spiritual needs. Many of these volunteers were students or full-fledged medical or dental professionals, but many others had no medical training and served in other ways.

Jonathan felt that the most tangible difference he and his team were able to make was at the Casa de Alegría—the House of Happiness—a home for girls who have been victims of abuse. Over the course of three weeks, these volunteers set out to bless these young women. The volunteers with medical and dental training did checkups on the girls, cleaned their teeth, and performed any necessary extractions. The men in the group replaced broken windows and used pick axes and hoes to break up the hard ground of the orphanage’s garden. The women spent time building relationships with the girls, taking them to church and to lunch, and giving them makeovers. Over the course of the three weeks, the volunteers witnessed a visible change in countenance in the girls, from quiet and withdrawn to joyful and engaged.

Another aspect of his ministry in Bolivia that Jonathan felt was particularly meaningful was outreaches to street children. Again, Hospitals of Hope volunteers provided basic health and dental care for these kids, along with health and hygiene education. While other volunteers worked on meeting these physical needs, Jonathan and Andy Hilton, another Hospitals of Hope volunteer, set up a prayer station where they talked and prayed with these young men and women. While drug abuse is widespread on the street and interfered with some aspects of the volunteer’s ministry, Jonathan and Andy were amazed to see that the drug use stopped while they prayed. This was the only time during their ministry that the kids were not sniffing glue. As Andy wrote, “This was the only time I remember the kids being still and calm, during prayer. It was an amazing and humbling sight to see as some of the kids actually knelt before God, as their Father, asking us to pray for their original families that they left behind to live on the streets.”

One of the things that impressed Jonathan the most during his time in Bolivia was the way Hospitals of Hope partners with other organizations and individual missionaries. These partnerships, he believes, provide an opportunity for God to really work through the Christian community there. We are just one group, but our partnerships allow us to minister to the girls at the Casa de Alegría and to the street children and ensure that this ministry will not end when our short-term volunteers leave.

When many of our volunteers come back, they tell us that their time in Bolivia has changed them, that God has used it to transform their life and their perspective. Jonathan’s experience was no different. In fact, he believes that God used his time with Hospitals of Hope to call him to long-term missions, perhaps in Bolivia.

Can short-term missions work? Jonathan believes that his experience is proof that it can, “if you’re willing to put your heart into a situation.”