Lauren Law, a Southeast Missouri State University senior studying biomedical sciences, spent a portion of her summer walking on dirt floors with guinea pigs at her ankles, spreading medicinal help and the word of God.
Law traveled with 46 other participants, ranging in ages from 13 to 80-year-olds, to Urubamba in the Sacred Valley of the Incas in Peru, South America for 10 days in July.
Law said she had wanted to take part in a medical mission for a while, and was even considering a career as a medical missionary. When the opportunity to travel to Peru came up she took advantage of it.
"My aunt is a dermatologist in Birmingham, Ala.," Law said. "She had been wanting to go on a trip, too. So she found out about this one through mutual doctor friends who do mission trips and she told me about it, and we signed up."
The only two requirements for those wishing to participate in the trip were to give a testimony of Christian faith and be able to come up with enough money to fund the trip, Law said.
The mission team bused from Birmingham to Atlanta and then boarded a six-hour flight to Lima, the capital of Peru, where they arrived around midnight and spent the night in the airport. The team left the next morning on a one-hour flight to Cusco, where it was greeted with a rustic airport built with concrete blocks. It had no heat and one bathroom, Law said.
"And then we bused over to Urubamba, which was about another hour on the curviest, craziest mountain roads you've ever seen."
In Urubamba, the team stayed in a hotel when they were not working in a health clinic, spreading the gospel or participating in local church worship services.
"We were actually in a really nice hotel," Law said. "I was kind of surprised by that because I was prepared, you know, I'll stay in the most modest conditions, I don't care. ... And we had nice, clean little rooms with a bathroom and shower in there. So we didn't have to rough it too bad."
Law and the rest of the team worked at health clinics in two different locations over a course of five days. Law said specialty doctors taking part in the trip, including Law's aunt, as well as an ear, nose, and throat doctor and an orthopedic surgeon, set up stations in the clinic for those specific needs.
Doctors were equipped with antibiotics and antifungals if needed, and every patient treated at the clinic received vitamins and worm medicine, Law said.
"I worked in the eye clinic, so we would have little eye charts and a table full of glasses, which none of us really knew what we were doing but you know [asking], 'Is this one better. Is this one better?'" Law said.
The last two days of clinic took place in a different, more scenic area compared to the courtyard area where the first health clinic was located.
"The second two days of clinic we moved to basically just a field, like farmland, and pitched tents, and it was gorgeous," Law said. "It was surrounded by mountains and just a 360 view of the Andes from anywhere in the clinic that we were."
Providing medical attention was only one purpose of the team's travel to Peru.
"The main point of the trip was really to share the gospel with people," Law said. "The main doctor, who heads it all up, kind of said that the clinic is a way to draw people in, give them something they need, but then really give them what they really need, you know, salvation and Jesus and the gospel."
Law said that before patients were given their medicines, they went through spiritual counseling and had the opportunity to have someone listen to whatever they wished to share.
"They were very open to the gospel," Law said. "It wasn't like here where if you try to share. There were a few people who didn't want to hear it, but I don't think their attitude was quite as offended as it is here in the U.S."
Law said when the team went door-to-door sharing the gospel, most people were hospitable, appreciative, gracious and welcoming.
"I know a lot of people did have a friendly response," Law said. "They were very friendly and wanted to let you into their home. They don't have much. Their houses are extremely modest, you know, dirt floors, guinea pigs running around the kitchen ready to be killed and eaten.
"I mean those people are very, very poor. But they don't really seem to let it ruin their lives, I guess. They just don't have much, and the whole city was just worse than our slums. But they were still pretty--generally seemed pretty happy and content. They weren't very materialistic, [it] didn't seem."
One of the most amazing aspects of the trip for Law was how the natives of Urubamba conducted a worship service. Law explained that although their worship service was different from what she was used to, it was also familiar.
"It did kind of surprise me that we got to the worship service, and it was like a total praise team, like you would think of in the hippest church," Law said. "They were playing guitars and bass and drums with, like, lights on the drums, and it was young people, and they were playing Hillsong songs, like that we would know. Just songs I recognized.
"So that was kind of unexpected, I guess to see that, like, they worship differently, but then again at the same time we were singing the songs in English while they were singing them in Spanish."
To top off the trip, Law and a few members of the mission team were welcomed to lead their own worship service on the last day of clinic in Urubamba.
"We sang all in English," Law said. "They even had us do a little encore. It was cool to lead other people in worship so far away from home."
Law plans to attend medical school and become a pediatrician after she graduates from Southeast.
She said traveling to Urubamba solidified her thoughts on participating in medical mission trips in the future. Law is planning to attend another mission trip next July.
