Shannon Costello

People have asked some good hard questions, and I don’t really have a lot of answers. Was this really a missions trip or just a medical trip? How helpful was it? What will you do differently as a result of this trip?

I’m still feeling a little fuzzy…and it was weird to be away from CJ and from my life in such an intense way. The little things that were important to me before- the middle school fantasy series I was reading, the latest in American politics, Star Trek episodes that I haven’t yet seen, writing- have all sort of faded, and I have yet to start them up again or replace them with other interests. This kind of trip also shows me up for what I am, which can be a little embarrassing. I have this tendency to tell little anecdotes that aren’t really all that interesting…I had a reputation for it in junior high. I felt like I did that a lot in Bolivia, totally exposing myself as a talker. I think it might be my way of seeking attention…not very sophisticated.

Lots of time has been spent on the question of how to do missions. I have seen some of the ways not to do missions- that is an easier question to answer. This is a way to do missions that has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. We shouldn’t be wishing people warmth and food but doing nothing to provide…we should be offering cups of cold water in Jesus’ name. This is a very practical way to help people. The biggest problem with this type of trip is that it is lighter on the gospel side of things. We were open about why we were there- because we love Jesus- but then not everyone was there for that reason. The directors were. I don’t know whether or not every patient we saw knew about that. I wonder if there is more I should have said, particularly as an interpreter. This bears thinking about. We did hand out health education cards with Bible verses on them, for example…but in a country that seems as open as Bolivia seems to be I wonder what else we could do.

I keep going back to the little girl with corn in her nose. They came after we had stopped accepting new patients, and I think they were from the countryside. It is very possible that they didn’t have much access to a doctor, and that a visit to a doctor could have been very costly, or they could have hurt her trying to get it out themselves. Some of those hearing aids could really be making the lives of not just the wearers, but their families more comfortable. We just don’t know…and that’s ok. How could we? (Like that “Thank you for giving to the Lord” song)

I do not expect a two-week trip to send my life in a drastically different direction. I do hope and pray that God will use it -just like He uses everything else- to move me in the right direction. I was a work in progress before this trip and in that sense nothing has changed. But there is a sense in which a trip like this serves as an encouragement- to think about these things, for example. The Quechua/Spanish sermon was a great example of that…the sermon felt like it was designed especially for me, and I should be reading the Bible a bit more than I have been. So I needed the reminder.