by Paul Tonetti

In February of this year, I arrived, with Mercy Ships in La Union, El Salvador to begin a four month outreach. Our outreach had many different aspects and many different departments. Among those is optical. Optical consists of two deferent areas. The first thing we do is called screening. This is a three day event where people come from all over the region to see an eye doctor. The optical unit on the ship contains an operating room where eye surgery can be done to remove cataracts and to fix other eye problems. The optical clinic set up on the shore will provide eye glasses to those in need. Many of these people can not provide for their families because they can not see, but the majority of these can be corrected with a simple pair of glasses.

If you could imagine living in an area where it is summer twelve months a year and bright sunshine all the time, this is Central America. This is part of the reason cataracts are prone in this area. In the United States a cataract condition would be identified early on and be taken care of with a simple surgery. In Central America the cataracts we find are often large and fully developed for lack of medical care. On the Caribbean Mercy we have a surgical theatre where cataracts can be removed and other corrective eye surgeries that allow people to see once again are preformed.

Also along the lines of medical and health care we have many different programs. During the outreach we set up an audiology clinic to test for hearing problems and to pass out hearing aides to those in need. We also visited many remote villages with the medical team addressing general medical concerns and giving regular check ups. Along side the ship we set up a dental clinic in one of the port buildings. The dentist would go out to the villages and look at people to see if they could benefit from our services and would then give them an appointment to come to the dental clinic.

In the local hospital, our resident orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Tim Browne, preformed many corrective orthopedic surgeries. Not only did Dr. Tim perform the surgeries but he trained the local doctors in the procedures to be able to perform them in the future. One of the events that Dr Tim arranged was a week

long medical conference. Many of the doctors in developing nations graduate from medical school and do not receive continuing education. Through this conference the doctors were brought up to speed on current practices. Surprisingly we had a really good turn out.

Continuing on with the practical ministry that we did in La Union includes our own well drilling team The well drilling team consists of several seasoned well drillers that are retired from the industry and several eighteen year olds who are willing to learn the trade to serve God. The well drilling team will go to a village, usually one that the local pastors association recommends to us, and will drill a well for fresh pure drinking water. Most wells in this area are hand dug, shallow, open top wells and contain many contaminants. After the wells are in people come from miles around to get good water that won’t make them sick.

Working along side the well drilling team in these communities is our very own evangelism team “Esparanza” which is Spanish for hope. Bringing hope into these communities is like shining a light into a dark tunnel. Our evangelism team preaches the gospel of Jesus through love and hope along with practical work. They include many testimonies, lots of worship and drama’s portraying real life scenarios. Esparanza is a full time team lead by a team leader, we also have two crew outreach teams that consist of crew members who normally work other jobs and go out above and beyond what they normally do to be part of these teams. One of these teams is the video team, this is one that I go out with frequently. We set up a large projection screen and show “The Jesus Film” at a local event or in a public park. The Jesus film is a two hour movie that basically tell the story according to the book of Mark from “The Bible”. A large part of what we do is interacting with a community and just being ourselves, even though the ship is large and visible and does many things it always seem to be that the locals look at the way we live our lives and what we do as individuals. It is because of this that many long term friendships are made. One of the things we see from this is that maybe some one does not have much, but they will go out of their way to help someone with even less.

Part of the evangelism team includes a disciple ship program where we will start a Bible Study in a local house hold. Not only do we start it but we will teach them how to lead it them selves once we are gone. During this outreach we visiting a local jail and started a Bible study there, which resulted in many changed lives.

During the outreach time we will take up an offering among ourselves and use the money to hire day workers, people in the local community, recommended by their pastors, and in need of a job. We will then take the money from the offering and pay them a daily wage according to the standard of the country we are in. In El Salvador if you make US $3.00 then you are considered to have a good job! Many of the day workers are so excited about what we are doing and end up working above and beyond what is called for.

Another aspect of the ministry is the pastors conference. This is an event where over one hundred local pastors will attend a seminar with guest speakers from the US or Canada. It is always good to see the local pastors come together and talk and get together about visions for ministry in their communities.

The first eye surgeries of the out reach were covered by the nation TV and radio stations and involved a visit to the ship from the president of El Salvador. The President and his wife received a tour of the ship, which included scrubbing in to enter the operating room to watch an actual eye surgery. The president removed the first eye patch from the first patient and much to the ladies surprise the first thing she saw was her president!

We first visited La Union in January of 1999, and what we saw was a gang run town. The people who lived there would not even go outside after dark, people were afraid to walk the streets in fear of being shot, stabbed or robbed. When we left La Union in the spring of 1999 we felt that our work was not finished. We had seen a dramatic improvement in the town and we even saw close to 30 gang members join a local church. For the first time in a long time the people realized that it was possible to take their town back, a town that the police were even afraid of. The decision to go back so soon was a relatively easy one, we had all been first hand witnesses to what God was doing in this country. When we returned in February of 2000 to begin a four month outreach, we immediately saw a different town, a better town and when we left in June 2000 the police chief told us that the crime rate in his city had dropped 60%. There was no doubt in our minds we left a better city behind, as we walked down main street to the ice cream shop and the streets were full of people and it was just after dark. Our DTS students talked with the mayor of the city and got permission to paint the outside of the wall to the basket ball court in the cities public park, a wall that had been covered in gang graffiti for years. The students painted each panel of the wall with a specific story, each telling the gospel in its own way. Talk about leaving a lasting image in a city, one that the local will talk about for a long time, a symbol of hope and a future.