Monday, April 28: Members of the Miles Ahead medical team were at St. John’s Methodist Church in downtown Montego Bay, Jamaica, preparing the location for the launch of the free clinic tomorrow. Behind a door in the warren of rooms off the sanctuary, someone found an old walker. In pieces. They took note of it, and moved on.
On Tuesday night, team members were eating dinner together, sharing the day’s experiences. Someone brought up the story of the stroke victim, carried to the clinic by his brother. That’s when one of the doctors at St. John’s said they had found a walker. Maybe it could be fixed and given to the man, if he could be found again.
Each of the four medical clinic teams had assigned to them a MacGyver — a fix-anything guy. On Wednesday, April 30, Jeff Scranton refurbished the old walker, cobbling together spare screws and metal parts until it was sturdy enough to donate to a needy patient.
‘Stand Up! Stand Up!’
On Thursday, Sean Burgess, the director of the Miles Ahead medical outreach operations, dug through the clinic’s records and found the paralytic man’s name and address. He lived in a neighborhood known as Grandville, which had a reputation for being dangerous. Sean, with a local volunteer named Otis and the team’s local bus driver, found the address. The man and his brother lived in a shack behind what looked like a garage. Sean takes up the tale:
“We take the walker into the room, and start to explain to them how to use it. We also explain how it’s going to take time for the man to be able to walk again… The crippled man puts his hand on the walker, and the brother starts giving him instructions. …He kept saying ‘Stand up! Stand up!’ And [the man] stands up on his own power.
“And then the brother says, ‘Come to me! Come to me!’ And he gets behind the man and moves one leg forward and says ‘Come to me! Come to me!’ … You could hear the love of the brother in his voice; it wasn’t like he was demanding or angry. And then the man moves his leg, and then again, until he walks across the small room!
“And I said, ‘This usually takes three months, so be patient with him.’ And the brother said, ‘He can do it!’ He turned him around and had him walk back to the bed…”
Sean said he, Otis and the bus driver joined the brothers in prayer, and then left, amazed at what they had witnessed.
“That’s why we were doing what we did in Jamaica,” said Sean. “Miles Ahead Medical exists to bring the gospel and its message of the saving grace of Jesus Christ to a population that otherwise is lost, forgotten, and left to die.”
Postscript: John Clifford said his wife, Nanci, the physical therapist, thinks the man will regain some ability to walk on his own, and eventually he may learn to communicate in some fashion. Pray for him!
