Local mission team gives medical help, builds in Peru
Source: The Birmingham News - al.com (Original Article)
A mission team from ClearBranch United Methodist Church went
to Peru last month to conduct mobile medical clinics and
help with construction on a church and school campus run by
World Reach of Hoover.
A group of eight team members including nurses and
paramedics ran mobile clinics in rural areas south of Lima,
said Paul Whitmore, assistant to the general director of
World Reach.
“I think we were able to touch the people,” said
retired nurse Edie Smith, a member of ClearBranch.
“They know that God cares for them.”
The team worked with a Peruvian doctor to dispense medicine
and treated parasites and other ailments that are routine
for the people there.
“There were meeting medical needs in an area where we
are planting churches,” Whitmore said. “They are
economically depressed areas. The folks do not have much
access to medical care.”
The mission trip continued a medical and evangelistic
outreach from Birmingham over the past decade, as churches
have tried to make an impact on the wrenching poverty behind
massive child abandonment and a generation of orphans.
Working with World Reach, which founded a church in Peru
and keeps an ongoing mission presence there, ClearBranch
Church of Argo has sent mission teams to the area for five
years. Dozens of churches in the Birmingham area have also
sent short-term mission volunteers to assist the work in
Peru, one of 10 countries where World Reach of Hoover has
mission projects.
World Reach, a nondenominational mission agency, founded La
Roca Church in Lima and a three-acre campus of outreach
ministries that includes a school, a health clinic, a Bible
institute and a prenatal counseling center for pregnant
teens. World Reach has resident missionaries who live and
work on the campus.
The mission teams from the Birmingham area stay at the
church campus. “They work in conjunction with our staff
down there,” Whitmore said.
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