Physical therapy adventure
Sep 5th, 2009 |
I had a fun and very different day yesterday. I drove about an hour outside of Managua to a town called Niquinohomo to meet up with a woman that I met about 2.5 years ago when we worked with her church during a medical outreach. Her name is Eva, or Eve in English. Anyway, she had called me up a few weeks ago asking if I could come give physical therapy to about 10 women. She said most of them suffered from stress. She, herself, had acute vertigo. I remember that she had vertigo 2 years ago and I treated her for it then.
Anyway, I arrived to the quaint town of Niquinohomo and met Eva and her sweet daughter, Nyni, at a bus stop. Nyni has translated for us a number of times for medical and youth teams. From there we drove to a beautiful home with a huge patio area. The gardens were lush and there must have been 20 different fruit trees on the property. Slowly the 10 women trickled in and Eva explained to me that some women were Christ-followers and some weren’t. We started our time with a short devotional about how physical exercise is of some value, but godly training is of higher value because it involves this life and the one to come, based on 1 Timothy 4:8-12. They received some packets of information about eating a balanced diet, what kinds of food offer specific vitamins and nutrients, and the benefits of physical activity especially as related to lowering negative effects of stress.
They had borrowed an exam table from the local public health clinic and made a make-shift PT consult room for us to use. The consult room was about a 10X10 room with one small window, 3 broken beds propped up against one wall, a desk along the other, and a chest of drawers on the other. Needless to say, there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room, but one by one the women filed through. We laughed, cried, and sweated together. Each woman had a special story and it was an incredible privilege to be right there, right then, for those women. What was intended to be a morning event, lasted all day. The family that had hosted us offered me lunch and then I gave the hostess and her blind husband a ride to Managua. Along the way they shared with me that glaucoma had taken his vision, but not his passion to share the Bible with others. He has been blind for nearly 12 years, but knows the Bible backwards and forwards. He still preaches once a week in his home to a group of Christians that desire to grow in their understanding of God. What an awesome example of a godly man that is reaping the benefits of a life spent devoted to studying and learning God’s Word!
