testimonios

Dear Medical Mission Team,

There is so much I want to say but I must start out by thanking you for choosing my daughter and blessing her so much with the opportunity of her life time for a young lady of 17. I hope you realize what you do for these teenagers by offering these scholarships to them. I pray daily for God to guide my children but I never dreamed a door such as this would ever open up. It has changed her life forever giving her the courage to risk and to reach beyond her dreams and to realize by doing that she can make them happen.

It was harder on me than I had anticipated, having my daughter in a foreign country and not hear from her for 17 days. Between my prayers and my angel on earth, Bev [our coordinator], I got through it.

Her arrival home has kept me in stitches from all the stories. My heart swells with pride as I look at the pictures and see her in her scrubs and listen as she explains those inside the O. R. or specific surgeries. She fell in love with parts of the beauty of the land. But then her mood changes as she speaks of the starving children around her for food and though it hurts us all, I know it hits her especially hard because of the innocence of her age. You gave my daughter something I couldn't and that means so very much to me. Thank you.

I will end by saying what a wonderful gift you give to those of other countries and to our teenagers of our area, but closer to my heart, my own daughter. Thank God for all of you!

Sincerely, T.

. . . I didn't really have the opportunity to say all that I wanted to about my experience with the HCMM . . . [Y]ou deserve a huge THANK YOU for all that you did in getting me to Bolivia.

I have told some of you this before - but I want to make sure that as a group the Board is aware of how much influence these trips to South America have had on where I am right now. Had I not won a scholarship in 1997 I would probably not be sitting here at Middlebury College as a Latin American Studies Major. I remember riding over the Mountains from the airport into the city of Loja in one of those priceless buses and realizing that I had found something I was really interested in. True, through that first trip, subsequent travels and three years here at Middlebury, that interest has changed and morphed into something more specific, but that does not change the roots of my fascination with Latin America.

...the flexibility and experiences I had in Ecuador prepared me and gave me the courage to spend four months in Cuba. As one of the first twenty students to study at the University of Havana since the end of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, a lot of groundwork (years of groundwork!) had to be laid to make it a successful experience for all of us. Consider youselves one of the primary parts of that foundation - I certainly do!

Thanks to all of you... I can only hope that I can continue to be a part of whatever you do, and wherever you go, in the future. (Please, however, inform me if I am going to have to learn Bengali or something of that sort . . . I should start now!)

Much love, M. K. O'B.

Señora

Sister Ana Lopez Alvarez

Pastoral Director, "CARITAS"

Distinguished Sister Ana:

Those of us who have signed at the foot of this document come before your dignified authority with all the respect that you deserve, while expressing our very sincere gratitude for sending us this medical team from the United States that on the 9th day of this month has come to lend its professional services to our impoverished settlement, and that through them our residents have benefited in health, beseeching always to God that he give them much satisfaction in their professional life and that they desire to attend many needy people inside our country, especially in the rural areas, without any objection.

Without other particular motive, may we take the opportunity to reiterate our sincere gratitude and personal greetings.

Sincerely,

[five officials of that town}