Merlin and Becky Gesing of Waukon share the experience of the "answer to our prayers," their mission trip to Ecuador

by Kelli Boylen

Becky and Merlin Gesing of Waukon say going to Ecuador for a mission trip was an “answer to our prayers.”
Going on a mission trip was something they always wanted to do, but the timing was never quite right. Becky wanted to share her knowledge and skills as a nurse practitioner and Merlin was hoping to serve others by sharing his knowledge of agriculture or contributing in any other way he could.
Last summer a fellow nurse practitioner friend of Becky’s, Annette Johnson of Cresco, told them about a mission trip she and her husband were planning to take part in. The trip was organized through Christ Lutheran Church of Whitefish, MT, a church that a friend (a doctor who used to live in Cresco) now attends. By the end of last summer Becky and Merlin were also invited to go along.
Their only hesitation was the fact that they had traveled to Peru, a similar culture, the year before on vacation, but in the end the “trip was perfect,” Becky says. “They are a wonderful group of people.”
While the doctor and his wife, Randy and Mary Butikofer, were back home in northeast Iowa for Christmas, the Gesings had the chance to visit with him and learn more about what to expect on their trip and tips such as what to bring.
Becky and Annette worked with their employers, Winneshiek Medical Center and Mercy Healthcare of Mason City, respectively, and gathered medical supplies such as wound dressings, antibiotics, orthopedic braces, pain medications, blood sugar tesing equipment and blood pressure medications.
March 23 the mission trip crew flew from Chicago, IL at noon and met up with the group from Montana in Houston, TX. They flew five more hours to Ecuador, took more than an hour to go through customs at the airport due to the medical supplies they carried, and then boarded a bus to travel three more hours to Ambato, the town were the pastor hosting them was located.
Ecuador is in the Eastern time zone and they finally were able to rest about 3 a.m. They were back on the road right away in the morning; traveling another three hours to Zumbahua, Ecuador, the area they were to serve the residents.
Zumbahua is a small town located near the center of Ecuador in the Andes Mountains, sitting at an elevation of about 12,000 feet above sea level and about three-and-a-half hours southwest of Ecuador's capital city of Quito.
The mission group consisted of about 22 volunteers, including two dentists, two nurse practitioners (Becky and Annette), three doctors, a pharmacist, a beautician, several young adults who taught bible school to the children, and the remainder were service crew members, including Merlin, who worked on the new church in that community and helped out however possible.
After the medical work was done each day, Merlin, Becky and the others participated in the “Soles for Souls” program. The missionaries sat facing the gathered children one-to-one. They would wash the children’s feet, dry them, trim toenails if needed, put lotion on their feet, and then fitted them with a new, clean pair of socks and a brand new pair of shoes. They would then say a blessing for each child.
“The kids would go outside and be running and jumping with their new shoes. That was really special,” says Becky. Washing of the children’s’ feet was symbolic of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples as a symbol of humility and servanthood.
They also took “hygiene kits” with them to Ecuador as well for the children. Each kit contained soap, a comb, toothbrush, toothpaste and a washcloth.
Providing medical care for the indigenous Quichua Indian tribe in Zumbahua, as well as traveling to other remote villages in the region, was an exercise in patience, and sometime frustration. The medical staff members would ask a question and a translator would ask the question again in Spanish. Another translator would then ask the question in the local language, Quichua, and then the process would reverse for the patient to answer. “Every encounter took a long time,” Becky said. “It was pretty intense the entire time. And sometimes there was the frustration of how to help."
A lot of the health complaints come from a life of hard, physical labor on the steep mountainsides, she explains. Sometimes they have headaches or dizziness from the altitude and dehydration, and they carry heavy loads on their backs resulting in pain in the back, knees and shoulders. Becky and the others could give a month or two supply of something like ibuprofen, but it was difficult to know that she would not see them again and that after the medicine was gone there may not be pain relief again.
“I’m used to seeing people in my family practice where they can come back. It made it hard,” she says. “We realized that we have to believe that we are touching peoples’ lives in a way that is more than just medical. We are showing them we care, educating them and praying with them.”
Becky says that praying with each of her patients, holding their hands and bowing heads, is what meant the most to her during the trip. “The prayers needed no translation. It was wonderful to see how Christianity transcends every culture, every country and every race. Getting to show my affection to my patients was very rewarding.”
The medical and dental crew saw up to 100 people a day. Most of the people of that region do not have access to medical or dental care due to lack of transportation, or lack of availability of those types of services in the area in which they live. Each person who came for medical care received a treatment for parasites and a month’s worth of vitamins.
The dentists were not able to fill cavities due to lack of needed equipment, so they ended up pulling a lot of teeth with local anesthetic, usually while the patient was in a plastic patio-type chair. This offered the patients long-term pain relief.
Merlin was one of the volunteers helping with a variety of other tasks, including working on a church that is being built in Zumbahua and helping to clean an orphanage to prepare it for also serving as an abused women and children’s shelter. The Christ Lutheran Church in Montana raised enough money during its last mission trip in 2008 that they were able to pour pillars, and put up the walls and roof of the church. During this trip, Merlin and the others painted the interior and exterior, installed the doors and built the frames for making pews.
“They will be able to have services in their church now,” he says. “It’s amazing how giving the people of the church in Montana are. They are so generous and amazing. They are just a template of how churches should be. The entire experience of this trip was really good.”
The hotel the missionaries stayed in had water and electricity, but the availability of water, especially hot water, was somewhat sporadic. Most of the villages had running water but not hot water, and it was common to have toilets but they poured buckets of water down them instead of flushing them.
There were typically four to six people to a room at the hotel, which was much closer in size to a dorm room than the large rooms most Americans think of as motel rooms. They washed their clothes on a cement washboard outside of their room, and hung clothes where they could to dry.
As rewarding as the trip was, the Gesings admit it was a lot of hard work and the barking dogs that roamed the village and the frequent car alarms made it difficult to stay well rested. They hope to take another mission trip someday, but they say it is not something they would want to do every year.
Becky contracted a food-borne illness shortly before they returned, and she says it took her a couple of weeks to really feel like herself again. She says now looking at the photos they took she more fully comprehends how amazing their trip really was.
The Gesings put together many of the hygiene and other supply kits they took with them on the trip for distribution and they paid their own transportation costs. They accepted financial donations to help cover in-country costs, such as lodging and transportation, as well as to help cover of additional supplies for the mission.
“It was humbling to know that people in our community supported what we were doing and were willing to pour their hard-earned money toward this,” said Merlin.