Ian Lozada: Images and Words

(You may want to make sure you watch the video podcast first.)

Well, the first thing I found out when we hit the road this morning was that we were staying in Cebu Province/Island, but NOT going to stay in Cebu City. In fact, we went over the mountains clear to the other end of the island, to the village of Lamak (yes, I mispronounced it on the video), where a church in the neighboring town of Balamban is trying to plant a second church.

This was the second clinic Dr. Titus Bantiles, our lead doctor, had done in the area recently. By the time we arrived, there was already a large group gathered. We ended up seeing almost 300 medical patients, about 50 dental, and 50 vision patients. We also had a station set up to provide daycare for the children of many of the patients, who sometimes had a considerable wait.

Despite the numbers, it started off much like the other clinics. Our team did a little program in the beginning with music, preaching and various health lectures. The local church leaders participated. The doctors went to their stations, and it was time for “Riders up.”

I started doing the usual photos, filmed my usual opening piece for the video, and a couple of amusing spots on the vendors who started showing up to hawk food to the patients as well as having my dad doing some errands for the dental staff. I laid out the first few minutes of the video by the time we broke for lunch, at a church member’s home. The lumpiang was particularly delicious, and I had some time to talk with our host, who is one of the many overseas workers (oil refining) and was home while waiting for a visa for his next assignment, plus the pending birth of his child.

When we got back, however, something was different. Various people on the counseling team kept calling me over to shoot video of unusual cases, not all of which made it into the final podcast due to YouTube’s 10 minute maximum length.

Quickly, it turned into an emotional afternoon. Suddenly my own daughter’s little upset stomach I heard about this morning didn’t quite seem so serious, especially since Caroline had kept down her crackers at last report.

As I continued to add each piece to iMovie (I still haven’t gotten the hang of Final Cut Express yet), it became obvious that if we added the right follow-up pieces, we could have the defining piece of our team’s time together.

You could feel the team’s sense of wanting to be able to help, but not knowing if there were enough resources to help, and in the case of Brian’s patient, the added frustration of knowing that even heroic measures weren’t likely to help.

We’re seeing a number of needs come together at once—an amputee who needs a wheelchair so that she can continue to run her store now that her husband has left her. The woman who needs cataract surgery from two days ago, who doesn’t have the government health card that would keep her surgery to a manageable $200 USD. A child whose unusual vision problems will likely require hospitalization as well. The list goes on, and we haven’t even gotten to the particularly troubled areas yet.

But as I watched the local church members in action—it’s not an accident that Pastor Ben took responsibility for that mother and child’s goiter medicine and baby formulas—I realized that there’s a lot of support in place for them if we can get them a little more help.

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When I decided to go on this trip, I knew I was going to mainly take still photos, since that’s my expertise, but I also wanted to do a series of videos in the style of Dane Sanders’ SimplePhotoMinute (http://www.SimplePhotoMinute.tv). A couple of weeks before I left, Dane, who’s also a Christian, aired a piece on the short term missions trip he was going on to India. That’s when I realized the type of impact that something like this project could have. And mainly I mean on me. If it impacts you or the supporters of Dad’s missions organization as well, that’s just an added benefit.

God’s put a lot of opportunities in my hands lately. It’s clear that he wants me to use them for more than just my own family, or even my own community.

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Catching a boat to Leyte this evening for tomorrow's clinic. Back soon.