Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Church mission team to head to Dominican Republic


By A.J. Panian

Published: Monday, June 18, 2012, 11:52?p.m.
Updated 17 hours ago

It's a quiet morning in a tiny village deep in the rural outreaches of the Dominican Republic.

As residents there mill about, solemnly discussing their various illnesses and infirmities, a bullhorn suddenly pierces the dank, Caribbean air.

The rounded bellow of the device makes eyes widen with excitement as word spreads.

Such a welcome sound customarily comes with the arrival of SCORE International, a Chattanooga, Tenn.-based evangelical outreach group, which employs the device as a means of informing the residents there that health care and medication will soon be available at a nearby mobile clinic.

"When SCORE gets on that bullhorn in the middle of town and announces that medical treatment is coming, they tell us that people will walk for miles and miles and miles and wait for hours and hours and hours to see us every day," said Richard Conn, a physician in Dawson and member of Pennsville Baptist Church near Mt. Pleasant, who on July 14 will join roughly 40 other members of the church on a SCORE International-organized mission trip to the country.

"It will be my first trip abroad," said Conn, who will make the journey with his wife, Tanya, and the couple's three children, Sarah, 16; Emily, 15; and Richie, 13.

The church's mission team was compelled to undertake the trip after hearing a speech by Ron Bishop, SCORE International founder and chairman of the organization's board of directors, at a conference in 2010.

"The access to medical personnel in the Dominican Republic is very limited," Bishop said. "What we try to do is meet humanitarian needs by going to third-world countries, even the remotest parts, and providing medical care to people in need."

Meeting people's medical needs, along with their spiritual needs, is what compelled Conn, his fellow parishioners and the Rev. Aaron Wylie, youth pastor at Pennsville Baptist.

"Typically, we've done youth trips overseas," said Wylie, 34, who added that the church's youths address construction and evangelical-based assignments. "With this trip, we're trying to move the whole church body ... to have our student ministry work alongside adults in the church."

Each person on the trip was required to raise $1,700 to cover their airfare, hotel costs and food.

"We have to look at that figure individually, based on what one life can be impacted by each person going, and by how their lives can be impacted as well," Wylie said.

As the team's primary physician, Conn said he knows he will likely have to draw significantly from his extensive background to address the needs those in the Dominican Republic will have.

"There will be rashes, burns, effects from parasites, contaminated food and water ... things you normally don't see here."

Conn will be joined by his sister Amy Kriss, a pharmacist for the Excela Health System, and her husband, Tod Kriss, a respiratory therapist at Excela Health Frick near Mt. Pleasant.

Amy Kriss said the team was advised to bring drugs used to treat diabetics by Bob Nilsen, SCORE International director of medical evangelism.

"Bob sent us a list of drugs to bring and, beside things for diabetes, he wrote 'NEED LOTS,'" Kriss said. "Diabetes is a problem there because they eat a lot of sugar cane."

Excela Health recently donated 150 sets of hospital scrubs for use on the trip.

"The scrubs have been a huge blessing, not only to have to wear as a team, but also to leave behind," Conn said. "SCORE has a nursing home there, so in Bob's words, a lot of the grandpas will have new pajamas."

In addition, Conn said he and his fellow mission team members have received valuable advice from veteran Dominican Republic mission attendee Carla McClintock, one of Conn's students at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, where she is studying to be a nurse practitioner.

"Be prepared to be out of your comfort zone," said McClintock, regarding what points she tried to cover during a recent speech to the Pennsville Baptist mission team. "As much as you are there to help the people, the people will change your life if you let them."

According to Conn, both McClintock and SCORE officials also leveled with the team regarding some of the harsher realities they will face in the setting they soon will encounter.

"We were told we need to be prepared that there will be some people we will be unable to help."

Nevertheless, Bishop said he has high hopes for the work Conn and his fellow team members will be able to do.

"I know Dr. Conn, and after this trip, he's going to be a better physician, a better American, a better father and husband, a better church member and a better human."

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