The other week, I found myself in a humid hotel café in Saba, Honduras, sipping blazing hot, very dark coffee. Too cheap to pay for the international plan for my cell phone, I was soaking up some WiFi before the work of the day with my mission partners from Children of Soledad. I mindlessly scrolled through the US news sites and read about current events back home. Suddenly, from my dusty Honduran vantage point, I was pierced by the words I was reading. Some strong, hateful words. Words that back home could be sanded down and smoothed over with the object of the hate safely far away in the next nation, not the next room. But here, it felt different. And all at once, I felt broken. The vitriol was pointed straight towards my new friends here, a little closer to the equator.

My eyes welled with tears. Then my heart softened and the ache settled in. Deep in my chest, a heaviness pressed on me. Out of my bewilderment that I was witnessing such desperate and indignant behavior from back home, I fiercely journaled my feelings, poured my heart into a social media post, and shut down my phone.

Later in the week, we found ourselves in a conference room in the hospital in La Ceiba. The Sub-Director of the hospital clicked on the air conditioning. He opened his notebook and glanced up at us cautiously. “What are your greatest needs,” we asked. “Everything,” he replied. “Everything?” “Everything.” Medications. Supplies. Doctors. Nurses. Volunteers… Everything. “Can you come back next month?” he asked. I heard his desperation, yet his hope. “Whoa, whoa. I have a lot of planning to do when I get home. Lots of phone calls. That’s gonna be tough…maybe in 3 months.” “Ok, anything you can do will be helpful,” he offered.

We walked humbly through the (outdoor) corridors of the sweltering hospital. Families and patients lined up along the walls. Hungry. Tired. Thirsty. We found the newborn nursery and donated the bag of newborn clothing we had left from our supply. The nurses were grateful. We were overwhelmed.

I came home and was jolted back into my life. Three call shifts. Two weeks of clinical service. Hundreds of emails. Dozens of (in contrast) useless meetings. My mind racing. My heart heavy….We have to go back. We promised…

I called a friend and discussed the opportunity. “We can’t stamp out disease in one trip to Honduras, Jen,” he said. He’s right. We can’t fix in one week what decades of lack of medical access has done to our friends in Honduras. But…what we can do…is love them. We can give them a week’s worth of antibiotics and a message of hope. We can bandage a wound and say a prayer. We can lance an abscess and release infection…and the misperception of hatred. We can love. One. Person. At. A. Time.

If Jesus wanted to, he could have walked up to every leper, every cripple, every Lazarus and healed them or raised them from the dead. But He didn’t. Because love is relational, not transactional. Love and hope don’t come in the form of giant relief efforts, they come in the form of friendship. Of knowing the name and the story and the heart of the hurting.

So often I return to the words of an early mentor in my life, “You can’t change the world, but you can change the world for one person.” By name. One. At. A. Time.

Disclaimer: My viewpoints are not necessarily reflective of my employer, or any local, regional or national organization that I belong to. As a matter of fact, I pretty much just speak for myself. Please keep that in mind.