On a mission: MUSC group to spend 10 days on outreach trip to S. Africa
Story last updated at 8:40 a.m. Monday, May 5, 2003 BY WEVONNEDA MINIS Of The Post and Courier Staff
Tending to the physical needs of sick children is what Dr. Todd Vasko does best. Three days of most work weeks, the young pediatrician can be found doing just that in his West Ashley office.
However, in late May and early June, Vasko's location changes for a while. That's when he goes on a medical mission with students and professionals in the MUSC community. In the past he has gone to Venezuela, but this year he will be leading a 10-day medical mission to a South African orphanage. To Vasko, it's part of being a compassionate physician. Compassion also is a quality Vasko tries to instill in students at MUSC while working Tuesdays and Fridays as director of the university's Medical Campus Outreach -- an interdenominational Christian organization.
On May 22, Vasko will leave for South Africa with 131 others from MUSC, including Dr. Philip McGaha and Dr. John Traynham, two other doctors with whom Vasko shares a practice at Plantation Pediatrics.
YALONDA M. JAMES/STAFF Dr. Todd Vasko of Plantation Pediactrics in West Ashley, director of the Medical Campus Outreach, stands with donated items he an 131 others from MUSC will take to an orphanage in South Africa. It was McGaha who showed Vasko the meaning of being Christian when they were medical students in Georgia. He also spends time at MUSC helping to ensure it graduates professionals who are compassionate, as well as competent and who have good character.
Medical Campus Outreach's goal is to: "... build laborers on medical school campuses for the lost world to the glory of God."
A Georgia-based Christian organization called Evangelism Task Force is organizing the trip for the campus outreach group. Its missionaries scout out locations where medical school students and professionals are desperately needed. If a group on a medical college campus chooses one of its locations, the task force will perform the administrative tasks necessary to get the group there and back.
The MUSC group will be working in the town of Thohoyandou, located in northeast South Africa, helping the Venda people.
The Vendas used to live in Zimbabwe but moved down into South Africa in the early 1700s. The task force's missionaries who are assigned there say the Vendas worship their ancestors, are superstitious and consult witch doctors.
The children in the orphanage are trying to function despite missing limbs and other challenges, Vasko says.
Some also have sight or hearing losses or both. In some cases, their injuries have been caused by trauma.
In other cases, the children were born with them.
"Their parents were unable to care for them and left them there," says Vasko.
PROVIDED Vasko joins students in considering the medical needs of a young Venezuelan boy during a previous mission trip. "We will see a need there that is far beyond what we will be able to treat.
"Maybe we will assess their needs and go back and do corrective surgeries at Christmas or next summer.
"Hopefully every kid will get a physical."
The MUSC students and doctors will help the Venda children with health problems in such areas as orthopedics; ear, nose and throat; pediatric allergy; pediatric neurology; dentistry; physical therapy and occupational therapy.
Those in the group will take more than their skills and the box of medicines each will carry, Vasko says.
They will take the love of Jesus Christ, he says. They will take it to children such as one little boy with missing arms who only asks for plastic foam arms to fill out his shirt sleeves.
"If one child could see that somebody loves him enough to come halfway around the world to provide him with fake arms and tell him about Jesus, it will be worth (the journey)," Vasko says.
PROVIDED Children at an orphanage in Thohoyandou, South Africa, where MUSC's Medical Campus Outreach and Georgia-based Evangelism Task Force will conduct a 10-day medical mission. "It is very important to attend to the children's medical needs, but the walker or wheelchair (given to a child) could break the week after we leave, but Christ can change their lives forever," he says.
Michelle Sanders, a first-year physical therapy student, can't wait to work with the children at the orphanage and see life in another country for the first time. Yet, it took her two weeks to decide to join the medical mission.
She considers herself a Christian but had reservations about joining an evangelical mission. Once she met some of the people who are going, their kindness and sincerity about their purpose overcame her concerns.
"I think it's going to be one of those experiences of a lifetime," Sanders says. The group has been preparing for its mission by studying the Vendas' cultural values. One thing the women have learned is that their legs should be covered with pants or long skirts.
While the mission's main focus will be the orphanage, some of those in the group will go to the local hospital, where there is a shortage of specialists, to demonstrate techniques that can help hospital workers take better care of their patients.
Like most of the people going on the trip, Sanders had to solicit donations from others to cover the $2,350 cost of travel, housing, food and other expenses. So far, she's been able to get $1,830 just by requesting donations from everyone in her address book.
Currently, the group is collecting many of the items patients will need, such as braces, canes, walkers and wheelchairs.
They are asking vendors in the Lowcountry to give them new supplies or old ones that can be repaired.
They also are writing brochures for those who visit the clinic to take home, so they can continue their treatments once the group leaves.
PROVIDED Vasko examines a child at a mission clinic set up by the Medical Campus Outreach in Venezuela last summer. The group’s mission is aimed at saving souls as well as lives. Jim Mathews, project director for Evangelism Task Force, says no one in South Africa will be charged to see a doctor or other health care worker.
"We use the medicine to bring people into the clinic so we can share the gospel with them," says Mathews.
"We charge them nothing to be seen by the doctor, all that we ask is that they give us 15 minutes to share the gospel."
Usually a separate part of the clinic is set up just for that purpose, Mathews says.
He estimates the MUSC group will treat about 1,400 people while in South Africa. The number they treat will depend on how many show up.
"The need is always great. We could go and spend six months in an area, and there would still be people who needed to be treated -- that's true in any Third World country."
This year ETF offered MUSC a choice of missions to Ecuador, Peru and South Africa, Mathews says.
It had offered Venezuela for the past four years, but political unrest there has made it unsafe to offer it as a destination this year.
At 132, the MUSC group is the largest ETF mission this year. The average group has from 12 to 20 people and the largest ever is 170. Dr. John Powell, a pediatrician and the organization's founder, plans to travel with the group.
One of the student leaders on the South Africa mission will be Angie Mullins. This will be her third mission.
"Every year, it's just changed my life. It's given me an appreciation for using the gifts the Lord has blessed me with."
Mullins says that while in Venezuela, she saw the prayers of those all around her being answered.
She also felt a sense of increased strength and boundless energy while working. Medical professionals in the country were on strike, and the need was larger than she and the others had anticipated.
At times when she should have found it impossible to do anything but sleep, she was able to focus on others' needs and continue working.
That ability to carry on could only have been a gift from God, she says.
Whether at the hospital or the orphanage, the group will make the best of whatever situation it finds and will remember that treating the people and ministering to them are equally important.
"If we can train those doctors and children, we can change that community," Vasko says.