Medical Missionary Work in the Hills of Porto Rico by Clarence Moon

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 14, 1915

Medical Missionary Work in the Hills of Porto Rico

By Clarence Moon

CLARENCE MOON

THESE last few months here in Porto Rico have been months of great blessing from the Lord, both in the church work and in opening up new interests out in the country. We had the privilege of seeing eight persons baptized in the sparkling waters of a brook which dashes down from the hills overlooking Moca.

Some of our workers had made trips out into the country to Barrios Cruz and Burladores, but had met with little success. At one place a Catholic woman told one of our sisters that she did not care to have anything to do with us. The next day her son fell and fractured his left arm near the shoulder. She brought him to us, and we bound up the fracture, and they went their way. In a few days we heard through this sister that the woman had changed her ideas about us, and was now saying that “los Adventistas son muy buenos” (the Adventists are very good). We afterwards went out and gave her studies.

I was called out one night to assist in an operation where a small boy was wounded by a falling rock. His head was so badly crushed that part of the brain had been forced from the cranium. The doctor who went out on the case, after making an examination told me that there was absolutely no hope for the boy. He sewed up the wound on the head, and left the boy to die. I went back the next morning and found him almost dead, and the place in great confusion. These people have a very demonstrative way of manifesting their grief, in shrieks and wails, and one feels quite relieved to get away from such a place, out into the open air.

On this particular morning I was feeling a great burden for these poor people, and so I determined to do what I could to console them and to point them to Him who has promised to carry our griefs and sorrows. I found a small New Testament, and read from Heb. 11:1 where it says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for,” etc. I then talked to them on the subject of faith and prayer. They gave the very best attention. After this we had prayer, and I never felt the presence of the Lord more than at this time. The room seemed to be full of light, and we prayed earnestly for the boy, believing the promise, “They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” We felt that the Lord had heard us, and all seemed in a more hopeful mood. The boy made a speedy recovery, and the other day he came out to meet me when I went to their house. We held several studies with this family, and since that time other doors have opened, until now we are making regular trips out there each week, holding cottage meetings and house-to-house Bible studies.

Such instances as these bring to our minds the truth so often enunciated by the Lord's servant: “As a means of overcoming prejudice and gaining access to minds, medical missionary work must be done, not in one or two places only, but in many places where the truth has not yet been proclaimed.” “We are to work as gospel medical missionaries, to heal the sin-sick souls by giving them the message of salvation.” It also brings before our minds the fact that when God extends his hand to do a work, he opens closed doors, and breaks down the hindrances to the advancement of the blessed truth.

We are at times tempted to look at the greatness of the task before us, and say, with the ten spies, “We cannot go up;” but certainly when we think upon the unlimited resources of Omnipotence, we are led to say, with Jeremiah, “Ah Lord God! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched-out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.”

Moca, Porto Rico.