- April 17, 2024
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Steve and Kara Whitmer sat in the back of a pickup truck with their two daughters, Haila and Kara, and a group of medical students from throughout the United States.
They were in Honduras, on a 10-day medial missions trip, en route to a medical clinic in the mountains.
But there was a roadblock. Just days before, a flood had washed out the sole dirt road that led up the mountain.
With purpose on their minds and a decision to do whatever needed to be done, the group rebuilt the road and brought medical care into the mountains.
Steve and Kara recently completed their first year of nursing school and connected with Dr. Andrew Yoon, of Ormond Beach, who also practices dentistry at clinic in Honduras.
“We didn’t have the money to go,” Steve Whitmer said. “But we just said OK and sent out letters to family and friends. And somehow, we just went.”
In addition to friends and family, the Whitmer family was partly sponsored by their church, Church on the Rock.
The mission of the group was to provide a mobile medical clinic to the rural areas of the country that have no access to medical care.
The clinic where the group worked was set up mostly for parasites and infections.
Parents brought babies in for a cough, thinking they were sick, but the children weren’t actually sick, Whitmer said.
“They were coughing because people were burning garbage across the street and because their family was cooking on fire,” he explained. “It was their first introduction to how their life was going to be.”
But aside from the medical treatments, the Whitmer family said it was the human side of the trip that really made them think.
“It’s not the recognition of how much help they needed, but how much we needed to help,” Whitmer said.
