Moving Boulders with Medicine and Care

The washed-out road would not stop them. Neither would the boulders.

BCM International was on a mission, and the goal was the remote villages surrounding Manaira, Brazil, which is a 6 ½ hour drive from the city of Racife.

Swapping their van for another vehicle, the team forged onward on a road that most travelled by ox carts or dirt bikes.

After making it safely to Manaira, the real mission began when the team of nine united with a local pastor. This Holy Spirit-filled man travels an hour each direction to villages every week so that he can reach and evangelize in these remote places. By hosting clinics in these villages over the next week, they would be serving the people he’d poured so much into already.

The pop-up clinics drew locals from all around. Some locals walked two hours to see the American doctor, and no one grew frustrated by the long waits to be seen.

Thankfully, BCM travelled with a large variety of essential medicines because the patient needs were as varied as the prescriptions needed. One young boy had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. A family was treated for severe ulcers. A mother learned how to care for her two-year-old girl who had seizures. At one point, the team met a man with two thumbs!

But most incredible of all were the hearts that the medicine touched. Out of the 200 people BCM ministered to, ninety-seven accepted Christ and salvation. Nearly half of everyone seen!

As the team began their journey home, using the same roads they’d navigated a week before, they could leave knowing the medicine and the compassion they gave had initiated a change. The combination of the two was the vehicle that had removed boulders not in the roads but in the people’s hearts.