God’s faithfulness stretches to the heavens! He will always supply everything we need for the work He has called us to do.
It brings us great joy to announce a huge milestone for the medical side of Impact Ministries. As of last week, our little clinic at the top of our Chijacorral School, has officially been registered by the government of Guatemala! Many of you may not even have known that we have been running without registration for many years. This has been an acceptable way to practice, as we do not charge for medical services, and have typically only served the staff, students and families that are directly connected to our Ministry. However, by God’s grace, the medical arm of Impact Ministries has grown in leaps and bounds! As more people from the general community started turning to the Impact Ministries’ medical staff for help, it became necessary for us to formally register the clinic with the Guatemalan Ministry of Health.
The Lord is faithful. At just the right time, about a year and a half ago, we met a Guatemalan physician by the name of Dr. René Rivas. As our relationship with Dr. Rivas grew, we discovered that he is the head for the medical outreach arm of the Church of Nazarene here in Guatemala. In fact, he works a similar practice to ours, running remote clinics for various villages at no cost for the poor. He is a full-time medical missionary in his own right. He also began to see the value in the work we are doing in this part of the country and agreed to be the government required supervising licensed Guatemalan physician to register our clinic. We know this is the hand of the Lord providing for all of our needs. The paper work was complex and arduous; taking essentially nine months! To comply with all the required standards we were audited by a health inspector, our water sources were tested, we installed water purifiers and we hired a biohazard disposal company. In the end we were overjoyed to see the certificate of registration come through.
With this registration and the supervision of Dr. René Rivas, all visiting physicians can be assured that they can practice knowing there is formal legal acknowledgement of the care we provide. Impact Ministries by principle seeks to be “above reproach” and to maintain good standing with all local authorities. With this milestone now behind us, we are praying that the Lord will continue to grow the medical ministry with increasing momentum. We know we are blessed in order to be a blessing to many more. We will continue to love and care for all He brings to our door until His work for us is complete!
