March 19, 2011 A Transvestite In The Emergency Room

I have a medical team visiting from the USA doing surgeries... that is part of what the ministry which the Lord has given me is about, but other than the general surgeon, I also have an ER doc on this trip, so he is working in the ER. 

In Honduras, where I live there are Friday and Saturday night drinking and drugging fights and accidents... so Friday nights, Saturdays and Sundays in the ER are a challenge.  This Saturday morning a 6' tall man with mascara, blue eye shadow etc. came into the ER, he had been stabbed by his male "partner" So he is laying in the ER with a catheter in his "you know what" and all this shiney blue eye shadow and RED lipstick...

So I walk into the ER in the morning and this is what I see and no one, I mean no one would speak to him... not the nurses, not the doctors, not anyone and the ER doctor visiting me well, he might have been a bit "surprised" shall we say...  Don’t get me wrong, the local doctors and nurses did their job, but they must have been uncomfortable talking to him.  Well, who wouldn’t be?  Suddenly I had this compassion… just an overwhelming compassion for him…

So I pull a chair up next to him, he is bleeding out his side where he has been stabbed and has blood in his stool, which is NOT a good sign, that means his bowel has been perforated when the knife stabbed through his side.  So he will have stool in his body and if not treated immediately with surgery will surely die from a ferocious infection.  So I explain to him the gravity of the situation, which no one had explained... but he kind of knows…

But when I first pulled up the chair, I said... "So, you are a transvestite."  I thought every nurse and doctor in the room where going to fall over... the look on their faces was like I had just done the imaginable... But, I broke the ice, I was clear and concise, I identified his real problem and I moved close to him, caring about him...  He said that he was part of the big transvestite group in Tegucigalpa and we started talking... My church has a ministry to the transvestites on the streets, they are delightfully open and realistic… You don’t have to beat around the bush with them… The stark naked truth is ok.

Anyway to make a long story short, within 5 minutes he had prayed to receive the Lord...  His heart was tender and he was looking for a different lifestyle, he knew what he was doing was the wrong lifestyle for him... Meanwhile, everyone in the room was in shock... As he repeated a prayer of repentance after me…

More and more medical personnel gathered around as he prayed, asked God to forgive him for his sins... then I did the unthinkable... I stopped praying and looked directly into his eyes and I asked who had molested him as a child... He, without a second thought gave me the guy’s name... So I said, “Now we need to forgive that man for doing that to you... When you hold unforgiveness in your heart, it causes you to sin...  We must forgive.”  So he prayed again and told God that he chose to forgive the man and that he wanted God to forgive him too...

So that was my Saturday morning, how was yours?

These are the things I rarely write about on my blog...  but they do happen... As the Bible says, "The fields are white for harvest and the laborers are FEW! My medical teams are mixed groups, some are Evangelical Christians, some are Mormons, some are Buddhists, some are atheists.  They do their medical work and I talk to people.  

I just shared this with a new friend and decided I would share it with my blog readers…  I am stepping out on a limb here...  I sure hope I don't get a lot of hate mail.  I love people and have compassion for them.  This is not meant to demean anyone.  It is meant to show how we as Christians should love those different than we are.  A little compassion goes a long way.