Terri’s View – 2018 Medical Team Trip to Danishpet, South India

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Terri DiElmo was a part of a fourteen person TRP medical team trip to Danishpet India in late January 2018.

In her words :

Told of The Rhema Project by Colleen Sweeney and Steve Widder of Sweeny Healthcare ( https://www.sweeneyhealthcareenterprises.com )  the answer was “yes”. Yes to a trip 9000 miles away from home to a place never visited, with a description of how “amazing” it is and “hard to describe”; away from family.

The actual visit was INCREDIBLE. Greeted by enthusiastic girls with only one mission: For you to learn their names. “What is my name?” “What is my name?” over and over again.

Visits to hospitals, medical clinics, opportunity to lecture at a nursing college were part of the daily agendas. Every experience was impactful, not necessarily to the ways we originally thought. Those we thought we would be impacting, were impacting us. With their gratitude for being taught to, being cared for, or simply being asked “How are you?”.

Tenacity, strength and heroism were witnessed during visits to the villages of the nursing students. The ones who were to be inspired demonstrated their strength to us: walking miles for an education, smiling through tragedy, standing when weak, fighting for the one thing never to be taken away from them, knowledge.

Inspiration was defined every moment and every day of our visit. Inspiration by girls and young women struggling through a path of life’s hardships and challenges with a smile on their face and strength in their heart. The dusty dirt and the lack of resources is not holding them back from making a better life for them and the ones they care for. The support of strangers who “wanted to make a difference”, “who wanted to learn about India” made them believe something they already felt, “they could”.

Leaving India, the Bethel AFC Campus, where we were privileged to meet the nursing students, the “Esther House” girls orphanage and the “baby house” orphanage, there were several lessons learned but one was most important:

“The Power of One is Limitless”

Terri DiElmo