Sidgewick shared the love of Jesus with many women in Northeast India. She shared the Gospel, her testimony and her nursing skills with women trapped by prostitution.
By Torie Speicher*
INDIA — The smell of okra cooking wafted out to the streets, greeting the colorfully dressed women and children streaming into Ajunta Gupta’s* backyard for the free medical clinic.
Fresh cut flowers decorated the pharmacy table in one corner. Woven mats and plastic chairs covered the rest of the dirt floor/yard. Prostitutes and curious neighbors sat in any available space and stared at three American nurses visiting their Indian slum.
Unfazed by the chaos of children running, introductions and moving chairs, Dora Sidgewick* grabbed a blood pressure cuff and started doing what nurses do — gathering vital signs and evaluating patients.
“This will give us something to do so that they’re not just staring at us,” Sidgewick, an 11-time medical mission trip veteran, said with a determined smile.
Sidgewick, Alice Demsky* and Sienna Mortenson* spent a week loving women and children affected by prostitution in India by providing some free, basic health care that most in this crowd could no afford otherwise.
Gupta,* a new believer and former fly prostitute, opened her home to friends in prostitution. She hoped the free medical care would give them an opportunity to hear about Jesus. Most of her friends work in her former profession. A fly prostitute doesn’t live in the brothels and often looks like any other woman. Most of the prostitutes are housewives or single parents who are just trying to find a way to feed their children.
The volunteers wanted to see prostitutes as Jesus sees them.
“Jesus did not hang out with the Christians. He hung out with the sinners and went to where they were and that is what we have to do: Go to where the people are that don’t know Christ,” Sidgewick, a labor and delivery nurse and member of First Baptist Church, Monticello, Ark., said
As the women sat in the backyard awaiting their turn with the nurses, a local pastor shared about the purpose of life. He said that they should believe in Jesus because only Jesus sacrificed Himself for our sins. Sidgewick wasn’t about to let a chance to share her own story pass.
“Before they could pray, I interrupted him because I wanted them to know why we were praying,” Sidgewick said. “So, that was when I shared where we were from, why we were there and basically gave a short testimony about my life in Christ, how I came to know Christ and the difference He had made in my life.”
Mortenson didn’t miss a beat and added her story to the mix. It was the opportunity she had been waiting for. Through an interpreter, the nurse educator from First Baptist Church, Norfolk, Va. shared the Gospel with two ladies who now believe in Jesus.
“My prayer before the trip was for God to prepare their hearts for the Gospel and that is what He did,” Mortenson said.
Taking blood pressure may be routine for a nurse like Dora Sidgewick,* but it allowed her to care for women in Northeast India through a medical camp.
While the nurses were only providing basic general exams, their goal was to share the love of Jesus with everyone they touched.
“We have not done fancy things like surgeries or curing illnesses, but we have touched people and each time that I would listen to someone’s heart or listen to their lungs or touch their neck I would ask God to bless this person and think about what a difference it would make if Jesus was in their lives,” Demsky, Hillmon Grove Baptist Church, Cameron, N.C, said.
Whether their patients were fly prostitutes, slum children or children of prostitutes, the nurses cared for everyone.
“God makes us perfect,” Mortenson tells a young girl with deformed arms and legs. “You are perfectly made!”
Sidgewick, who has participated in medical clinics in eight different countries, said that no matter where she goes, people are the same.
“The greatest need I can see is the need for Jesus Christ,” Sidgewick said. “There are always people who need Jesus everywhere you go.”
Mortenson agrees and likens the church to a hospital in meeting this need.
“Who needs the hospital more than those that are broken or broken-hearted? We can’t just give them a band-aid, though,” Mortenson said. “We have to fix the heart and only Jesus can do that.”
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*Name changed.
Torie Speicher is a writer serving among South Asian peoples with International Mission Board.