in his own words
I
in every issue
photographed by Faren Kilpatrick
Dr. Walter Earnest Connor talks about love
Derinda and I met on our first day of college at USC Sumter regional campus in August 1976.
We had calculus, history and chemistry classes together. I was attracted to her because of her smile and friendliness; later, I realized how detailed and organized she was. We dated for four years before getting married in August 1980. I knew very quickly that she would be the woman that I would marry, as she complemented me perfectly and motivated me to strive to be the best at all I set out to do. I had always been like that, but she gave me a reason and purpose for continuing to be successful and to build a life for our future family. Deeply wanting to go to medical school, I majored in biology. She started in pharmacy, and then switched to nursing as this suited her better in her innate desire to serve and care for others. We transferred to the main campus of USC in the spring of 1978 to complete courses. I loved everything about her. She was my soul mate and completed me in every way. I had the strongest desire to make a life and a family with her. Once we graduated in May 1980, we were married on August 2nd. I started medical school two weeks later. She was completely supportive of me, helping me spiritually and emotionally in one of the most stressful times of my life. Faith has been important to us throughout our lives, as we both were raised in a Baptist
church. Derinda has always been strong in her faith; this has kept me striving to work for what the Lord had in store for my life as well as our lives together. She kept me grounded, always leading me back to the church when I strayed or got too wrapped up in my career. We became actively involved in missions in June 2005 when we did our first trip to Hon- duras. We both had an interest in missions, especially medical missions as an opportunity to give back and show God’s love to others through our medical service. We both wanted our children to understand how blessed we were and to serve the Lord by helping others. Our daughter Amanda was 16 and our son Ryan was 19 when we went on our first trip. This changed our lives in many ways. We continue to go back and lead teams every year to provide medical care and other services to the Honduran people. We chose Honduras because we both truly believed we were called there. I had the
opportunity to go to Romania with a medical team. I prayed about it and strongly consid- ered it, but something didn’t seem quite right. At a meeting of the South Carolina Acad- emy of Family Medicine, we were made aware of the Carolina Honduras Health Founda- tion and Clinic in Limon, Honduras, from a colleague of mine. We gathered information
116 February 2014
and it just seemed right. We had the sense that God was calling us there for a purpose. We have made at least one or two trips per year since then. To date, Derinda has been 16 times, and I have been 15. Our first trip was at the end of May 2005. We flew to New Orleans and met a group from
Alabama, none of whom we had ever met before. We then went on to Honduras and were part of an 18 person team consisting of two other doctors, four to five nurses and con- struction members. Ryan and Amanda worked in the medical area helping with triage and pharmacy. We held four to five clinics at Limon and in surrounding villages, churches and schools. We saw 100 to 200 patients each day and served approximately 1,000 patients. We met many people in this third world environment and saw firsthand how poor and un- der-privileged the vast majority of these people were. The striking thing to me then, and still today, is how happy and grateful the people were for anything that we tried to do for them. This is very humbling and makes anything that we see as hard quite insignificant. I truly gain more from serving these people and the feelings of peace that I obtain from this experience than anything that I do for them. I’m a problem solver as a family doctor, and I want to fix everything I encounter. These trips have made me realize that God has a plan, and it is my duty to serve him and accom- plish what He intends for me to do - not what I intend or wish I could do. The biggest need is medical care and food for their families to eat. We try to help them physically, minister to them spiritually and show God’s love through our actions. We typically see 700 to 1,000 patients each trip. We treat malaria, hypertension, diabetes, skin infections, parasites, mal- nutrition, upper respiratory infections and injuries such as lacerations and broken bones (among many other things).
Most of the people have had exposure to Jesus and many are Catholic. Some are very
active, praying and reading their Bibles every day. Others are more focused on where their next meal is going to come from. We have the opportunity to witness and ask people about their beliefs and faith to help them understand that God loves them and that we are there because we love God. We want to serve Him by serving the needs of His people in Hondu- ras. Each trip, we have many people accept Christ as their Savior. Oſten 15 to 20 at a time accept Jesus as a result of the children’s ministries and interaction with the children and their parents or the adult witnessing. We are planning our largest team as of yet for July. We will be taking 44 people. Half of the team will be the youth from our church, Ebenezer Baptist; the other half will be medical team members (pharmacy, lab, optical) witnesses, worship leaders and Bible study leaders.
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