Titus 3:14
Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good, in order to provide for urgent needs and not live unproductive lives.
Before the Sunrise
On October 20th, the parking lot at Tigard High was packed long before dawn as 360 volunteers flooded the school to meet urgent medical and dental needs at the first Tigard Compassion Clinic. Inside the gym, hundreds of guests waited for free dental, medical, chiropractic, and vision appointments. This included one man who said he had been waiting outside the door since 3:30 a.m. to make sure he was able to see a dentist. Volunteers weren’t there to greet the men at 3:30, but they began arriving two hours later to finalize the tables and schedules and food.
I joined the 130 volunteers from Solid Rock on Saturday. My assignment was to help coordinate vision appointments and escort guests to their next service when they finished having their vision checked. The eye doctors and students from Pacific University saw more than forty patients in six hours, and those of us on the “flow team” were busy making sure the guests were able to find the services they needed.
Antoine and Stacy
In front of our table, across the waiting area, I watched the beautiful faces of children and elderly guests and those who didn’t have a home to return to when they left the clinic. I was honored to be able to sit down and talk with one godly grandmother and her 21-year-old grandson Antoine. This kind woman had cared for Antoine since he was eleven, one of five foster kids whom she still considered to be her grandchild long after he graduated from the foster care system. Antoine was a giant of a man, with the tender heart and mind of a boy. He was also legally blind in one eye, and his grandmother brought him to the clinic because they couldn’t afford glasses to help him see.
On the other side of Antoine was a vibrant, autistic young woman named Stacy. Stacy was alone on Saturday with her walker, the four drinks that she’d collected on her way to the vision area, and a wide smile that brightened the room. As I helped Stacy fill out the paperwork, she laughed and cried and was elated to learn that I could spell her name in sign language. Even though she could hear, she preferred to communicate with signs. That is until she met Antoine. Then she stopped signing and started talking.
When I returned to my work at the desk, Antoine and Stacy began laughing together and later I could hear them whispering about the families they’d once had. When Stacy left the room for her doctor’s visit, Antoine was smiling as wide as Stacy had been minutes before. Stacy had agreed to be his friend. None of his friends ever returned his phone calls, he told me, but Stacy promised him that she would.
“When Stacy left the room for her doctor’s visit, Antoine was smiling as wide as Stacy had been minutes before”
As I escorted Antoine and his grandmother across the hall, Antoine told me they were meeting Stacy for lunch. He was more excited about his new friend than his glasses, and his grandmother’s heart was full of gratefulness, to our Lord and to the people God used that day to bless her family. I thanked her as well—for blessing me and, most of all, for sacrificing her life to take care of so many hurting children.
What was the result?
A thousand people were fed on Saturday at the Compassion Clinic. Six hundred immunizations were administered, and almost three hundred people received dental and medical services.
Antoine and Stacy both left the clinic like many others with their urgent needs met. They had new eye prescriptions and a certificate for free glasses at LensCrafters in Washington Square. But more important perhaps, both of them left the Compassion Clinic with their hearts filled with joy—and with a new friend.
Other clinic stories
Miracles at a Compassion Clinic
I’m A Pastor And This Is Why I Value Compassion Connect’s Mission
