Welcome. Bienvenidos. Bienvenue.

Welcome dear friend,

As I sit down and start to write this evening I am on the cusp of a trip, of a new beginning that has been 23 years in preparation. Let me bring you up to speed.

The ability to bring love and healing to the people of this world through surgery has been an ultimate ambition of mine since an early age. At 14 years, it was pressed upon my heart to enter the field of medical missions; at 15, to do so in the field of surgery. I have not looked back since. It has been a long path thus far, neither straight nor easy. Challenging at times in the moment, but always a blessing in retrospect; and it has brought me right to where I am supposed to be today.

Having grown up in a Mid-West small town my roots are founded in community, faith and self-purpose. Life was comfortable, and safe and my greatest stress was understanding calculus. From Illinois, I choose to move to Mexico for medical school. Although accepted to Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, I chose the unknown, in a way, testing myself and my ability to assimilate and survive in a new and foreign culture. I emerged not only with a medical degree and bilingualism, but with an appreciation of the ingenuity, hard-work and selflessness that is required to cross cultural borders and thrive. From Mexico, I moved to New York where a one year Preinternship at New York Medical College, turned into a Trauma Research Fellowship and finally a General Surgery Residency at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, NY. After finishing residency I moved to Lafayette, IN and joined the Lafayette Surgical Clinic where I have worked for the last 1.5 years. This last step has been vital for the restoration required emerging from the residency environment as well as the preparation for entering the field of Global Surgery.

If it sounds like three life-times are packed into that last paragraph, I assure you, it also feels that way. If you would desire a further peak at the journey that has brought me to this point, I invite you to refer to my previous blog that has chronicled the ride. Between the words and the lines filling the pages, it has been a journey of mountains and valleys filled with God's grace and mercy, His patience and always, His Love.

http://yoestoyenmexico.blogspot.com/

I leave for Togo, West Africa on Sunday, January 1, 2023. I am working with Samaritan's Purse World Medical Missions and am being supported and sent as a missionary by the Apostolic Christian Church in Ellington, CT. I am thankful for the journey that has brought me to this juncture. Now as I prepare to once again step out into the unknown, I am filled with excited anticipation of what lay ahead. I believe that every human being is worthy of love. That they are deserving of being looked into their eyes and recognized for the innate value they possess simply by sharing the same air I breathe. I believe they have a voice and I want to listen to their story. There is much work and learning that I have ahead of me yet, but I take comfort knowing God is sufficient beyond my own small abilities.

As I close this post this evening, I offer a prayer for the people of Togo. I pray for Jesus to go before me and with me. I pray for guidance amongst them and with them. I pray my hands can be for healing and for love towards them.