Four Updates from Four Friends International

#1 - 2017 Four Friends International Golf Classic

The second annual Four Friends International Golf Classic will be held Saturday April 15 at Chesley Oaks Golf Course in Fairview, Alabama, beginning at 8:00 am. Details are in the flier below. Last year we raised $10,000 for the Los Laureles clinic. This year we hope to raise $15,000, all of which will be designated for the new clinic in Los Pinos. The golf tournament is a wonderful fun-and-food event, and we have several new twists planned this year. If you or someone you know would like to field a team, sign up soon. (The tournament field is limited to 22 teams.) If you or someone else would be willing to sponsor a hole, contact Jeff Fowler (256-714-1203) or Randy Stewart (256-302-4296) for details.

#2 - Los Laureles Clinic

The clinic at Los Laureles continues to treat 500-600 patients monthly. Pray for nurse Lilian and the clinic staff as they care for the sick. We have had some problems recently getting medicines to the clinic from the United States, and we are exploring other options. Please pray that this problem will be resolved soon.

#3  - Los Pinos Clinic

The foundation and walls are finished at the new clinic in Los Pinos, and the roof is now being constructed. We have enough donations to complete the roof, and the golf tournament this month should pay for the next phase. After the tournament, about 60% of the costs of building and furnishing the clinic will have been donated. Pray with us that the remaining $40,000 will come just at the right time, so that the clinic at Los Pinos can be completed this calendar year.

#4 - A Testimony from a Volunteer

 As a small child I often heard that salvation was achieved by accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior and believing that he died on the cross for my sins and the sins of every other person that has ever existed or will exist. Admittedly, that was always a little bit of a hard concept to grasp from being a little kid and moving into adolescence. I believed and even got saved during this time, but my critical error was in believing that was all that there was to it. That routine of waking up, going to church, and administering my “servitude” in the form of collecting the offering every other Sunday was what I sated myself with to convince myself that I was doing my duty.

As I got a little older, though, I began to become uneasy and lack confidence in that ploy, and felt there had to be something more. Sure enough, God began working behind the scenes right around that time, and the common theme of Sunday School and the sermons were servitude, and I became more and more dissatisfied with my current commitment level. Furthermore, I was blessed enough to have been offered an opportunity to go to Guatemala with Dr. Stewart’s medical mission trip in October of 2016.  That compounded with my interest in medicine into a perfect storm and I soon found myself counting down the days in anxious impatience for the trip.

It was in Guatemala that I began to understand more fully what real servitude entailed. Getting out of your comfort zone is almost mandatory. Waking up early (which is not what normally happens on my Fall Break) and spending your entire day serving others to glorify God, and all of this in a location where you don't even speak the same language as the local people. I’d never witnessed about Jesus before, and I learned that there was no other way to learn besides jumping right into it.

The events of that week, and seeing the needs of the people there, all culminated in one moment that I will remember forever. The day before we left, we had a banquet/service where they served food to the children and the adults had a service. I played with the kids, and in a moment where I stood back and really thought about where I was and what I was a part of, I had my epiphany. That moment that I always heard about when someone really felt God’s presence. I cried in a beautiful mixture of awe, happiness, dejection, and divine presence. I knew what it meant to truly believe that night, and knew that such beautiful works in such a poor place could only be the work of God.

Jared Ridgeway