Co-Laboring With JesusExemplo

Dr. Jamel Patterson looked into the eyes of the young mother and the baby girl she held in her arms. “You must stop breast-feeding her,” she implored the woman. “You might infect your baby with the HIV virus if you continue to feed her your milk.” The woman understood the danger, but without money to buy food suitable for her infant what else could she do? She could continue to breastfeed and risk transmitting the virus that causes AIDs from her own body to her daughter, or she could watch her little girl die slowly from starvation. Dr. Patterson knew she would choose the former rather than the latter.

It was Dr. Patterson’s first trip to Uganda. While the primary purpose of the church-organized missions’ trip was prayer and evangelism, she had extended her stay to provide medical services in a local village. It was there she met the breastfeeding mom who was infected with HIV. And it was there that she also learned how malaria, a potentially deadly mosquito-borne disease, ravaged the village, killing many men, women, and children. 

On her return home to the United States, Dr. Patterson resolved to do something about what she had seen. First, she decided to provide monthly financial support for the HIV-infected mother so that she could feed herself and her child. She sent $250 to a trusted local official in Uganda with instructions to purchase soymilk, sugar, millet, and other foods for the young mother and her infant. To her amazement, the official informed her that the money she provided could feed not only that small family, but also the entire village for one month. On learning how relatively inexpensive it was to feed the village, Dr. Patterson rallied family, friends, and colleagues to donate funds to cover eleven additional months. Within a matter of weeks, she raised enough money to feed the village for an entire year. 

While in Uganda, she had also learned that the cost of a mosquito net to cover a person or family and protect them from malaria-infected mosquitos while they slept was only $5. That was the cost to potentially save the life of a child or parent. So she started collecting money for mosquito nets as well. Soon, Dr. Patterson was able to purchase hundreds of mosquito nets for the people in the village. The nets worked. A year later, medical personnel in the village informed Dr. Patterson that there had been a significant decline in malaria infections in the area. And the infant girl for whom she provided food? Today she is a healthy and happy adolescent.

But Dr. Patterson’s “good works” on Jesus’s behalf did not end there. After speaking of her experience in Uganda with her friend Dr. Holson, who had served in Haiti, the two realized that they shared similar visions and goals. They decided then to join forces and today they co-labor with each other, friends, family members, and yes, with Jesus, in the Caribbean and Africa, sharing the Gospel as they bring education, water, food, healthcare, and business opportunities to diverse communities under the umbrella of the Ageno Foundation International, (www.agenofoundation.org) the non-profit they established together with the help of many others.