Medical Mission Impossible

Forget about Tom Cruise. The new star of Mission Impossible is Ludving Navarro.

The pastor coaxed a medicine shipment through Guatemalan Customs – a week-long process of frustrating and tedious paperwork that led to a heart-attack arrival at the church at 8:00 p.m. Sunday – literally just in time Monday morning clinic.

“We always have a challenge getting our medications out of Customs,” said team leader Dr. Bob Hamilton, a Santa Monica pediatrician who founded Lighthouse Medical Missions. “We literally got the medications the night before our clinic. We thank God for His perfect timing. It was last minute.”

The $9,000 shipment arrived from Holland aboard Iberia Airlines on Monday of last week. The two pallets of pills for everything from blood pressure to antibiotics received no attention on Tuesday because it was Guatemala’s Independence Day.

But starting early on Wednesday, Ludving Navarro, the logistics man in Guatemala, was at Customs perfecting paperwork, sweet-talking officials and performing magic tricks to satisfy the excessive carefulness of officers who are panicky about making a wrong move.

Ironically, it was the ousting of President Otto Perez Molina on Sept. 3 over allegations of corruption that dragged down paperwork. The anti-corruption sting group Cicig had collected evidence that Perez Molina was receiving kickbacks for illegal transactions in Customs and provoked nationwide calls for his resignation. While the president’s demise was a victory for democracy and transparency in Guatemala, it stung Customs workers who now watch their backs with more zeal than ever.

The Guatemalan medical clinic very nearly started Monday without any medicine.

But thanks to the protracted diligence of Navarro, doctors and nurses attended to about 100 sick people on Monday. They will continue their clinic in Guatemala City today before moving operations to Villa Nueva, just outside the capital, for another two days of medical care.

“We filled a lot of paperwork to realize this clinic, but where we hit most setbacks was in Customs,” Navarro said. “It was way too much paperwork. We fell into a drastic revision. The scan wasn’t sufficiently legible, and this provoked that the medicine was detained. We had to get the originals.”

Fortunately, Customs is open through the weekend, and so until nighttime before the start of the clinic the pallets were released.

Taking paperwork from government office to office has taken its toll on Navarro, who hasn’t lunched in almost a week. With his thumb hooked in his waistline, the Guatemalan pastor demonstrated how much weight he has lost.

“It was a test of our faith,” said Navarro, who was helped by his politically-savvy wife, Nelly. “We were praying and believing. We saw that God was faithful.”

Every time Dr. Bob’s Santa Monica-based charity decides to bless a new country, it faces an overwhelming process of deciphering a new set of rules to comply with. Most frequently, Lighthouse Medical Missions has realized clinics in Africa.

While donors applaud the sacrifice of the volunteers who serve in the Third World, somebody is behind the scenes grinding out labor-intensive compliance, statute by statute, government office after government office. If you think the DMV is bad, you should try the Third World.

It’s no camping trip. Somebody has to do the work that nobody wants to do. And like their counterparts in the United States, the actors in the Third World who mount these clinics are unpaid. Their work is selfless, to benefit others.

“Thanks to Pastor Ludving, his untiring and hard work, we got through the paperwork,” Dr. Bob said. “We’re always challenged. Guatemala wasn’t worse than normal. It was just normal.”