Jeff Davies and his wife, Laura Chen Davies, both of Oakland Township, Mich., first felt God’s call to help with the tsunami relief effort while sharing breakfast December 29. Forty-eight hours later, they were on a plane headed to Banda Aceh, Indonesia, the region hardest hit by the December 26 disaster.

Jeff Davies, 30, an emergency medicine resident, and Laura Davies, 28, a journalist, recruited friends Craig Chaya, 28, an internist, and his wife, Michelle Chaya, 28, an emergency room nurse, to join them. The group met in Los Angeles, the Chayas’ hometown, and left the United States on January 1. Once in Indonesia, they joined a medical team put together by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA). The entire team including the Davieses and Chayas included four doctors, ten nurses, three medical assistants, and a pastor.

The group set up a free clinic on the outskirts of downtown Banda Aceh, just down the street from a survivor camp that had been set up at a mosque. They saw about 500 patients a day and treated them for conditions such as respiratory ailments, rashes, diarrhea, infected wounds, and more. Over 3,000 patients were treated during the group’s seven-day stay.

“We expected the people to be depressed and thought we would be consoling them the entire time,” said Craig. “But most people were pretty upbeat considering what they had just gone through. We were inspired by their resilience.”

One survivor who stood out in Jeff's mind was a man who was in his 20s. The man brought his grandmother to be treated for pneumonia and, with tears in his eyes, told Jeff, “I have no words to explain how thankful I am for what you are doing here. How can I say ‘thank you’?”

“I told him, ‘You just did,’” Jeff recalled.

“It’s so easy to get caught up in the numbers,” said Jeff, who, with his wife, attends the South Flint Seventh-day Adventist Church. “You hear 200,000 were killed, 100,000 are missing, and you become numb to the real suffering. But when we were in Aceh and met the people and heard their stories, we were able to put a face with the numbers, and these faces belong to real people like you and me.”

ADRA Indonesia has committed to rebuilding schools in Aceh and Melaboh, which is off the western coast of Sumatra. For more information or to donate, call (800) 424-2372 or visit www.adra.org.

To read more about the medical team’s experience, visit http://www.freep.com/voices/sunday/davies23e_20050123.htm.

Susan Cooper is a pseudonym.