My roommate while in Ukraine was Dr.Lee Franklin. Unfortunately for him, he had to deal with me coming in the room late at night after processing photos and blogging. Plus there was the whole thing about me not having clean clothes for the first few days we won’t mention. All in all, he survived and we’re still friends and truthfully we really got to know each other better through the week.
Lee is a doctor here in Montgomery and was our doctor for the mission trip to Ukraine. Lee saw a break neck amount of patients daily, nearly 10-12 an hour, talking with them generally for 5 to 10 minutes with the help of his interpreter Veronika Moskovenko.
Lee has visited Ukraine multiple times as part of a medical mission team. He has also visited several other countries and is what I would call a world traveler using his skills.
“The IMB Missionaries here (Mike and Linda Ray, Ross and Kasey Lewis) have figured out that this (medical clinics) is a great way to reach adults. They come for medical care, but on the way they get real medicine. They get to hear about Jesus,” said Dr.Franklin.
Having been in Ukraine before he was easily able to recultivate the relationships he had already established. Watching and listening to Lee give Veronika marriage advice as she approaches her nuptials in June was like listening to an Uncle give his niece a hard time using scare tactics to emphasize how big this moment in time was for her. You can tell that he really cares, but uses humor to soften the truth sometimes.
“The thing I deal with the most is high blood pressure,” said Dr.Franklin when asked what he was dealing with the most in the medical clinics. “Probably 75% of the people that come have high blood pressure. And they can have significant high blood pressure. They can actually get medicine here but they’re like us, they don’t take it very well.”
Lee shared a particular story about a woman he was talking to in the clinic about her high blood pressure. She had a serious health issue, but she was so concerned about all these other things that didn’t really matter. She was focused on things that don’t count. The illustration really struck Lee as so familiar to many of us. Here’s Lee to share the full story himself: