Medical Scholarship
Doctoring in a remote Guatemalan village where mothers, children and the elderly are at highest risk
David and fellow students travel to small towns to provide medical services alongside doctors.
Imagine you are a Guatemalan boy with dreams of becoming a doctor. You live in a shack with a dirt floor and no indoor plumbing. Chickens and dogs share your family’s home. Students bring machetes to school to cut through brush and ward off snakes.
A missionary couple living nearby realizes you are a promising student and arranges a sponsorship for you to attend a college-prep missionary school in the mountains, a day’s trip from your home. After nearly two years of studying day and night, you’re ready for medical school—but with no way to afford it.
The foundation partnered 50/50 with Great Commission Air to co-sponsor a medical school scholarship, an extension of its ministry, to improve the quality of life for people of Mayan descent in rural Guatemala.
This put something miraculous in motion. David Pérez Andrés began an eight-year journey to earn his medical degree from the University of Guatemala in Huehuetenango. The grant also bought textbooks for David and other students, who previously had to copy everything from shared books into their own notebooks. Understandably, they learned at a much faster pace.
Since graduation in 2019, David has tirelessly worked to reduce suffering in remote villages where children and elderly people often die from very treatable diseases. Medical care is only available a few days a month from a Cuban doctor, who doesn’t speak the local dialect. David talks with patients in their native language, providing faster diagnoses and better medical care.
The result is a better quality of life for these deserving, hardworking people.
