The Hahns
I almost went to Bolivia by myself if the Hahns didn’t volunteer to join me. Hui-Jin and Joong Hahn are respected dentists in Cleveland. With their daughter Jenna and a friend Peter Kim who later became a dental student in NYU, we made a medical team in the summer of 2008. Although we carefully prepared medicine and tools for dental treatments, we found working in the remote villages in Bolivia challenging with limited resources. We boiled a pot of water to sterilize the tools and used a fan to cool them down. There were so many patients that we worked eight hours a day, mainly extracting teeth under a mango tree and an empty classroom. I remember one peasant who walked for several hours to get treatment and a woman who wanted to extract several teeth at once for a denture.
As a priest, I distributed tickets to people for the treatment and took pictures and movies. I was amazed at what one team could do for the poor and how much they appreciated us. We were not only a medical team to work for them but also friends to celebrate together in the community where we found friendship and love. We participated in the baptism of the church and the festival of the village. The bracelets we wore summed up what we experienced, “One Human Family.”
On the last day, we visited one house in the middle of the field. The house was a large tent covered with tires and woods. There was no water and electricity. Cecilia was living there and she was about Jenna’s age. After the poor surgery, her distorted hip made Cecilia limping. The family wanted to do something, but finance was a problem. We donated some money out of our pockets for Cecilia.
Three years later in May 2011, Jenna gave me $400, saying, “Father, I have saved this money for Cecilia. Would you send this to her?” Her beautiful heart that remembered a friend in need moved me. Jenna has practiced Jesus’ teaching; “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
The Hahns are the fifteenth Christ.