Story time

Story time about how a Christian doctor told me how to dispose of a body in Mexico…his body.

In a previous life I was a campus minister (BSM at SMU and UTSWMC). Every year the med school students went to Mexico to run free clinics out of local churches. I led my first trip solo in 2004. I was 25 and responsible for 60+ students plus doctors plus medical supplies in a foreign country… in Juarez where things weren’t the safest. Fun times. (Genuinely it was! But also, quite intimidating.)

Shortly after we arrived in Mexico our insurance people called me because one doc did not provide his birthdate – which was required for the insurance. So, I went to find him. After asking him for his birthdate (w/ an explanation as to why) the following happened:

Him: No. I don’t tell anyone my age. [He seemed serious. He was not a jovial old man.]

Me: [pretending that I thought he was joking] Oh, that’s okay. I’m not asking for your age, just your birthdate. [Que innocent smile.]

Him: [Gives me birthdate]

Also him: I have a serious heart condition that could kill me at any time.

Me: [Internally: Wait. What? Seriously?! Why are you here, then!]

Him: So, if I die, here’s what you need to do. Don’t call the police or ambulance. Just put my body in the back of one of the vans and drive me across the border [to the US]. Find a payphone. There’s a card in my wallet with a number on it to a body disposal/cremation service that I’ve already enlisted. Just call the number from the pay phone and tell them the location. Leave my body in the phone booth and drive back across the border.

Then he walked away. No smile. No laughter. No mischievous twinkle in his eye.

A Christian doctor on a medical mission trip told me to smuggle his dead body across the border and dispose of him in a payphone booth.

Surely, he was joking, you say. I want to believe that. I really do. I desperately want to believe that, just like I desperately want to believe Jephthah didn’t murder his own daughter (Jdg 11). But in both situations the evidence leads me to conclude otherwise.

Oh, also, this is the same doctor that led a mutiny in Juarez 3 years later over the lack of ice cream. No exaggeration! By the way, that was only one of two mutinies that week. But that’s a story for another time. The next time I have trouble sleeping and start recalling random stories from the past (that’s what precipitated today’s story) I may tell that story.