... The Lord God made them all

Dinelli combines vocation, avocation to care for animals in Honduras

SOUTH WILMINGTON – Most people have heard of Christian mission trips, where the devoted travel to sometimes far-flung outreaches of poverty-ridden cities or villages to help how they can.

Heidi Dinelli, of South Wilmington, recently went on a rather unusual mission trip. Hers was a veterinary mission trip.

A third-year veterinary medicine student at the University of Illinois, Dinelli accompanied two veterinarians, four other U of I vet med students, three vet students from Auburn University and two from Louisiana State University to rural Honduras, a country where 24 percent of its people live on less than $1 a day.

It’s such a poor country, Dinelli said, that many people there don’t have the resources to take proper medical care of their pets and livestock.

The group went to Honduras the last two weeks of May with a program called Honduras Outreach Inc., through the national organization, Christian Veterinary Missions.

“It was so much fun,” Dinelli said. “We were so blessed by all the people who came along on the trip. It was an amazing group. We bonded really well. I learned so much about veterinary medicine, but I also learned a lot about how to combine a Christian life with veterinary medicine.”

Dinelli was not a newcomer to mission trips. She’s even been south of the equator before, traveling to Bolivia during college to work in orphanages.

But growing up, she was not familiar with missions trips.

“In high school,” she said, “I didn’t even know what a mission was. I didn’t even know what was out there.”

It was when she was a freshman at the University of Saint Francis that she was talked into going on a Christian retreat.

“That opened up my eyes to retreats and to mission work,” she said.

That spring, Dinelli went to a poverty-stricken area of West Virginia on a missions trip and helped a community with home improvements. It was a great experience, she said.

Helping those in need is what God wants of us, she said, and the camaraderie with fellow mission workers was a bonus. There were students there from four different colleges, and they all got together for devotionals and prayer.

“It was really awesome,” she said.

The summer after her sophomore year, Dinelli went to Bolivia, then came back to do a couple more local missions.

“Once you get bitten by the missions bug,” she said, “you’re going to keep going on them.”

It is a calling, she explained. Something she feels is expected of her and something she wants to do to “give back” for what she feels has been a blessed life.

Her parents weren’t quite sure what to think about their daughter’s missions, she said, especially her mother, who, she said, worries a lot. But Dinelli said they came to accept them, and they pray for her when she goes.

After college, Dinelli was accepted into the U of I veterinary medicine program. It was her dream since childhood to become a vet. She said her story is typical of veterinarians. She would always bring in the strays, she said, especially cats, and her family ended up with quite a few of the animals as pets.

Through high school and college, she loved her science courses. The science, her love of animals, and a desire to work with people were a perfect fit for an eventual career in veterinary medicine.

Last fall, when Dinelli was a sophomore in vet school, she learned about veterinary missions trips. She didn’t even know they existed and was thrilled that she might be able to combine serving the Lord on a mission trip with her love of animals. It would be a learning trip for her, as well.

She organized a group of other veterinary students, and they left for Honduras May 16, the day after finals. Honduras was beautiful, she said, and the people were very nice.

“The people were really glad we were there,” she said, “and the children were awesome. They were the most beautiful children I’ve ever seen. They just melted your heart.”

Dinelli said the people in Honduras have an average income of $450 a year. They are very poor, she said, and often can’t afford surgeries or other veterinary care of their pets and other animals.

The bulk of their work there were surgeries, she said. They mainly did spays and neuters of dogs and some cats. By the end of the trip, they had spayed or neutered 135 dogs.

The crew also de-wormed more than 500 dogs, applied flea and tick preventions, castrated 35 horses and eight bulls, and gave rabies vaccinations.

Dinelli knew how to de-worm before she went on the trip, but she got to learn spay and neuter surgeries, performing six spays and two neuters herself, with a veterinarian right beside her.

Keeping sterile technique was a challenge, she said, as the procedures were done outdoors right in the villages. They were sure to give antibiotics to help prevent infections after the surgeries.

The group traveled, sometimes for hours, to different small villages each day, and operated in their truck. Once in a while, a villager offered a table or other surface for the procedures.

Once a woman brought out her kitchen table, Dinelli said. They tried their best to cover it up and keep it clean.

The students spent their nights in cottages at a ranch, which hosts missions all year round. The windows were always open, she said, which led to quite a few creatures wandering in their rooms. A couple of bats were among the visitors, as was a tarantula on their shower curtain.

It was hot, too, at about 95 degrees during the day, but cooler at night, with temperatures between 65 and 70 degrees. Dinelli said she enjoyed the evenings, when they would all sit around the porch on rockers and a hammock, sharing devotionals and prayers.

The food was pretty good, too, and she said she probably ate more nutritionally there than she does at home. There was rice and beans at every meal, even breakfast, and pineapple, watermelon, or mango at every meal. Meats were mostly chicken.

Dinelli said she hopes to return to Honduras, maybe her senior year.

“I feel God calling me back there,” she said. “If you’re called, you have to go. And you know deep down it’s going to be amazing.”

Dinelli said she especially wants to thank everyone who prayed for her and the group and who helped them. Pine Bluff Animal Hospital and Aroma Park VCA Hospital also donated many supplies for their trip, which Dinelli said were very well used.

This summer, Dinelli is working a short externship at an Aurora specialty animal clinic, then she will mow lawns to earn some money. She begins her third year in veterinary school in the fall and is excited at the prospect of putting her newly-learned skills of surgery to use at school.