Alberto and Laura Zamacona
Dr. Alberto & Laura head Project Compassion Oaxaca, which evangelizes indigenous people groups through medical outreach clinics.
Alberto Zamacona is a native of California who grew up in a Christian family. He came to know the Lord as his personal savior at the age of twelve. As a young man, his ethnic roots drew him to Mexico. He studied medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico during the 1970s. Then for the next twenty years Dr. Zamacona was a practicing physician in Oaxaco, Mexico.
In 1998 he had the opportunity to work with a group of doctors who had come to Oaxaca on a medical outreach. Dr. Zamacona was the only Mexican physician among the group. He relates that “he was sad and ashamed to see that foreign doctors had come to do a job that he and other Mexicans should have been doing for their own people.”
The next year, 1999, Dr. Zamacona was able himself to organize a couple of outreaches. He found it difficult, at first, to get others to understand the vision – to see what a great evangelistic tool this was! However, starting in 2000, the work blossomed. Project Compassion ran thirty outreaches in 2003, reaching over 3,500 people. Laura Zamacona works tirelessly alongside her husband in arranging and managing these outreaches.
What happens on a medical outreach? Consultations, treatment and medicine are provided without charge. Christian workers are brought along, to pray for those that will accept it. Often Gospel messages are distributed on audio cassettes and tracts. Where and when allowed by local authorities, the Jesus film is shown in the language of the people who were treated. (Frequently, this is an indigenous language, NOT Spanish.) The team works closely with pastors and Christians to arrange follow-up.
Home Church: Centro de Alabanza y Proclamación, Oaxaca, Mexico