NJ doctor heals body and soul in Guatemala | Faith Matters

For three decades, Dr. Gisela Munne has had a thriving medical practice in the Journal Square area of Jersey City. She often works 12-hour days, six days a week. After seeing a few dozen patients, she makes hospital rounds. It takes weeks to get an appointment. And I know because for years she treated my mother, Grace, and her caregiver, Bernardine Franciscan Sister Mary Reginald Zajac.

Part of Munne's success is that she has what is often called a good bedside manner. She is very patient and does not rush you even though there is a full waiting room outside the examination room. She has a pleasant personality and is very caring. Her staff reflects that same ambience in the office.

As a daughter of Cuban immigrants, Munne has a significant number of Hispanic patients. But what is not known is that her Christian faith not only informs how she practices internal medicine, but it has also motivated her to spend significant time throughout her medical career giving back to some of the poorest residents in Central America.

"As a Christian, I have always joined churches that support ministries," she said, paraphrasing the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus tells his disciples "to go out and spread the message of salvation and baptism throughout the world."

"To go," she said, could mean "next door or another country."

And that's where she spent part of this past summer – in Chiquimula, Guatemala — on a mission trip sponsored by Mendham Hills Community Church. The church contracts with Beyond the Walls, a local non-profit, to plan and carry out their mission trips.

In Chiquimula, she said, poor people live in shacks with leaking tin roofs. There is no running water in their homes.

Some of the volunteers would build little homes, called Potter houses, or classrooms. She, obviously, worked in the medical clinic.

During the trip, they also built a large chicken coop.

They also have a program to sponsor children's education because most drop out by third grade because they have to work, Munne said.

"Malnutrition is the main health problem for these families," she lamented. "We provide them with bags of food and hygiene products."

In the clinics, she saw many malnourished children very behind in the growth chart, she said.

As part of the mission, the group also provided vaccines for the children and Munne noted that adults don't seek medical attention unless it's severe.

"They can't afford the medicines, testing, and follow up," she said.

Government-run clinics and hospitals are so overwhelmed, many people also don't go for screenings, she said.

As a believer, however, she also participates in the missionary spirit.

"We also bring them the message of hope and eternal life through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," Munne said.

During previous trips, the missionaries would support single moms and pregnant women who would have otherwise terminated their pregnancies or given their children up for adoption, she said. In Guatemala City, they helped a local church feed their children and also taught them budgeting and trades like cooking and making leather goods they could sell.

The two churches she's attended through the years — Mendham Hills Community and the Crossing Church in Livingston — sponsor fund raisers year-round to defray the airfare (as much as $1,800 per volunteer) for the mission trips. She pays her own way and even raised money from members of her spin class.

The Mendham Hills church sends about 38 people in each of three summer groups. Throughout the year, parishioners tithe toward the missions.

Munne also sponsors the education and school lunches of two students each year, she said. She learned from experience that "for some children that's their only meal."

Munne was born in Miami Beach to parents who were exiled from Cuba in 1961 after Fidel Castro took over. She graduated from a Christian elementary and high school and then from Barry University, a Catholic university in Miami, in 1983. She then graduated from St. George University School of Medicine in the West Indies in 1988 and did her residency at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Paterson.

She then returned to Miami and joined a medical practice in Coral Gables. Her husband was from New Jersey, and they then relocated back to New Jersey. Their son is a veterinarian, and their daughter is following in her footsteps and is now in her last year of her residency in internal medicine.

"I would tell anyone who is interested (in a mission trip) to look into it and get out of your comfort zone," Munne suggested.

She knows that for most of the people she has met in Guatemala, their poverty won't go away.

"But they will know that they are loved," she said, "and that people are praying and helping to provide for them."

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