Another Milestone – We are Mobile

No, not that irritant that makes one accessible to everyone irrespective of location or time of day. Instead, I mean our outreach mobile clinic, which is now operational. Praise God!!!

The beginning of February marked another chapter in the ‘life’ of Nixon Hospital. The hospital re-started its outreach programme to surrounding areas after a 17-year break. Nixon Hospital previously used to run a number of outposts before the civil war. It was a vital service to the communities that the hospital served at the time. It was another way of making the hospital’s services available to a greater percentage of the population. In a country where road and communication networks are very rudimentary, access to health care can be very difficult and mobile services are usually one of the best options for reaching the public.

Also, another doctor has joined us albeit for a 6-month period, but this has increased the number of doctors to 3. In a country where the flow of medical personnel is ‘out’ rather than ‘in’ this is a welcome addition. The new doctor, who is a native of this country, has taken to the task like ‘duck to water’ even though he has been based abroad in the UK for the past 27 years where he practised most of his medicine. We are really grateful to God for the additional resource and help that he has brought to the hospital. This is because his presence makes running the mobile clinic less taxing on our present doctors.
The clinics are running presently in only two villages and our plan is to extend that to about 10 more by the end of the year depending upon availability of both financial and human resources. Our prayer is that God would open the windows of heaven and provide us with financial resources to enable us achieve this objective. Prayer warriors, please kindly make this a prayer point.

We have also had a bit of bad news. The handle on the only well that provides the hospital with good drinking water was damaged due to overuse. We are therefore without drinking water within the hospital campus but praise God there are other sources in town. It is however imperative that it gets repaired as soon as possible since the surrounding community depends on the well for good drinking water. Our major problem is finding the financial resources to repair the handle. Again, we are trusting the Lord for His provision because repairing the well would mean diverting badly needed resources that otherwise would have been used for looking after the patients. Our hope and trust is in the Lord. Please pray for us as we have sent off an email to an international organisations asking for financial help to repair the well.

As we go about our daily activities at Nixon, we are challenged every day to live as Christ would and to make decisions which can be both emotionally and professionally taxing. How do you deal with difficult and sometimes life threatening medical conditions when the patients have no ability to pay the medical bill, albeit a very small fee? Nevertheless, in all of this God has shown us His faithfulness when we have trusted Him to provide for us in such difficult times. As a mission hospital, our number one priority would be to show compassion and understanding and this sometimes means undertaking medical interventions even when we know that the patients may never be able to repay their medical bills. Saving lives through affordable and accessible medical care is our main objective and we thank God that despite some difficult cases we have not turned any patient away because of their inability to pay their bill.
For us as a family our lives are beginning to take on a regular pattern. We the adults leave for morning devotion at 7.30 am with the nursing students at the hospital chapel. Of late Little J has been waking up early – about 7 am and insists on going to chapel with us. Maybe this is just her way of spending as much time with us before we leave for our respective places of work – Michael to the office & Joey to the classroom. In respect of our daily routine, we are grateful to our house helpers who help us with Little J and with the house keeping, thereby enabling us to focus on our jobs here at the hospital. We consider this yet another blessing from God to have found very dedicated and trusty people to take care of our daughter and our home.

Little J is really flourishing and have made good friends here with some of the children on the campus. We have still not being able to find a teacher to help her with her development so mummy helps her with her alphabets and colour identification. She has recently taken a great deal of interest in trying to identify various colours. Presently the phrase ‘what colour this?’ is a constant one in our home.

Just to end I recall a recent devotional piece I read about how the efforts of one college student changed the lives of a whole family. This is because he showed compassion to one man which led to him and his family accepting Christ. This started a chain-reaction, which led to a change in the lives of a whole generation who dedicated their lives to Christ. The bible verse that talks about not despising the beginning of small things comes to mind. Our prayer is that God would find our work worthy to be used to touch the lives of others.