The Board

Last Saturday marked another milestone in our time here. The hospital Board met for the first time this year on Sat 3 May, and we were faced with the challenge of co-ordinating all the papers required for the meeting, organising the logistics of the meeting for 14 board members (only 8 attended in the end), whilst ensuring that our reports were also ready.
Thankfully, all went well and some key decisions were taken which would help us in planning the future of both the hospital and the nursing school.

The hospital has had, for the past three weeks, the privilege of hosting a medical student and her mum, from Texas USA who chose to do her medical elective here. It was for us an opportunity for our work to be reviewed and assessed by an outsider, as they have shed a different insight into our work here. She helped with our mobile clinic and had some very interesting experiences. On two occasions, the villagers presented her with two chickens and other foodstuffs as gifts.

J & Little J with Erin and Karen

There have been a few challenges in the past two months. The pump on our only well that provided us with good drinking water broke down, and now our main generator - which supplies electricity to the hospital, has lost a few crucial parts – so most of the hospital is without electricity at night. We are relying mainly on portable generators to provide us with electricity to selected homes. Thankfully, most of the operations are done with the help of portable generators. The pump by the way, was fixed a couple of weeks ago so we are doing ok with water - but still no pipe borne water yet. Hopefully that would be resolved pretty soon.
Please pray that we can get sponsors to help with the provision of basic utilities such as water and electricity.
God bless ya all.

On the No 2 River beach - splashing around.

The Pink Lady

The last few days have been interesting. Little J has suddenly taken a liking to the colour pink. Nothing pleases her more than putting on her pink clothes – especially a particular pink trouser!!! She goes to bed and even dreams about (we hear her calling out for ‘the pink’). I know pink is the ‘accepted’ colour for girls – oh she’s a little lady now- but why she has this obsession has beat us all. I guess we all go through some kind of phase like this. We don’t know how long this obsession would last and we don’t believe it would go on for long but we are glad it’s nothing too negative.

As usual, our lives are very, very hectic. The past month has been very exciting as the hospital farm takes shape. To see all those groundnuts beginning to sprout, covering the hospital land with a blanket of green plants…..as we were blessed with rains a few days after they were planted. The professional farmers among us have advised that to achieve the best crop, planting should be done by the second week of May. We seem to be on track, as the last batch of seeds would be planted before the end of this week.

Notice how even on the beach J still has JA on her mind.

J is also busy with her Obstetrics class and sorting out the community placement for her students, to be done by June. How do you arrange placements for 39 students at 7 or 8 Primary Health Units (PHU), when they can accommodate only 2 or 3 (max) students per week? This has to be done in a space of 4-6 weeks. It is proving to be a challenging task but she is relishing the challenge.

We are planning to have a break in June to attend a wedding in Ghana of one of our best friends. This would hopefully give us time to recharge our batteries and most importantly to review and reflect on keeping to God’s direction as we yield to His promptings. It can be very difficult as we try to find solutions to some of these issues – trying to remember that the work is not ours’ but the Lord’s. Our prayer is to find the time to seek God’s face intently and reflect on what we have been doing as we seek answers to the daily issues.

Please pray for God’s continued guidance, for spiritual renewal and physical rest; emotional and mental stability as we continue to have the peace of mind to enable us to endure the challenges we face.