PRAISE
We praise the Lord that we have some short-termers from France and the UK here now. A General Practitioner, a Pharmacist, and two Physical Therapists for 2-4 months.
Our main reason for being here is to reach unreached people groups for Christ. But another reason for being here is to minister to our brothers and sisters in Christ who are also on the front line.
We’ve been able to patch up some of them and their children so they could return quickly to their ministries. We’ve also treated some of the national colleagues who serve the Lord with them.
The missionaries know when they send patients here there is a Christian witness.
Debbie, despite wearing several caps, is holding up well. This is a praise item.
PRAYER REQUESTS
BERT’S KNEE:
My knee, in a word, is bad. It’s not much better now than before surgery. The long hours of standing in the OR here are taking its toll. I will almost certainly need a total knee when we return to the US next year.
In the meantime, your prayers that the Lord will intervene and help me make it another 6.5 months are appreciated. Hey, or for total healing! We’ve been back a month already so time marches on.
It is obvious that I must pull out of some of this work, but there is no replacement in surgery yet.
ADDITIONAL SURGEON:
CEF and our partner missions, Baptist Mission Society UK, SIM France/Belgium, and Lutheran Brethren US, have been unable to recruit another surgeon yet.
The greatest need in this area of Chad is surgery. There are other hospitals that can handle many of the nonsurgical problems, but here we do a broad variety of surgical procedures.
For example, in the last few of days, I operated on a six-week-old baby with pyloric stenosis and one with an imperforate anus. Both usually are lethal conditions if no surgeon is available.
We had a young man yesterday with a head injury, fractured hip, and intra-abdominal injuries from a motorcycle accident.
We usually do a couple of prostate operations and thyroidectomies and mastectomies each week as well as many hernias, hysterectomies, C-sections, etc.
We will soon open our new surgical center that will have four Operating Rooms. We have only one OR now, and it gets stressful when we’re in the middle of a case and have an emergency such as a stat C-section.
PARTNER MISSIONS:
To run a hospital like this one without everyone getting burned out requires more depth in staff. Thus the reason to seek more partners.
All of our current partner missions have other projects in Chad in addition to this hospital.
The other missions that plan to meet with us at our Summit on January 13, 2018, also have other ministries in Chad.
It is to all missionaries’ personal advantage to have at least one dependable mission hospital in the area.
Thanks for your prayers!
Bert & Debbie