We had a pretty remarkable year.  We told over 20,000 people about Jesus, apart from religion, at our hour-long morning gatherings with patients and their visiting families. 20,000! In a “small” group meeting of 50-200 attendees daily, with different people every day; the majority visiting us for a day or two, after which they return to their lives in and around the rural region of Cavango with knowledge of a Father who wants to know them.

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Average church attendance in the US is 186 people, with an average of 3-5 visitors/week.  This means that about 200 visiting people hear about Jesus in weekly church services.  At our little rural outpost in the heart of Africa, we shared Jesus with over 100x that number of “visitors” last year…  This is the work that you are supporting…

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Though there is value in inviting people to one’s church services, Jesus said to “go” and “be my witnesses” that He is alive and reigns today and will live and reign when your life ends.  The majority of those who hear of relationship with a living Jesus in Cavango will never set foot in a “church”.  Most will never forget the message heard in Cavango or the demonstration of care they received during their stay.  Our message is simple.  Jesus is alive and invites every hearer to daily, interactive relationship with Him.  We share and demonstrate how to walk with a living Jesus and that walking with Him will never be easy, will set you apart from the majority (narrow vs wide path) and will be fraught with mockery and rejection.  Following Jesus will not bring happiness but one’s life will be a journey with our living Shepherd King.  We also share simple knowledge every day of how to improve one’s physical health…

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We set up two monitors with ECG leads for our most critical patients this week.  This is the first time Cavango has ever had “beeping” machines!  They are used and were donated by beautiful individuals in the US and will serve our most critical patients for years.

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We have seen our volume greatly increase in the first few months of 2024.  It’s been busy.  We’ve enjoyed the presence of an Angolan physician, Vianne, here to learn evidence-based, rural medicine.  We had a medical student with us from Germany, Elias, and another from the US, Nathan.  Another student from the US, Evan, arrived this week.  As I have never forgotten my visits to Haiti in the 1980s, they will never forget their time in Cavango and their lives and careers will forever be influenced by what they see and learn here.

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Amanda arrived with pelvic pain for several days.  She arrived when we had a beautiful, visiting surgical team here doing minor surgeries, led by Annelise Olson and April Hall from CEML.  We diagnosed Amanda with an ectopic pregnancy which was bleeding into her abdomen.  Surgery saved her life.  If she had gone to a shaman, to another health post or to another hospital in Angola, she would have died.  If she had come a day earlier, she would have died.  If she had waited another day to arrive in Cavango, she would have died.  The Wind…

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The surgery team also repaired seven hernias, repaired an intestinal perforation in a teenage boy from Typhoid and removed a large, uterine tumor in one of our dear workers.  They are returning this week to tackle nine more surgeries for these people who have great difficulty obtaining these same surgeries in this country.

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Feliciana’s first pregnancy was also an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy and she arrived this week and we were able to treat her with medication before she hemorrhaged and her situation became life-threatening.

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This week we saw several people with large abscesses secondary to injections from dirty needles at “health posts”.  These needles are reused multiple times on different people, without site-cleansing.  Flora arrived a week after a similar injection and her whole buttock was black.  All tissue was removed to the muscle and she will be with us for months as her huge wound scars over with sterile dressing changes.

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We also opened several dental abscesses this week and we see several people/year die to asphyxiation from the spreading infection/swelling, which they bear too long before arrival.  One young man came in during the surgery team’s time here and his whole anterior neck was necrotic.  He had tolerated beyond-imaginable pain for over a week at home and tooth pain for weeks prior to that.  He didn’t survive.  Where there is no access to basic health care… 

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We’ve had six infants arrive with liver failure because in the first weeks of life their parents purchased medicine for their kids from a local shaman.  Several have survived and several will not survive the mixture of “all-natural” leaves and roots, one (or more) of which is liver toxic.  We teach moms and dads that nothing is better/necessary for the baby beyond mom’s milk until six months but they hear, and believe, that they need to supplement. 

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This is a good example of the need for trust in any instruction, “education” and public health program.  Our counsel is sound and proven but they have other voices shouting unstudied advice from people they know and trust.  They know nothing of studies/degrees/expertise but they know trust.  More are coming to Cavango, as the trust dynamic changes the longer we are here. The developed world has sent scores of teams/booklets/diagrams/videos to teach proven methods and people everywhere in the poorest places listen/watch politely and continue with their ancient methods.  Change occurs where people with knowledge to give live among the people and establish trust through relationship and teach those who trust them.  An old saying: “People are more interested in how you care than in what you know.”

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The same is true of Jesus and His ways.   He said to go and “make disciples”, not to “go” and preach/teach/hold crusades/make converts.  We can do these activities if we use them to build relationship, to know and be known.  If we seek to teach without living among them and establishing trust, we return home feeling good about our effort in accomplishing little and causing long-term harm.

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Short-term medical teams can do great good (especially in the area of surgery), but they can also cause great harm, arriving with bells and whistles to an area where they are unknown.   After the talented and well-meaning foreigners depart, the locals have difficulty trusting the simple local medications and care-givers who remain (who lack bells and whistles).

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All of our six oxygen concentrators have been in use every day this past week, providing high-concentration oxygen to kids who arrived with blood oxygen levels that wouldn’t sustain life.  Thirteen kids will return home alive because of these machines and the purchase of the same by your contributions to this work.  A beautiful group from the US and Brazil has purchased four more of these machines and they will arrive soon…. and benefit many…

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Our German Shepherd, Lisamba, had seven puppies and two survived their first day, nearly the same as statistics for moms and kids in our region, where about 1/3 kids don’t survive to the age of five.

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We still “employ” four cats on the hospital campus, feeding them daily a small ration of cat food.  We now have no rats on the campus, a problem that plagued us for years.

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We’ve given blood transfusions to over a dozen kids in the past two weeks.  Each of these kids will return home because of the capability of this little bush hospital to provide another’s matched blood (usually a family member) safely and efficiently to those with blood levels that can’t sustain life (most have had more than 2/3 of their blood destroyed by malaria).

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We’ve had three new cases of full-body and deforming leprosy this past week.  We had a whole year without new cases and thought it was, perhaps, eradicated from our area.  Meds are under the tight control of the government and there are none available in our province…

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Inflation in this country has escalated, with many of our med prices increasing exponentially in the past year…  costs for commonly used antibiotics have increased 8x and that of malaria meds, 10x!

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The abuse and neglect we see, especially toward the powerless, the poor and the women and children, is sometimes beyond bearable.  Principles that have become commonplace where Jesus’ teachings have been embraced are largely absent in this culture.  Demonstrated compassion for “the least”, demonstrated concern for the suffering of others before oneself, demonstrated sacrifice of self for the well-being of another… 

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We see the prosperous “developed world” sprinting in the same direction of this largely godless culture as passion for one’s personal “happiness”, comfort and ease takes priority over Jesus’ emphasis of service and “betterment” of others.  

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It was exactly this philosophy of Jesus that attracted me to Him as a clueless, immature, self-focused young adult and caused me to wonder about His deity.  I was fascinated and intrigued by His teaching and how He demonstrated what He taught and it wasn’t difficult to see how set apart it was from all other teaching and living I’d seen/heard/experienced.  So little of our King’s emphasis is taught in “His” church today as we pursue self-betterment and twist His teachings to support our pursuit of personal wealth/health.  Following Jesus and adhering to (all) His teaching (essentially the prioritization of Him and of others) is the most challenging way to live and few embrace it, both in “the church” and outside.  We love to call on others to live this way but who will follow Jesus today and “die” to self-satisfaction, self-pleasure, self-comfort and self-betterment?

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For example, who will go to the fifty villages within a day’s walk of Cavango and teach them of Jesus and proven methods of agriculture, nutrition, hygiene, etc while developing trust relationships with them over time?  Like with Jesus’ disciples, no special education is needed, no special skills… but someone with care for people and communion with Jesus will likely bring transformation to people that this region hasn’t seen for several thousand years…

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