Our work in Angola is a primary healthcare outreach with SIM, MAF, AGA and CEML.  SIM is our excellent US sending mission organization (www.sim.org), Advancing the Gospel in Angola (AGA) is out of Colorado and has been hugely involved in supporting the work at both CEML and Cavango.  CEML is the beautiful mission hospital in Lubango that invited us to Angola to work in primary care with rural people groups.  God works miracles every day at CEML through surgeons Steve Foster, Sam Fabiano and Annelise Olson, as well as other physicians and nurses, serving all arrivals from literally all over this part of Africa.

CEML Hospital

CEML Hospital

We currently live and work in Cavango, where Tim is treating people with illness/injury, making disciples, sharing the Good News and leading community efforts to improve the physical and spiritual health of the people in Cavango and surrounding villages, and simply loving and serving the beautiful people of this region of Angola (see Angola map @ kubackisinangola.com).

Tim prays with each patient, emphasizing to them that only God gives life and heals, and that (like us) he often uses tools to do His work (doctors, nurses, medicines, friends, etc).  He especially loves utilizing His people to help hurting people. Knowing that only He heals and that He hears our requests for help, we ask Him to resolve the patient’s health problem and to reveal Himself more and more to the person for whom we are praying.

One of the joys of my (Tim’s) work is a daily morning discussion with the patients and their families.  We talk for about 30 minutes about how we can improve our physical and spiritual health.  Improving physical health involves discussion of various symptoms that adults and children face in this culture and how they can make sound decisions as to how to respond to the various symptoms.  The spiritual health discussion involves a teaching on God’s Kingdom, revolving around a passage from the bible, followed by questions and discussion.  There is nothing better than the interaction with this revolving group of people and they are always grateful for the input and interaction, as few have the opportunity for such interaction in their rural villages.

Our morning discussion group with patients and their families

Betsy enjoys building relationships with especially the women in Cavango and the surrounding area. She handles the administrative duties associated with the small Cavango clinic/hospital and also assists SIM Angola administratively, as “Personnel Coordinator” of SIM Angola, with current and new missionary personnel as to missionary care and the sometimes complicated logistics involved in serving in a country that often presents challenges to people from other countries serving in Angola.

Betsy teaching English class

We have enjoyed the presence of the DeSouza family in Cavango since Febuary, 2021 as they join us in our work among these rural people.  Eduardo is a physician and Jocelyn is an NP and both hope to help with the clinical work in Cavango.

The Desouza Family. L-R: Tiago, Eduardo, Ella, Sienna, Jocelyn, Teu (Mateus)

Tim travels by small plane with Mission Aviation Fellowship Canada (MAFC) (mafc.org), as he is able, to remote sites in southern Angola to hold clinics among people groups living in areas difficult to access by car. The work is sadly plentiful and the health care need great after 30 years of war and little current health care infrastructure. In these rural areas, there are many tribal groups with no or little gospel presence and it is these groups that we are targeting with our health care ministry and public health interventions, while demonstrating and communicating with them our Father’s love.

We are especially targeting unreached people groups in the impoverished and severely remote southeast part of the country (Cuando Cubango Province) and have been embraced by the government in granting us permission to work among these groups and we are praying that our Father continues to open more opportunities among these peoples and directs us to others that He would prioritize in this place at this time.

For this primary health care outreach, we have three small planes and two pilots and over our first five years we have made many trips especially to the southern part of the country and served many with medicine, educational talks, and sharing the truth of our Father and His grace and love for these beautiful people.

The need is far greater than what we can meet. We would love to see several doctors, nurses and non-medical missionaries join our effort to reach out to especially these remote peoples of Angola.

Our plane and our two local translators for an isolated people group living in a dormant volcano

One of our rural clinic “buildings”

Tim’s medical boxes and clinic setup

The group gathered to hear Tim speak on improving our physical and spiritual health (before every clinic)

Tim prays with every person, asking our Father to resolve their health problem and to reveal Himself to them

Our only diagnostic tool is an extremely valuable portable ultrasound machine

The Cavango Mission

Activities of 2023 and plans for 2024:

Activities of 2023:

o Full-time hospital workers – 56

o Autonomous full-time clinicians Tim, Eduardo, Jocelyn, Florindo
o New part time clinician – Jordan Yarbrough, NP, Huambo

o Ministry visits from CEML, AGA, MAF, VCDC (Tim’s sending church), Vineyard Columbus, YWAM Angola,, SIM Angola and UIEA

o Graduation of lab tech x 3 after four years of training with return to work at Cavango in 2023

o Discipleship and evangelism through storytelling and drama weekly with church leaders

o Children’s and youth ministry

o Initiation of husband/wife chaplain program so that every patient receives personal care and prayer daily. It’s been very well received

o Initiation of construction of future main hospital building. Roof, exterior and interior walls complete. Wiring and plumbing to begin in March, 2024

o Renovation of old water tank, gravity, spring to tank, tank to hospital

o Operation of the “Transition Hospital” on foundation of former hospital

– Electricity and water in each room
– 5kW solar power system x 2, with 15kW generator backup
– ICU, Emergency Dept, Operating Room
– Consultation rooms x 3
– Laboratory – basic machines purchased and operating well
– Radiology with digital, portable X-ray – functional
– WiFi functional in all rooms

o Construction of roofed outdoor market at entrance of campus. It’s thriving

o Construction of jango (grass roof, no walls) for motor taxis, which transport most of our patients to the hospital

o Completed security fencing around hospital campus

o Construction fifty metal hospital beds by our local staff. Very well done

o Airstrip fully functional

o Initiation of Cashier System for patient payments for service

o Construction of additional outdoor latrines x 5

o Maintenance/repair of the raft to cross the Cubango River; addition of two guards for raft and airstrip

o Construction completed for housing for DeSouzas, SIM Guest house for visitors

o Completion of construction of Patient Family Housing (Vila) roofed, wall-less structure, outside of campus walls with latrine and jango x 2

o Completion of simple housing for diabetic patients x 2
Activities of 2023 (cont):

o Transition of former clinic and inpatient building to house TB patients only

o Completion of 40’ pharmacy shipping container storage with new inventory system

o Painting of the old hospital, transitional hospital, interior, exterior

o Solar “street lamps” scattered on hospital campus

o Sidewalks w pavers connecting all hospital buildings

o Landscaping – a local man has embraced this job and beautified our hospital campus using local plants…

o “Employment” of four cats (daily food) has completely resolved our perpetual rat problem

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Hospital Statistics for 2023:

• 10,089 consultations
• 2,792 hospital admissions
• 62 in-hospital deaths
• 20-80 acute inpatients/day
• 30-50 TB inpatients/day
• 306 TB patients completed treatment of 6-8 months
• 81 patients transported by air (via MAF) for life-saving surgery
• 200+ daily morning gatherings/messages, with 50-200 people, discussing how to improve our spiritual health and physical (Public Health instruction)
• 20,000+ adults attended daily morning gatherings and heard of the Kingdom of Jesus and a clear invitation to relationship with Jesus

Most common admission diagnoses in 2023:
o Malaria
o TB
o Heart Failure
o Renal Failure
o Pneumonia
o Diarrheal illnesses
o Typhoid
o Liver failure secondary to chronic hepatitis
o Cancer
o OB complications
o Burns
o Infectious wounds

Plans for 2024:

• Delegate leadership and management of various areas and functions of the hospital work.

• Completion of interior construction of the main hospital building

• Continuation of construction of Family housing (one 40’ x 80’ structure and possibly a second)

• Initiation of a “microfinance” Loan Program for workers (average of $300 each x 20)

• Increase water capacity with new tanks and borehole for both clinic and local village

• Completion of jango kitchen (grass roof, no walls) for daily meals for workers

• Begin training and facility capability for simple surgeries, including Cesareans

• Increase solar energy capacity (additional 15-60kW) for main hospital building

• Continuation of sponsored training of four teachers, who will return to teach the children of the Cavango region in 2026

• Drilling of boreholes and installation of manual pumps in 5-10 selected villages within a day’s walk of Cavango

• Continuation of discipleship and evangelism through storytelling and drama weekly with church leaders

• Continuation of Children’s and Youth ministry

• Continuation of Agriculture Project and cultivating/planting of vitamin-rich fruit trees in former orchard area on campus. Consider augmenting program to include housing bees, protein supplementation via protein packets, fish farming, other means…

• Welcome MAF pilot family, the Goud’s, to Cavango while they construct a house, to be completed in 2024

• Beginning of construction of the second (of three) dedicated inpatient building with AGA, local workers

• Welcome of three additional full-time Angolan nurses from outside of Cavango

• Construction of simple supplemental housing for visitors and staff from outside of Cavango

• Installation of more basic lab equipment to increase diagnostic accuracy

• Improve ventilation in three TB inpatient buildings

• Construction of simple bridge over Cubango River

• Installation of solar energy for Kubacki and DeSouza houses which are both currently without 24/7 electricity

Updated – February, 2024