Summer 2012 letter

Daniel at Dondi

Mother and child at Dondi Mission hospital

Steve Collins, operating on a patient with cataracts (over 100 operations in 2 weeks at Dondi)

Patient in bed, after her surgery

 A happy patient the morning after the operation, able to see her daughter again

AK-47 shells: remnants of the war in Huambo province

I visited Dondi Mission Hospital for two weeks last month. While i saw patients with general medical problems, Steve Collins cared for patients with eye complaints (the main reason for our trip). Until the mid-1970's, the mission maintained a seminary, agricultural school, leprosy mission, TB sanitorium, nursing and lab training schools, an international school, animal husbandry and a busy hospital servicing an area close to 2 million people. All this was destroyed during the civil war; now, a Bible school and girl's school are all that remain. 

It's a beautiful area, with even more beautiful people we met through our work there. And we pray that, with time, help for the people of the area will be restored.

Some of our medical work

Medical team to Kalukembe: the regional referral hospital for  1 million people, 180 beds and no doctor. We  come here once a month and are wondering if this might be a place for us long-term 

So this huge abdominal mass, thought to be a large ovarian tumor turned out to be a 10kg messenteric cyst!  

Nursing at Kalukembe: limited resources, lots of work. 

Priscila supervising the medical student Jody... they actually had fun! 

Zeke growing up: 15months

Zeke with his friend, Eva

We were trying to get a nice family picture.... Daniel had a temporary mohawk and Zeke was very distressed about our removing him from the fish pond he was swimming in.