Feeding the Soul
Look at all those onions!
These are three of our committed kitchen workers at SCH. Our hospital is unique in that we provide three meals a day to our patients (at other hospitals, the patients’ families have to bring the food), and this is a critical part of getting them healthy. In addition to providing great food, kitchen staff meet in two Bible St.udy groups weekly. They just completed a study on maturing in Christ. When asked how the study has impacted their lives, here were some of the answers:
“We used to get angry easily in the kitchen. Now we understand that this is wrong.”
“Before, I didn’t want to give to the poor. Now I have compassion. My heart is broken and I try to help them.”
“Now sometimes we will even cook food for the patients’ families too.”
One of the groups collected money for two poor patients in the hospital in order to help them pay for transportation costs home from the hospital. Praise God for how He is using these women, and how He is transforming their hearts!
Another Surgeon For Ethiopia
This is a guest post from Dr. Jon Pollock, originally featured on his personal blog. Dr. Pollock is a staff surgeon at Myungsung Christian Medical Center in Addis Ababa, our sister hospital. Our surgery residents, including Dr. Daniel Gidabo, train at both facilities: here in Soddo and at MCM in Addis. (In fact, Dr. Pollock himself previously served as one of our staff surgeons here!) The following is his account of Dr. Daniel's graduation:
Last Saturday, we celebrated the graduation of the sixth PAACS resident in Ethiopia. Dr. Daniel Gidabo finished his five years of training in general surgery at the end of August. Daniel has taken a position as a surgeon in his hometown, a city of more than 100,000 people that has not had a full time surgeon in a very long time. There Daniel will have the opportunity to treat hundreds and thousands of people who otherwise would have died without surgery. We are very proud of Daniel and his accomplishments. He has a well deserved reputation as a bold and effective evangelist and has led literally hundreds of people to Christ during our time with us.
During my remarks at his graduation ceremony, I spoke to Daniel from Psalm 34, one of my favorite Psalms. It begins with triumphant words of praise.
I will extol the Lord at all times;
His praise will always be on my lips.
My soul will boast in the Lord;
let the afflicted hear and rejoice.
Glorify the Lord with me;
let us exalt his name together.
These words were particularly appropriate for this day. We praise God for what he has done for us. When Daniel started his training five years ago, he had no guarantees that his work would amount to anything. The PAACS program in Ethiopia was not accredited at that time. There was little hope that this little upstart program would ever amount to anything. Fast forward five years and we are accredited by both the Ethiopian Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health and the College of Surgeons of East, Central and Southern Africa. We have expanded from one hospital to two and have tripled the number of residents in the program. This is only because of what God has done to bless the work he has called us to do. Praise God for what he had done. I sought the Lord, and he answered me;
He delivered me from all my fears.
I assured Daniel that there will be times that he will be afraid. Fear is an integral part of being a surgeon, particularly in the first year starting out on your own in practice. I urged him to seek after the Lord, and He would deliver him from all his fears. Delivery from fears comes with another promise if we look to him.
Those who look to him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame.
I encouraged Daniel to look to Him and be radiant.
This poor man called, and the Lord heard him;
He saved him out of all his troubles.
I reminded Daniel that his hometown has been without a surgeon for years and that people were crying for help.
Taste and see that the Lord is good;
blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.
As PAACS surgeons, this is as essential to our lives as anything we do in the operating room. We have the unbelievable privilege to invite people to “taste and seek” that the Lord is good. I encouraged Daniel to continue to be bold in his witness.
The righteous cry out, and the Lord delivers them;
He delivers them from all their troubles.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Finally, I told Daniel that as surgeons in Ethiopia, if we let ourselves, our hearts will be broken and our spirits crushed. There are so many challenges, so much pain and disease, so much death that if we are not careful, we can become hardened and uncaring. But as painful as it can be, we must allow our hearts to remain soft and able to be broken, because the pain, disease and death that we face everyday, breaks the heart of God.
One in a Million Babies
One in 729,000. That is the odds of having quadruplets naturally - without the aid of fertility medicines. And for this young Ethiopian lady, it happened 5 days ago. With no prenatal care, and no knowledge of the multiple babies she was carrying, she made the trek from her rural home to the local health center. There she gave birth to four babies, one of whom died soon after birth.
She was advised to seek further care at a hospital, and found her way to us. The mother herself is being treated with antibiotics for a suspected uterine infection, but she is expected to make a full recovery. The three surviving kids are doing well. Two of them have a mild omphalitis (an infection of the umbilical cord stump) and are being treated with IV antibiotics. They are expected to do well.
The three celebrated the Ethiopian New Year yesterday on their fourth day of life. The new family is the talk of the hospital as we ring in the New Year. A multiple gestation pregnancy is high-risk in any country, but especially here where over 90% of the women have no access to prenatal care. Though we mourn the loss of one of the babies, we praise God for the miracle of a healthy mom and three healthy infants.
A Miracle at Soddo
The parents were shrieking in grief and disbelief as they ran their 14 month old little boy to the ER at Soddo Christian Hospital.
Just minutes earlier they had found him upside down in a bucket. A bucket of mop water. He had wandered out and managed to tip himself into it, and couldn't get out. He literally drowned.
When the parents brought in little Yekebesera, they thought he had been underwater for at least five minutes. In the ER, he was having seizures which were requiring multiple doses of strong medications to stop them. Only minutes later, he began "posturing" - meaning that he was extending his arms and legs in such a way that indicates very severe brain damage.
Our pediatrician admitted him to the ICU, and assisted his breathing with a CPAP machine which we just purchased through generous donors. All of the doctors who cared for him that evening thought this little boy would never make it. But trusting God, and hoping for a miracle, we did everything we were capable of doing.
The next days, Yeke remained seizure-free, and started waking up more. Here's what our pediatrician Dave Ayer said when he walked into the room on hospital day #3:
"When I came in Sunday morning and his dad asked me if he could eat...I thought he was joking. That is, until I looked down and found out this little guy had purposefully ripped off some of his monitoring equipment. He was interacting normally with his parents and requesting something to drink. It nearly brought me to tears--today he came off CPAP and is on minimal oxygen support and eating/drinking like a normal kiddo. My only remaining challenge will be to convince his dad that he actually needs to stay 7 days to finish his antibiotics."
Praise God for this miracle. And for donors like you who gave so that this boy could have the gift of life.