ELWA Building Destroyed by Fire

Last week, our partner hospital in Liberia, ELWA (Eternal Love Winning Africa) reported that one its buildings caught fire and burned down. The building containing the radio station was destroyed by fire late last week. The cause of the fire is yet to be established. ELWA is still able to broadcast its radio station from a satellite site.

“[Praise the Lord] that we are still broadcasting the gospel which we trust will give some hope and courage to our many listeners and sympathizers during this crucial period,” said one of the ELWA administrators.

More discouraging news come from Liberia as the presidential elections took a violent turn last week. This update comes from our missionary friends in Liberia:

Today was a rough day in Liberia. Our runoff election is scheduled for tomorrow but one of the political parties is asking all of their supporters to boycott the elections. They had a protest today and began to march into town. Things became heated when the Liberian police backed by the UN tried to stop them and several people were killed. We had some of our missionaries in town and they had a bit of a harrowing time getting home. Everyone is safe and we are now restricting our movements. Please be praying for peace and righteousness to prevail.

Hospitals of Hope has had a presence in Liberia, Africa since for several years now.

In our first two years of working in Liberia, we primarily focused on JFK Medical Center in Monrovia, Liberia, the main government hospital in this country of 3.5 million people. When we began work there, JFK was in need of basic equipment, but Hospitals of Hope has donated $1.1 million of medical equipment to JFK, greatly increasing its capacity to effectively treat patients.

Since then, we have shifted our focus to ELWA (Eternal Love Winning Africa), a well-respected and established ministry, which has been at work in Liberia since the 1950s and began as a ministry of SIM (then Sudan Interior Mission).
Although ELWA offers quality care and has great plans for the future, the hospital is in dire need. With only 1 doctor for every 28,000 people in Liberia, ELWA is swamped with patients, and their limited resources are stretched thin. In summer 2010 we sent a volunteer team to work at ELWA, and, in early 2011, we partnered with the Brother's Brother Foundation to send necessary equipment to the hospital.

Join with us as we pray for both ELWA as they recover from this fire and for peace in Liberia through the remainder of the elections.

Update from 11/16/11

It was announced this week that President Sirleaf was re-elected as Liberia's president. Below is a congratulatory statement from the United States that also describes last week's election protest.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

STATEMENT BY SECRETARY CLINTON

On behalf of President Obama and the people of the United States, I want to congratulate the Liberian people for exercising their right to vote in last week's presidential and legislative elections. These historic elections are important milestones on Liberia's path toward democratic reconciliation. The United States congratulates President Sirleaf on her re-election and we will continue to work with her and all elected officials to advance democracy, and promote peace and prosperity.

The United States commends the National Elections Commission for conducting free, fair, and transparent elections. We applaud the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the African Union and others for sending observers to monitor the elections, as well as the UN Mission in Liberia for promoting security during the electoral process.

The violence on November 7th marred this otherwise peaceful process, so we welcome the creation of a Special Independent Commission of Inquiry to investigate the incident. We are also deeply disappointed by the Congress for Democratic Change’s decision to boycott the run-off election in an attempt to delegitimize the election. We urge all political parties to respect the election results and resolve their differences peacefully.

The United States is a long standing friend of the Liberian people and we are committed to their future. Congratulations on this momentous occasion.

ELWA Makes Plans to Expand

Hospitals of Hope’s partner ministry in Liberia, ELWA (Eternal Love Winning Africa) is making progress on drawing plans to expand its hospital in Monrovia.

Kedrick White, the director of ELWA in Monrovia, Liberia, has been working with a volunteer architect to develop plans for the new hospital. The current goal is to build a new a new 80-90 bed hospital to replace the current 40-year-old 30 bed hospital.
The plans also include an entry way area with seven wings coming off of it. The different wings house all the essential care facilities like an emergency room, surgical rooms, an outpatient clinic, children’s ward, male and female wards, a dental clinic, pharmacy, lab, counseling services, a chapel, a cafeteria, and administrative offices.

ELWA hopes to complete this project with in the next five years. However, they may be able to accomplish it sooner because Samaritan’s Purse has recently expressed interest helping with the project.

The current ELWA Hospital was built in 1965 and is too small and out-of-date to meet the needs of the community. With only 1 doctor for every 28,000 people in Liberia, ELWA is swamped with patients, and their limited resources are stretched thin.

Hospitals of Hope has sent volunteers to serve at ELWA the past four years. Also in early 2011, Hospitals of Hope partnered with the Brother's Brother Foundation to send necessary equipment to the hospital, including a much needed x-ray machine.HOH staff member, Daniel White will be traveling to Liberia next week in order to install the donated equipment.

Hospitals of Hope is committed to helping bring change in Liberia, through sending essential equipment, training hospital staff, and providing patient care.

The Hope of Glory

Check out this reflection by Peter Wickwire, one of our Liberia volunteers:

As I am sure you know, SMP [a Wheaton College program with which HOH is partnering] offers so many different and even unusual experiences, and Liberia was by no means an exception! I spent six weeks in this hospital that was located on the coast of the beautiful Atlantic. It would have felt more like paradise had their not been daily reminders of the travesty and horror of the civil war that had ravaged the nation. Daily I saw and interacted with beautiful Liberian people, but often their beauty was masked by an emotional callous that set in from the constant death and torture caused by witless militia wreaking havoc across the country.

I loved my time at the hospital. At first it was a little difficult getting our foot in the door. Often they would say, "You're welcome, you're welcome here" and then do nothing to help us get set up. Mostly I think it is because they had never had such newbies come to them, and so while they were used to white people coming in and taking charge we were there as inexperienced pre-med students. Soon, however, they began to understand that we were there to be taught and then to use that to serve.

By two weeks into our time I had scrubbed in on surgeries (C-sections, hernia repairs, appendectomies, hysterectomies, myomectomies, ovarectamies, etc), I dressed wounds and did stitches, I did a circumcision, and I moved on to the OB ward where I got to take care of pregnant ladies and those who were ready to deliver. I listened to fetal hearts, I set up IV's for pregnant woman with malaria, I inserted catheters to prep woman for C-sections, and I even got to deliver a baby all by myself!!! It was such a momentous thing... to see life come into this world and the pain that has to take place for it to happen. Really makes the imagery in the Bible, as in the pains of childbirth, a lot more real (Romans 8)... And as it says in that passage, "the creation groans in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed" it was very easy to see that in Liberia. Amidst so much pain and suffering, I had to daily remember the hope of glory, the hope of Christ removing the evil and ugly from this world.

Summer in Liberia: A Volunteer Story

We have a team of students from Wheaton College serving at ELWA Hospital in Liberia this summer. When HOH staff traveled to Liberia a couple of weeks ago, we interviewed them about their experiences. Here are some excerpts from one of the interviews:

My name is Peter Wickwire, and I’m part of a group of three that has come to ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia for 6 weeks. We’ve had a blast so far. It’s been about 4 weeks, and each week has given us something entirely different than the one before it.

I went to the OR to start with. I’m so thankful I went to the OR. It was a really good landing for me in the clinic. The OR is pretty much like the functioning ER, the functioning operating room. The first couple days were difficult to get settled into. I don’t think they were used to premed students coming in. They didn’t understand back then that we were really here to be taught, and then, using what we’re taught, serve. It was really just watching people, shadowing from the corner, silently watching people.

Really my in was that I watched a nurse folding gauze for surgery and wound dressings, and the next day, without them asking, I just got up and started doing it, and he’s just like, “Oh, where’d you learn how to do that?” They kind of realized that we can learn, and so time went on and day after day I started doing more things, learning new things.

I saw a c-section one day. It was the first c-section I had ever seen in my life. The next surgery after that was another c-section, and they’re like, “Okay, Peter, you’re scrubbing on this one.” I was like “What are you talking about?” but I ended up scrubbing on the surgery, and it was a really neat experience.

After the first week or so, I think they really picked up on the fact that really we’re here to be taught and really here to just serve them, and they really started understanding that and utilizing that. Also, I think what helped was founding relationships with them and spending time just talking, and learning, and exchanging personal stories and life stories of how the war has shattered this country. It’s good to hear their stories of what they had to go through. It kind of opens doors for you to be part of their lives.

I think one of the difficult things for me being in Liberia is this place is really so torn. The buildings you see when you’re driving by are a living history of the war that happened so recently. It’s hard to be in a country so full of pain and just coming out of that. It’s a beautiful time, and yet it’s a difficult time.

I think my favorite thing of being in the clinic has not been delivering a baby or stitching up patients but getting to know the Liberians and speaking Liberian English to them and joking around with them and them loving to see that I’m trying to learn their culture. People are really grateful.

This trip has been so beneficial to me as a premed student looking in the future to going into medicine internationally, to use it for furthering Christ and his kingdom, and I couldn’t have thought of a better experience for me. They’re kind of teaching me what it looks like to use the resources that you have, which here are very limited, to give the best health care possible. There is just such a pressing need for help in this country, and it was good to visualize that. It’s a renewed fuel to the passion and fire I had to become an international physician. I really hope to someday come back and serve in a country like this, if not maybe here.