Hope to Walk Again

When she came in to Hospitals of Hope, Gabriela* was convinced she’d never walk again. A year before, she’d been in an accident that had left her leg badly broken. She had been treated at another hospital, which had put an external fixator on her leg to hold the bone in place while it healed. Whether from lack of money or improper treatment, the external fixator remained in place a year later, and Gabriela still had no use of her leg.

When Gabriela came to Hospitals of Hope, staff and volunteers discovered that a section of bone in her leg had completely dissolved. Through surgery, they were able to remove a portion of her hip and use it and a metal rod to replace the missing section of bone.

A few days after surgery, when the doctor came in and told Gabriela that they were going to try to help her to stand, she didn’t believe him. She had given up on the possibility of using her leg. When hospital staff helped Gabriela to her feet and she was able to stand with the help of a walker, her entire countenance changed. Her face lit up as she realized the possibility that she would one day walk again.

People like Gabriela are the reason we do the work that we do. So many times, situations like Gabriela’s leave people in despair. But we serve a good God, one who has good plans—plans for hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11), both for this life and the life to come.

*Name changed.

Christmas in April?

“Papa Noel! Papa Noel!” This is how my dad was greeted as he entered an orphanage in Cochabamba, box of goodies in hand. It wasn’t Christmas time, and my dad doesn’t really look very much like Santa Claus, but, to those kids, he might as well have been Saint Nick himself.

My dad was in Bolivia for a little over 2 weeks, supervising physician assistant and medical students on rotation at the hospital. Judging from his stories and the pictures I’ve seen, visiting area orphanages was his favorite part. He and the students did check ups on the kids, many of whom had untreated health problems. It’s not that the orphanages don’t do a good job, he explained; there are just too many kids and not enough resources.

He told me about one little boy with degenerative retinal disease, who is slowly going blind. The orphanage where he lives has 2 caretakers for something like 40 boys; with that ratio, no one had even noticed that he was losing his eyesight. There is nothing to do to reverse the process, Dad says, but at least now that he’s been diagnosed, they’re taking him to the school for the blind.

It’s easy to become discouraged by need like this. There are so many who need care, and what we can do is so limited. But we believe that, even when we feel discouraged and as if the need is too great, our actions have eternal value.

As Mother Teresa once said, “The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.”

Our volunteers and the staff members at these orphanages will continue to work to make a difference in the lives of these children. We don’t know how our efforts will turn out, but we will continue to show them love in the best way we can. We hope and pray that perhaps, through our efforts, these fatherless children will come to know their Heavenly Father. That is the best gift we can offer.

Dios le Bendiga

It never ceases to amaze me how beautifully people pray in Spanish. I just finished reading a letter from Nestor Hugo, our staff pastor in Bolivia, and he greeted me with these words:

“It is my petition in prayer, that our Eternal Heavenly Father bless you, guide you, and prosper you in all of your activities every day. May the grace and peace of our Triune God be with you.”

Wow. I feel blessed by simply knowing that someone is praying that for me.

Lately, we at the Hospitals of Hope office have been desiring to give prayer a bigger place in our ministry. We want to make sure that we’re praying more regularly as a staff, and we want to enlist more prayer support for our work. We want to develop a group of people who will commit to praying regularly for our ministry, with whom we can share our specific prayer concerns. Jeanie Tidwell, one of our faithful local volunteers, has agreed to coordinate our prayer team, communicating our prayer needs and celebrating the answers.

Would you consider being a part of that team?

If so, please let me know by email, at leta@hospitalsofhope.org, or by phone, at 316.262.0964.

In the words of Nestor Hugo, “May our merciful and compassionate God bless you.”

In Memoriam

We’ve just returned from the funeral of Leonard Hicks, a faithful supporter and a great friend. Leonard was the owner of Castle Door and Hardware, next door to the Hospitals of Hope office, and we couldn’t have asked for a better neighbor.

Leonard was always eager to help us out however he could, whether it was by loaning us an extra forklift or by donating and installing doors in the Clinics in Cans. If you’ve spent much time at the office, you probably met Leonard, and you definitely met his dog Molly, who greeted us every morning as we arrived.

Leonard was the cofounder of the Bridgeport Area Business Association, and, when we decided to build Clinics in a Can for Haiti in January, he not only donated his own materials and labor but also recruited other area businesses to help out.

We were humbled to learn that Leonard’s family chose to set up a memorial fund benefitting Hospitals of Hope. Leonard gave so much in life; we should not have been surprised to learn that he would keep giving, even after death.

We will miss Leonard, but we don’t believe that we’ve seen him for the last time. As Tennyson wrote,

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,

Whom we, that have not seen thy face,

By faith, and faith alone, embrace,

Believing where we cannot prove;


...

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

Thou madest man, he knows not why,

He thinks he was not made to die;

And thou hast made him: thou art just.

...

We have but faith: we cannot know;

For knowledge is of things we see;

And yet we trust it comes from thee,

A beam in darkness: let it grow.

The Best Volunteers Ever

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I have to say it again—we have great volunteers.

With only three of us on staff here in Wichita, there’s far more work to do than we can handle on our own. With office tasks to complete, donations to inventory and pack, medical equipment to test and fix, trips to coordinate, events to plan, etc, our work can seem pretty overwhelming. But our volunteers make it manageable.

In the last couple of weeks, volunteers have built a new set of shelves in the warehouse and worked on organizing, packing crates, completing paperwork, and more. Here’s a picture of the new shelves. (As you can tell, they're already getting full!)

So, to all of you who give of your time, energy, and money to make our work possible, thanks. We couldn’t do it without you!

PA Students at Work in Bolivia

A team of 5 students from Wichita State University has arrived at our hospital in Bolivia, where they’ll be working for the next month. These students, in their 2nd year of the Physician Assistant program at WSU, are completing a rotation at our level II hospital, where they’ll learn about treating patients in a third world setting while assisting hospital staff.

This year’s students will be supervised by Michael Wawrzewski, PA-C, Hospitals of Hope’s founder and CEO, as well as by E.J. Reppert, MD, MPH. They will have the opportunity to observe differences in the healthcare systems of the US and Bolivia, as well as to see cases that they would not normally see in a US hospital, such as Chagas disease.

One former student, who has since spent time working in Afghanistan, commented that, in Bolivia, "you learn about health care that has limitations of money, medical supplies, instruments, and medicine, so you have to be more creative. That’s an excellent thing to learn as a medical provider."

We can set up rotations in Family Practice, Ob/Gyn, General Surgery, Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Medicine, Orthopedics, and Pediatrics at our hospital in Bolivia. We have formal arrangements with schools including WSU, Salus University, and Yale, but we have worked with other schools, as well.

If you’re interested in completing a rotation with us, email daniel@hospitalsofhope.org or call our office at 316.262.0964.

Loving the Half-hearted and the Corrupt

It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.

--Graham Greene, in The Power and the Glory

I was reading the God’s Politics Blog earlier today, and, while I don’t agree with everything it says, I was challenged by a simple question posted by one of their bloggers: “Does my life look like Jesus on the cross?”

I think that this question is asking if we are living sacrificially, offering love to others whether or not they ‘deserve’ it. It seems like living sacrificially would be much easier if people were easier to love—but people are broken and fallen.

Jesus didn’t die for us because we’re such good people; he died for us because he loved us.

I’m often struck by how hard it is to show love to people. Missionaries—those sent by Hospitals of Hope and by other organizations, both in the US and in other countries—deal with physical danger, unfamiliar surroundings, and cultural misunderstandings as they try to share Christ’s love. It’s not always easier closer to home, either. Even loving our neighbors or our family members can sometimes feel impossible.

Yet, in all of this, to quote Paul,

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Philippians 2:5-8

As Easter approaches, we ponder the depth of Christ’s love for us. It is because of him that we do all that we do here. I pray that this week, and every week, we will grow more and more like him.