Visiting Tendala Hospital

Hey Church!

I am e-mailing from Tandala Hospital. The internet is on for about 2 hours. What amazes all of us is that we have internet at all. It has been available through a satellite system only about 6 months.

We had a rough ride here yesterday and buried our 4 wheel drive in a mud hole. All in all we got through on very rough roads. It is about 75 kilometers from Gemena and took us around 4 hours. We were greeted warmly. We are all staying in the missionary guest house. Actually pretty comfortable if you donèt mind no running water, no electricity, with high humidity and hot temps. Sorry about the french accents the computer I am using is set to French. I do believe I have eaten goat 10 days in a row. Starting to get a taste for the little fellows. Today we were awaken by a goat making a bunch of noise tied behind the house. They only get tied up when they are close to being dinner. Well Nate and Mike saw the little guy being prepared for dinner a few minutes later. He was quite tender.

Enough of the menu. Tandala Hopital is an amazing ministry. Two of our guys observed two surgeries today and on the second surgery our team leader assisted the doctor a bit. I passed on the opportunity to observe due to fear of passing out. I was able to see today where all our White Cross projects come. They do so much with so little. The whole hospital (180 beds) runs on 300K per year. I was able to walk through the men's and women's wards, the materity ward etc. I also saw the dental clinic and some work being done. Now this is not like a hospital most of us would want surgery in but praise the Lord for this ministry. When people get sick they want to come here.

They are also in charge of public health and run 30 clinics in many villages. It is amazing. They are very short on medicines now. I think I brough more ibuprophen than they had on the shelf. They have recruited four very sharp doctors who are committed to this ministry with one more being trained as a surgeon on Cameroon.

We will be here one more day before we start the long journey home. Tomorrow we will have opportunity to meet with some more staff and doctors about their vision for Tandala Hospital.

God Bless,

Pastor Randy