Praises start the morning as the team joined the Theovision staff for a short time of devotions and prayer. Theovision began with the idea of creating audio scriptures in various tribal languages around Africa. From there their ministry has expanded to create listening clubs in the villages, ongoing recordings of yet more languages as well as radio and healthcare and community development. They fit well with HCJB Global because they believe evangelism happens best through both proclaiming the Gospel and loving the people in tangible ways. But what became very evident is that these Theovision people know how to pray! Thank you Lord that they are praying for us while we are here. Last night one of the team members gave a devotional time about the veil coming down in the temple—removing the separation between man and God through Christ Jesus. Indeed, at the jobsite today the separation also began coming down between us and our new Ghanaian friends. Jesus came and broke down barriers of race, religion and culture to reach out. I pray it is the same for us.
Amazing progress on the jobsite welcomed the team from Woodmen Valley Chapel as we arrived at the construction site on Monday morning.The contractor and his crew had obviously been working diligently to prepare the footings and pillars that will allow the team to begin laying concrete blocks.After some rest to recover from jet lag that was mostly negated by the late hour required to watch the Superbowl, the team was still itching to get their hands dirty. Reverend Theo Asare met the team and showed them a short tour of the Theovision headquarters before we started. I love the sign he has on his desk that says, "Make no small plans here." Indeed, the Tree of Life Health Post day clinic , situated directly beside the Theovision headquarters, is the fruit of this type of thinking. We met the jobsite foreman and began the process of integrating ourselves into the workflow.This process didn’t go great the first day and there were many awkward moments as we tried to learn to work together with the Ghanaian crew.I learned a few names and was glad to discover that many were familiar to me—Sylvester, Foster, Ebenezer, Frank—with a few Kofu and Rasheed type names mixed in. All are said with a strong accent so often it is hard to figure out someone's name. It is some consolation that they are no better at pronouncing our names.
On Sunday February 7, 2010 services at the church Lee and Michelle Sonius attend on the campus of the University of Ghana.At first the academic setting seemed to saturate everything with an intellectual tone.The music and the message were intelligent and well done, but the crowd was somewhat subdued and quiet in comparison to other African churches I've been at.Yet when the offering baskets were placed up front and the music started for the offertory, everything changed.Joyous singing arose from every mouth. Feet began to shuffle, bodies began to sway and hands clapped rhythms that seemed to arise from every soul.Joy arose from giving.What a testimony to the Kingdom of God that the most celebrated event at the church is the act of generous and spontaneous giving.
I put a new feed in the bottom right corner of our blog that automatically updates with the latest Tweets from HCJB Global. A lot from our medical team in Haiti recently.
This is an article about HCJB Global's involvement in Haiti. My friends Steve and Sheila and about 4 others are over there now. Please pray.
Sources: HCJB Global, Samaritan’s Purse (written by Ralph Kurtenbach and Harold Goerzen)
A quick response by HCJB Global Hands has put an emergency medical response team from Ecuador en route to the devastation on the Caribbean nation of Haiti after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck on Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 12.
In response to Samaritan Purse’s request for a medical help, International Healthcare Director Sheila Leech immediately began assembling a medical team including surgeons, family physicians, nurses, an anesthesiologist and a water engineer.
A registered nurse, Leech is heading the group as she has done in previous disasters around the world such as in 2005 when a medical team from Ecuador helped in quake relief efforts on Nias Island, Indonesia.
Samaritan’s Purse is centering its relief efforts at a 100-bed hospital in Port-au-Prince operated by a local partner, Baptist Haiti Mission. The hospital, 20 miles from the quake’s epicenter, only suffered minor damage and has electricity from back-up generators.
The hospital’s director of operations, Kyrk Baker, called the situation “overwhelming” with patients lining the floor. “There are big box vans coming in with people to see a doctor,” he told Samaritan’s Purse. “It’s just unbelievable the amount of people that are lined up trying to get basic medical care.”
Samaritan’s Purse has chartered a DC-3 cargo plane from Missionary Flights International (MFI) to transport supplies such as water, shelter materials, medical supplies and other emergency needs to Port-au-Prince. The first flight departed from Fort Pierce, Fla., Wednesday afternoon. A second flight on Thursday will carry additional supplies and staff members from Samaritan’s Purse and HCJB Global.
Family physician Dr. Steve Nelson said search and rescue efforts will be essential during the first few days. “We expect we will be receiving patients with severe traumatic injuries,” he explained. “A lot of the early response will be surgical, yet we hope to be able to manage some of the other kinds of problems that will be seen early because of the lack of water and infectious disease.”
While team members will concentrate on meeting people’s physical needs, their spiritual welfare is also pre-eminent. “We’re going with a team that we know—people who love the Lord and want to share Him in every way as we’re in this ministry situation of disaster response,” Nelson added. “We want to be able to show the face of Jesus as we work with our hands. We trust the name of Jesus will be lifted up in all that we do.”
HCJB Global and Samaritan’s Purse combined efforts after two natural disasters in 2007, including an earthquake that left thousands homeless in Pisco, Peru, and flooding that inundated southern Mexico’s Tabasco state.
The quake struck while an HCJB Global engineer was in Port-au-Prince to repair an automation system for partner radio station Radio Lumière. The engineer and three other technical workers, including two volunteers from the U.S., escaped injury. Operated by the Evangelical Baptist Mission of South Haiti, Radio Lumière is a radio ministry with a network of nine stations that reaches 90 percent of Haiti’s population. Radio station 4VEH, operated by cooperating ministry One Mission Society (formerly OMS International) in Cap-Haitian, was not damaged by the temblor.
“Our hearts go out to the suffering people of Haiti,” said Ken Isaacs, vice president of programs for Samaritan’s Purse. “We appreciate the close working relationship we have with HCJB Global for this response. Please pray that God will use this relief work for His glory.”
“This is an opportunity to show God’s love in a tangible way,” added HCJB Global President Wayne Pederson. “We feel privileged to play a small part in this emergency operation.” In order to donate to the relief efforts, please visit www.hcjbglobal.org.
After working on his canoe motor, a Waorani man named Oma said, “In the past people have sold or given us motors but never showed us how to fix them when they were broken. Now we understand how to repair them.” Many similar comments flowed during a late November small engine mechanics course on the banks of the Curaray River in Nemonpade, a Waorani community in eastern Ecuador. Missionaries Jim Yost, an anthropologist formerly with Wycliffe Bible Translators, and Nate Dell of HCJB Global traveled from the U.S. along with friends and family to help with the course. Dell formerly served as a missionary to the tribe along with his wife, Rachelle.
Youth World missionary Chet Williams also helped organize and run the workshop. They were joined by Menewa Nenquimo, a young Waorani man now attending the School of Missionary Aviation Technology in Michigan. His skilled translation and mother-tongue instruction proved invaluable for the group.
Traveling from 11 different villages, Waorani tribe members hiked jungle trails or navigated rivers by canoe to attend the course, held in a central location. They brought chainsaws, generators, Weed Eaters and outboard motors for hands-on instruction and assistance.
Twenty-seven men received certificates for completing the course, the majority of them receiving toolsets subsidized by the team’s churches and friends.
Lead mechanics Gary Yost and Greg Lynch teamed up with Nenquimo to explain the details of both two-cycle and four-cycle internal combustion engines, assisted by photo and video along with a small cutaway-view motor. Gary also assembled a clear plastic cylinder to demonstrate combustion that allowed the group to launch a ping pong ball with a controlled explosion sparked by an actual spark plug and fueled by hair spray. “The video and motor cut-away showed us how the inside of a motor works,” commented a student named Quipa. “That will help us repair it.”
Later the course switched to troubleshooting and repairing engines that the Waorani brought with them. Each new engine revealed its own set of problems, allowing the students to gather experience with multiple types of repairs.One nearly new generator was deemed irreparable because of a broken rod. Nevertheless, it became a tangible teaching aid as students and teachers disassembled everything, analyzing how each part worked and discussing why it had failed. Devotions were held each day before the instruction started, allowing Waorani Christians to share biblical truths with believers and non-believers alike.
One day Pegonka, who suffers from an autoimmune disease, shared that “some motors are bad so we give up on them and throw them out. God doesn’t do that. He wants to heal, to keep us, to save us. I almost died. If I had, God wouldn’t have discarded me. He would have taken me with Him.” Another Waorani man shared that man can fix a motor, but only God can fix a man.
In the end, Tementa concluded, “Just as the team came to teach because they love God, so we need to teach others both what we have learned and the good news of Christ.”
How does one “move on” back into daily life after a mission journey like my trip to Ghana and Sierra Leone?The unfortunate thing I find is that I do just that—move on.
The images are still there, some haunting, some joyful—a small, naked child crawling over a heap of trash to get a drink from a puddle—a boy’s frozen exuberant smile while playing red light, green light.
Good and bad juxtaposed in my memory. And yet I just move on.I do the next thing on my list. I go to the next place I have to go. Sometimes I don't have a choice.
I want to think deeply. I want to be affected. I want those experiences to change me. And I wonder sometimes if they do--or if they do enough.
Acts 17:26-28
From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'
