Yesterday was a village day. By that I mean we went to the village of Agban – about 40 minutes from here – to provide medical care. The goal was to build relationships and open doors to further spiritual outreach. The ‘we’ of this story involves around 30 people from the Eglise Baptiste Fondamentale de Bingerville (or in English, the Fundamental Baptist Church of Bingerville), and missionary Bob Mach, his son, Bobby, his daughter, Marylyn, Dr. Bernard Kadio (often called KB) and Kristine McLaughlin. Kristine and SERY Jules, a man of great desire to see others come to know Christ, have been working for weeks to plan this medical day. I was so very impressed at how smoothly everything played out, a tribute to their hard work, lots of prayer and the blessings of God. We saw a total of 178 patients, a record high for a medical day here. Someday, I’ll have to write more about Mr. SERY – you’ll be impressed.
If you are one that wants ‘all the details’, you would love that part of this culture. One cannot arrive any where without ‘giving the news.’ When we arrived at the village around 8:15 am, the chief was waiting for us, and a tent with chairs was already in place. The surprising thing was that there were no people! In Haiti, people were lined up around the building where we gave care, but in Agban it was a full hour before the chairs were filled. Everyone came in and took a place, giving the front row to the elders and leadership of the village, who were dressed in their African clothes. In front of and facing the crowd sat Bob, KB and Mr. SERY. The chiefs asked the news, Mr. SERY responded, the chiefs gave their news, and then Bob preached a short sermon.
Bob uses an illustration that, in my opinion, is very culturally relevant and well understood, besides being funny. When he came here in 1995, needless to say he was pretty green about the culture and other things. On a couple of occasions he was ‘offended’ by an Ivorian – usually a young man that didn’t do what he was supposed to do or did something he wasn’t supposed to do. Bob uses different incidents in his illustration. But, when the young man has realized he has offended this older man (Bob), he sends an older Ivorian man to go and apologize on his behalf. Of course, this is quite strange to a Westerner, where we would deal with it face to face (or at least we should vs. telling everyone but the person involved!). So, Bob has this long discussion with the older Ivorian about the situation and kind of goes along with things, but all the while is a bit confused as to why this guy is coming to him instead of the young man. A few days later, Bob is in a conversation with an Ivorian neighbor and decides to ask what this was about. The neighbor thinks Bob is a little odd because he is asking about something completely normal in his mind, but explains that the young man is showing Bob respect by sending someone of Bob’s age and thus level of respect (age is respected here) to intercede for him. He is demonstrating humility, that he doesn’t have the right to come before Bob to reconcile things between them, so he is sending someone in his stead whom Bob would ‘accept’. Bob then explains that we need to do the same thing with God. We have sinned against God, we do not, as sinners, have the right to come before God to reconcile ourselves, thus we need an Advocate, someone the Father will accept. That Advocate is Jesus Christ, and He is the only One that can satisfy the Father, and He is willing to intercede for us to bring about reconciliation. I just love that illustration!
Okay, so after the preaching, KB gets up to explain who the providers are (Kristine, KB and myself), and then we all go to our stations. Everyone has an assigned team with which they work: welcoming team to take names, distribute John/Romans and complete a brief medical questionnaire, the consultation team, the pharmacy team, and then the evangelism team. After being seen by a medical provider, the patient is given their prescription to take to the pharmacy, and while they wait for their meds they speak with a soul winner. Let me tell you, those soul winners were busy, busy, busy! It was fantastic listening to each one speaking one on one to a villager. I don’t know yet how many were saved, but later on I heard testimonies of how the people responded. One man put it like this – at first the people were a bit ‘cool’ in their reception, but as he would speak more with them about their need they would become ‘disarmed’ and he could tell he had ‘touched their heart’. He said that three of the thirty people with whom he spoke accepted Christ as Savior. Amen!
There were three cases that particularly struck the cord of compassion in my heart. One was a little boy about seven years old that has epilepsy. The problem is he doesn’t have meds to control the seizures so his family doesn’t let him go to school. Seizures are not uncommon here as a secondary effect to cerebral malaria. Without follow up, however, it is useless for us to give him meds because they require titration based on blood levels. Another was a girl around ten or eleven that was incredibly thin. Emaciated is the word that comes to mind, but it may be a little too strong. She was quite frightened at everything and looked on the verge of tears, but her mother brought her because of enlarged lymph nodes. You could visibly seem them along her neck and mandible, and it made me wonder if she didn’t have some form of lymphoma or other severe immune disorder. We gave her a round of antibiotics, but without proper nutrition and other follow up, I have serious doubts to her improvement. The last case is one with which I hope we can intervene. It’s a young woman, less than thirty, that has maybe 25% of her vision as a result of cataracts. I’m not sure why, at her age, she has this, but at first glance I thought she was wearing blue contact lenses. KB tells me there are doctors here that could remove the cataracts, but I need to ask more questions, especially on whether or not she would properly follow a treatment plan. That is the hard part for me – seeing cases where I know they could get care if they were in the US – regardless of whether or not they had insurance.
At the end of the day, the village provided a meal for the team leadership (thankfully, I was allowed to bow out!), and then we all headed back for night church. As I mentioned, we are waiting for a count on how many professed Christ, but the very, very exciting thing is that, after four different medical days in this village, the chief has now decided we can return to Agban at any time – implying that we can begin Bible studies and do follow up with those who accepted Christ. God richly blessed – thank you for all those that took time to pray for us!
PS – I didn’t bow out of the meal because I don’t like African food – on the contrary, I have very much enjoyed most all of the native food here. However, I like to know under what conditions that food has been prepared J
PSS - here is a link to some photos from this trip:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.249680728424059.59013.100001464003535&type=3&l=2391653799
