News from the Mennonite Mission-Guinea Bissau                         July 2012

The Clinic

Walking into the clinic waiting room at 9 am on a weekday you will see perhaps 15-20 people who have come for medical attention: a woman with pain in her neck, spine, and chest, a two year old with impetigo sores on her neck and around her mouth, a six year old epileptic, a middle aged man with a head wound, a twenty year old woman wondering if she is pregnant, and a new-born with diarrhea. The clinic is open daily (except Sunday). In a typical week we will have up to 200 people coming to the clinic for medical attention. Most come from villages within a 15 mile radius but quite a few are traveling as much as 50 miles. Our reputation is getting to be country wide!

Just a few years ago, before the Mennonite mission came to Catel, most of these people and hundreds more like them would have received little or no medical care. Today we have progressed to where we have full-time medical professionals, basic medical tools and a reasonably well stocked pharmacy.

Moving from the waiting area into the consulting room is where the patients begin to see what it is like to get compassionate medical attention. The nurse or other medical staff asks routing questions, come up with a probable diagnosis and outlines a plan for treatment.

Often the treatment plan falls short of the patient’s expectations because in most clinics and pharmacies the health care providers use a shotgun approach with a prescription for an antibiotic, a pain pill, multivitamins, malaria pills and a laxative. If they have less than four kinds of medicine to take, the patient feel somehow cheated. Sometimes our patients are told to just drink lots of water, put a warm towel on their aching muscle and eat moringa powder. This is really bewildering to someone who came expecting to bring home a small bag of medicines.

This is only one of the challenges the medical staff deal with. Another is that people often will go to the witch doctor first whose potions are usually ineffective and, in effect, gives the illness several days to progress into something really serious. Then they come to us.

Generally people believe they are ill because someone has put a curse on them. The logical intervention is to contravene the curse, not going to the clinic for medical attention. Few people live with an illness prevention outlook. Helping people live a healthy life-style, one that prevents diseases from starting is another major challenge we deal with. But we do have a plan.

Getting medicine supplies, from a predictable, dependable resource is an ongoing challenge. Some come from U.S. medical ministry suppliers, Gambia where medicines are more available, a hospital in Ziguinchor, Senegal, thru the Guinea Bissau Health Ministry or thru a local pharmacist. In other words, getting medicines is a hunting expedition. Get where you can.

The primary players in our clinic staff are Terianne Edwards, RN and Sean Fitzgerald, EMT, both from Lancaster County, PA. They are assisted by YESers Derik Hershey, Peter Stahl and Sharon Honigmann plus GO volunteer Colin Good. The YESers help with translation, wound care and record keeping.

The next major step in the clinic development is to receive certification from the Ministry of Health as a Class ‘C’ village dispensary. That done, we will be legal and it will open more options for us to provide health care using governmental and UN resources.

Another primary, long-term objective is to make the medical ministry self sustained based on revenues from medical services and the sale of medicines. And our goal is to have the ministry operated by African medical professionals.

In an environment of extremely deficient medical services, the medical ministry becomes a very significant vehicle in communicating the Good news of Jesus Christ.

Praying Together

One of the first events of nearly every day is morning prayer time at the YES compound. Praying together is one of the commitments made by the YES team back in Harrisburg. It happens at 6:30 in the grey light of daybreak, once everyone is up and moving.

Alyssa, on of the YES girls told me why praying together is important for the team:

1.     It helps us to focus on what God is doing and how we can be part of His work today.

2.     It helps us to be aware of needs and to be joining together bringing these needs to God.

3.     It is a time to intercede for others around us in the village who are being persecuted or facing difficult family situations. We plead for those who are seeking God or whose lives are crushed by sin. We specifically ask God to speak to them through dreams.

4.     It is a time to talk to God about our anger and frustration and the feeling of being overwhelmed with all the injustice and brokenness we see around us.

Their praying bears fruit. Seekers are finding God and coming to commit their lives as disciples of jesus, persons are finding courage in face of their difficulties, conflicts are being resolved, the discouraged are finding hope and the ministry of the mission is expanding.

The prayer time is a well established routine of the day and when they miss a morning prayer time there is a feeling that something important is lacking.

The Pre-School

The first full year of the pre-school came to a conclusion on June 15^th when the students presented a program to their parents and friends. They sand and danced, recited the alphabet forward and backward, wrote their names on slates, counted to 100 and did a color learning game. The event was both fun and chaotic, but clearly demonstrated how children coming from an exxentiall free-for-all, survivalist family setting can get on-board with the discipline of learning, their social skills developed and they are beginning to see the way of God for their lives and their community.

The head teacher is Gabriel Mane, assisted and mentored by Lia Veiga from the mission staff. For next school year, starting in October, Lia has plans for a larger student body; she wants to include community women as classroom assistants and use the public school classrooms across the street instead of out meetinghouse. The parents will begin paying a small fee for sending their children to the school.

Our track with the pre-school is to work in collaboration with the public school system rather than to develop an independent, private school. The parents are very pleased with the results of the first year and willing to have us use the public facilities. They want their children taught Christian values and to hear stories from the Bible.

I talked with parents from two households who had children in the pre-school this year. They all commented how pleased they are to have a pre-school available for their children here in Catel. They noted some of the changes in their children not only that they can count, write some letters, their names etc, but that they are developing socially as well. They were amazed at how their children respectfully greeted them upon their return from class, for example.

Most of the children are from animistic or Muslim homes. All of the parents are happy that their children are singing gospel songs and that they  talk freely about things God wants us to do or not do. One little guy upon returning home from class found his mother beating a younger brother. He confronted his mother with ‘God doesn’t want us to beat other people.’

Mentoring, Discipling, Inviting

At this very moment there are 5 expatriate long termers plus 4 YESers on the mission staff. According to our gifts, we are all, in one way or another, in relationships with local believers and seekers in which we are sharing with them the life of Christ and inviting them to transformation. We do this trough our work, be it medical, agricultural or educational or a teaching context, or just casual friendships.

When I travel abroad and tell people I am a missionary the next question inevitably is – well, what exactly do you do as a missionary? Hearing that question always reminds me that most people don’t understand the term ‘missionary’ quite the way I do. For me, and I think I can speak for the rest of the team, being in Guinea Bissau and comprehending the spiritual and social brokenness of our friends here, there is no way a missionary cannot be inviting people to salvation and wholeness in Christ.

Recently there was a young woman in our clinic, brought in by her brother. She was seeking an abortion, having been impregnated in a grossly unacceptable relationship. They wanted an abortion for her because when her father learns about her condition, he will beat and possibly kill her. How does one respond to these people? How can you bring the compassion of Christ to this young woman, the unborn child, her dad and the whole family? Is there any good news of compassion and hope for these people? We believe there is.

Passing along this good news to others through word and deed is the number one reason why we are in Guinea Bissau. Helping people to know and experience the transforming power of the good news is on our collective front burner.

Mia and Aminita Sambou are late twenties-early thirties sisters here in Catel. They are refugees from a village in Senegal about 0 miles away. As youth they had some experience with church activities but that connection was mostly for fun reasons and didn’t really speak to their deeper need to find a relationship with God and provide answers to life’s problems.

It wasn’t until they responded to an invitation to attend a women’s Bible study group here in Catel that they began to see a way opening before them, a way that offered direction on the questions and needs of their hearts. At first they enjoyed the fellowship of just meeting with other women and hearing teaching from the Bible. At that point they did not attend the Sunday morning worship service at Catel Mennonite.

But earlier this year as Amanita was busy preparing food and doing housework on a Sunday morning there was a loud voice in her ears- “Go to church, go to church.” She could not escape it once she realized that it was God telling her that she needed to be joining the Christians as they meet to worship God together and listen to the Word on Sunday mornings.

Since then they look forward to the Sunday services at church in the morning and the Sunday afternoon women’s fellowship. The women’s Bible study group is facilitated by our missionaries Lia Veiga, Terianne Edwards and Alyssa Heberlig.

Amanita and Mia’s testimony on their path to faith is how:

·       They understand God as one who loves them and welcomes them

·       Through prayer they are able to talk to God and to listen to Him

·       God is the ultimate judge of everyone and we do not need to judge and punish people

·       Our responsibility is to forgive others for evil they do to us and help them to know God

·       God helps us to discern what is good and what is evil

·       They are excited with growing in their ability to read and understand the Bible

On Sunday, July 8, Amanita and Mia were baptized at Catel Mennonite along with four others.

Beryl Forrester

Mission Director

June 2012