Yep, been a long time since I have written anything. We're currently in the USA preparing for our youngest daughter's wedding! Kelly and Todd will get married 31st August at Waldenwoods Resort, Michigan and I will get to officiate. Our whole family is so happy for them. For the past two years they have worked together for Habitat for Humanity in Minneapolis, MN and during that time got to know each other. Realised that God had brought them together and so we get to celebrate a wedding.
Amidst the wedding preparations we are totally enjoying seeing our extended family, our grand daughter Dani & Megan, and Adam & Brianne. Just love our family so much…
We are now a two family team here. The Essers are an awesome family. Jon and Kim are home schooling their kids and running our program to provide safe drinking water in homes. They are identifying kids that were admitted to our hospital for water borne illnesses or malnutrition and then follow up with home visits to place a ceramic water filter. Of course with that comes health and hygiene teaching as well as discovering other social and spiritual issues in the homes. We are so thankful to donors through BGR for providing 600 ceramic water filters for our team!
About the hospital… We have seen NO Ebola patients. We are over 4,000 miles from the epidemic although we do recognise people travel a lot. We are always vigilant for unusual tropical diseases and use appropriate precautions. On a great note, we have been blessed to open the Maternity Ward last October. It has been busy busy with 140 deliveries in June! Kigoma moms love our ward as it is clean and equipped and staffed. We've added some more staff for the hospital through the contract with the Gov't of Tanzania. We've had some great volunteer teams come and serve with us and have plans for more in the coming months. It is a blessing to serve along side others who see the need for the combination of proclamation and demonstration of the love of Jesus. It is our privilege to serve Him.
God willing we will be back in Kigoma on 8 September. Will be accompanied by a young nurse that will volunteer with us for a couple of months. Yeah! We have been blessed to have an oxygen concentrator donated so we will be carrying that back. A huge thanks to Brainerd Baptist Church for arranging to pay the extra baggage fee! October we'll have two PA students from Michigan rotating with us and November another PA and her husband. Another small team in November from Dawson Memorial, AL as well.
Thankful for the privilege we have to serve Jesus and to work under such a great organisation. Thank you to all that give through the Cooperative Program and Lottie Moon Offering of our SBC churches as well as giving to BGR (Baptist Global Response). Keep on praying for us to remain strong and focused on what God has called us to do.
Grace and Peace,
Larry and Sally
