(Financial) Year End

We just reached the end of Serge's financial year. Now that all of our receipts are submitted (I hope!) it feels like a good time to let you know about some special projects that we have been able to support due to your generosity (through our accounts at Serge, World Medical Mission, and Great Commission Fund). The hospital and school of Theology have MANY other projects going on, these are just a few small areas that we've gotten involved in thanks to a surplus from you all!

School of Theology: Student assistance fund. Many of Kris' students have a difficult time raising money for their own school fees while also paying for their children's education. We don't want tuition to be a barrier to keep adults from furthering their own education, or providing for their families. Thanks to those of you who have donated specifically toward this student assistance fund.

Kapsowar Hospital: Infrastructure is vital to safe patient care. Our hospital's generator was receiving somewhat routine maintenance, but was struggling to keep up with the growing demands of the hospital. A generator is absolutely critical given the unreliable nature of our "grid" power. As Kris often says, the grid power goes out about once a day here on average. Usually, it's out for a couple of minutes. Sometimes, though, it's out for hours - and we have no way of predicting when that will be. Even a minute-long power outage can be really dangerous for a patient who happens to be undergoing surgery during that time! So the hospital generator needs to run smoothly and reliably for our patients' safety. 

We're grateful for a donor who responded to this specific (and perhaps not very glamorous) need and provided funds for a professional evaluation and overhaul of the generator. 

The hospital relies on a lot of donated equipment to reduce costs. We have anywhere from 4-6 ultrasounds in the hospital, all in various states of disrepair. In our radiology "suite" (two rooms, one for xray and one for ultrasound) we were using three ultrasound machines - only one was able to export files to the computer system which is needed for health insurance "prior authorization" but the pictures were not great quality, (another) one was capable of measuring color flow (needed to diagnose blood clots in the legs, characterize various tumors, and evaluate hearts), and a third gave pretty good images, but the lid was cracking off and every time we opened the machine, we were afraid it might be the last time before the lid falls completely off! During a trip to Nairobi, our hospital's medical director found a used ultrasound for sale that would take on the work of all three of the partially-working machines! The price was exactly what we had agreed to contribute as a surplus from our Serge fund toward upgrading hospital equipment, and we were able to get the machine to Kapsowar within about 2 weeks!

As we've mentioned before, your contributions help us with a lot of big and small expenses of life on the mission field. We're so grateful every day for the ways that you give, to help us serve the people in our community. Thank you!