12-7-06
Hello friends and family,
We are sorry it has been a long time since we have
been able to send emails. It appeared like the other
ham email was going to work. But I think the devil
does not want us sending emails easily. I think my
equipment is working but propagation must be bad, and
I cannot connect like I need to. So we are still
using our other yahoo email address.
We are doing well, other than a few rounds of
malaria. Audrey and Sarah had it last month. This
month it’s me with the malaria. We are coming through
it just fine. Audrey had a tough bout with resistance
and lots of nausea and vertigo. Fortunately for me,
my symptoms are not bad with the medications. The
number of patients has dropped down to about 20 in the
hospital now. With Christmas and some Muslim holidays
coming up people are trying more than normal to save
money and therefore come in to the hospital even in
worse conditions than normal because they wait so
long. So we are getting out a little earlier these
last few weeks.
We are glad to have a Nigerian intern with us for a
few weeks. It is a new part of the internship at Ile
Ife to try to send some of the medical interns to
other sister institutions. Also recently we had my
sister, Cristy, visit us for a month. It was nice
having her here. We look forward to my parents coming
to visit in the next month also.
I want to thank all of you who continue to support
our hospital. With donations we were recently able to
make an order from Yaounde at 30% reduced rates for
some medications for the next three months. Others
meds we will still have to buy from other locations.
When we order we get about half of our order because
they do not keep all things in stock all the time. So
the other half we try to get from other sources. Also
some have donated money specifically to help patients
who were unable to pay their hospital bills. This
recently helped a woman who had been here for 6 months
of TB treatment leave, and another whose bill was $20
and she could not pay for 1.5 months. It seems so
contrary to the mission of a hospital like this to
have to keep people because of inability to pay but we
have to do that to continue to purchase medications
and salaries…keep the hospital functional. We
continue to pray for revival of missions in Christian
churches and ours specifically. There are many
hospitals that need personnel and also financing that
is lacking. So all this to say thank you so much. I
wish you could have seen the ?70 year old woman
dancing around after 6 months of being here at the
hospital knowing she was going home. She says
THANKS!!!
Please continue to pray for us and our ministry here
that we would be used, as God wants us to be. In His
Service, Shank’s
Shanksteps of Faith #52