Dear Friends,

A week at Good Shepherd Hospital
in Tshikaji, Democratic Republic of Congo

Saturday. The week began with rounds on our unit followed by an educational meeting and then a staff meeting. As the meetings ended, I was handed a note to go to maternity. I arrived to find a woman who had just arrived in labor bleeding badly. An ultrasound revealed a uterine rupture with the baby lying free in the abdomen outside of the uterus and dead. We hurried to surgery, asking God to help us save her life. He did. This was her fourth pregnancy. All four of her children are dead.

Sunday was peaceful. A lovely church service at the station church after rounds. With all of the students from the schools, the church is packed and lively. After the sermon in Tshiluba, all said "amen." The sermons often last an hour so the amen may have a double meaning.

Monday began with Nancy and I giving our lectures to the nursing students. We each lecture for about two hours Mondays and Thursdays, teaching the course in obstetrics. In French! After these lectures, I drive to our clinic in Kananga, which is 9 miles from here but takes a good half hour to drive, given the state of the "road." It had rained hard all night so there was a lot of water on the dirt. This actually improved things, as we hadn’t had any rain for nearly a week and the "road" of dirt and sand becomes more difficult when it is dry.

Tuesday, I had a consult to see a lady who had been operated for cervical cancer the year before. She was now a recurrent "stage 4," meaning that she was going to die soon. I explained the reality to her family who decided to take her home to die.

Wednesday is my main surgery day and we did three major surgeries, including removing a soccer-ball-size ovarian tumor that was likely benign and doing a hysterectomy for another cervical cancer.

Thursday, I saw 29 patients at the PAX clinic in Kananga. Three had advanced cervical cancer beyond any treatment. All will die soon. When I arrived back at the hospital, my medical student informed me that a lady had a problem requiring a cesarian. All went well.

Friday morning when I arrived for rounds, another lady with a history of two prior cesarian sections had just arrived in hard labor. The nurse could not hear a heartbeat and the ultrasound confirmed a baby dead from a separation of the placenta, an abruption. We did another cesarian to save the life of a mother. Following this, I went to the clinic here where our nurse, mama Kapinga, asked me what we might do to reduce the deaths from cervical cancer. She is a bright woman who wants to do something to reduce the burden of suffering of Congolese women. She had done a study and we will present it for possible funding. She has good ideas. Death is all too frequent here and it is just as sorrowful as anywhere. Each of these deaths and those to come soon would be preventable with things we take for granted such as pap smears and tests for lung maturity that allow us to predict the need for cesarian sections and not wait for labor in someone with no way to get here in a timely manner.

The Good Shepherd Hospital is one part of the Christian Medical Institute of the Kasai, which has a nursing and laboratory school as well as medical students doing their clinical rotation and residents in family practice. It’s a reference hospital built to train medical workers, and we are here to witness to our Lord by teaching what He has allowed us to learn. We are here to share with our brothers and sisters in both the joys and sorrows of daily life.

We have been here only a few weeks and are only beginning to realize the extent of the poverty and suffering of the people. I (Mike) see this in the activities in the hospital and Nancy in her daily walks and visits throughout the village as she talks with the chief, traditional birth attendants, and villagers, learning what day-to-day life in an African village means. We have been advised to take some time to absorb what we see and hear. Sometimes it is difficult to be an American used to taking action to solve apparent problems. Taking those actions to save the day could make us feel very good, but we know that this day will end and another will begin. What work we do must take this into account, so that whatever benefit we may be will be of lasting importance. We ask all of you to pray for us to find the wisdom to understand God’s will for us here. We will pray that the good people of the United States take a few minutes to reflect on their brothers and sisters over here. We ask that you read Matthew 25, remembering that Jesus is here in each of these sick and hungry people.

We wish you all God’s peace from the IMCK in Tshikaji, Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa.

Mike and Nancy Haninger

The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 29