August 15, 2007

Dear Friends,

When we were accepted by PC(USA) as missionaries, one of the most important instructions we received was that we were not sent to do the work of others but to share with them our education, helping them develop their capacities. Most recently, I was asked by our partner institution, IMCK, the Christian Medical Institution of the Kasai, to be the director of education. I accepted this position with gratitude and respect for the position. The original vision for IMCK was to establish a nursing school. A school for laboratory technicians was added and, later, the Good Shepherd Hospital was built as a clinical site. Since then, Good Shepherd has served as the clinical site for medical students, as a training site for medical residents, and for further education and training of young physicians planning to serve in Presbyterian bush hospitals.

Since we arrived in Congo, among the great joys has been to see the “lights go on” in our students, be they the medical professionals with whom Mike works in the hospital, in the village where Nancy helps train traditional midwives, in the nutrition center where women learn why malnutrition occurs and how to prevent it, or in the fields where village women learn how to get better yields from their crops.

We wanted to introduce how education is the very “reason to be” for our partner institution and to tell you that Mike has just been named director of education at IMCK. This is both a great honor and a great responsibility.

School that was first built as a chicken coop.

Education, as we know, begins in our infancy and continues throughout our lives. In our village, when we arrived, the village school consisted of a dilapidated building that had once been a chicken coop. A new school was built four years ago through the Booth Foundation, and the villagers have constructed a second building on their own.

Dedication of new village school.

We were recently visited by members of the church that provided the funding for building the station school, Myers Park Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, North Carolina. They recognized that, although building a building is a good thing, as is equipping it with desks and chairs, teachers are most important. Although the school had teachers, they had great difficulty getting to school. Most of our better, more educated teachers live some distance from the school, and they have to walk in each day. This takes several hours, and results in a shortening of the school day. The response was to provide a bicycle to each teacher as well as some funds for didactic materials.

We speak of the “developing world,” but it can only develop if its citizens are healthy and educated. The better we can educate those in primary school the better prepared they will be to go on to secondary and higher education. These things are obvious. Mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers want these things for their children and grandchildren whether in our developed world or in the poorest of nations. Deuteronomy 15:4-6 tells us:

There should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. For the LORD your God will bless you as he has promised.

We believe that education is at the heart of abiding by God’s words. The inheritance clearly has not flowed equally to all of His children. We want to  thank all of you for allowing us to serve our Lord in helping our Congolese friends educate each other, safeguard the health of themselves and of their children, and join us in giving thanks to God for the abundance of our inheritance.

Our love,

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 313