Dear Prayer Partners,
Accra, the capital of Ghana, we’d left far behind. We’d visited with Dene and Felix Greer at the Ghana Baptist University and School of Theology near the city of Kumasi (ku-mah-see), walked the school grounds, toured the buildings, talked with students and attended a chapel service. Traveling hours further up and into the country we’d visited with Pat and Peggy Ozment at Northern Ghana Baptist Theological Seminary in Tamale (tah-mah-lee)..
Two and a half hours further north of the Ozments, two and a half hours from the Ghana/Burkina Faso border, and 1 hour off the paved road, tucked under a forest of trees next to a small tan-walled village sits the expansive grounds of the Baptist Medical Center of Ghana in the remote village of Nalerigu (nah-lare-ih-goo) .
Amazingly, long before we arrived at the hospital the spirit of the whole area transformed. The moment we turned off the pavement and began tossing dust clouds into the air on our final 40 kilometer trek toward Nalerigu the very old to very young quickly discerned that we were attached in some way to the hospital and began to greet us with enthusiastic waves and huge toothy smiles. Instant celebrities! This shouted to our hearts how greatly respected and appreciated the hospital is in far reaching areas—a testimony of Christ’s salvation, love and healing touch.
Arriving at the hospital we discovered the dust of the harmattan still hung in the dry air against the dry leaves and dry grasses under our feet. We were shown to a guest house and excitedly welcomed by our IMB missionaries there Dr. George and Elisabeth Faile, Dr. Earl (African shirt and stethescope below) and Mona Hewitt, and Jane Paysinger (pharmacist).
We've heard people talk about the Ghana Baptist Medical Center during all eighteen years of our time in West Africa but never had an opportunity to visit there before. What an incredible place of ministry!
We were quick to discover we were just two among many visitors to the compound, the others having arrived with medical skills to offer the masses of people who come seeking good medical care. We dined with several surgical obstetricians from New York, medical students and one medical resident. We watched their joy bubble over in having this incredible opportunity to serve Christ and Africans so that they may know Christ. Short term and long term volunteers are a huge part of the hospital’s operation. Medical residents come as part of their residency program. Those studying to become doctors of Osteopathy come for part of their rotations.
The Ghana Baptist Medical Center is one of the last IMB operated medical institutions in the world and therefore one of the few remaining Baptist hospitals where medical personnel can explore God’s calling on their lives for missions in a hospital setting. The impact on volunteers’ lives is immeasurable.
The hospital isn't set up in a familiar American way, but African—much better, of course, than our village volunteer mash clinics! But unfamiliar to Americans.
Imagine, the doctors treat 700 patients a DAY on clinic days (three times a week), conduct operations on Tuesdays and Thursdays, have two chaplains to witness to the patients and have planted 60 churches in 50 years (the hospital’s golden anniversary is coming up in September !). Since records are kept of each person who surrenders his life to Christ I asked the head chaplain if he could send me this 50 year number. I’ve yet to hear back from him for I imagine that he is still sitting at his desk counting…
People flood to the hospital from far corners of Ghana, Burkina Faso and neighboring Togo. The hospital’s outreach is to numerous people groups, animists, voodoo worshippers as well as to the vast northern Moslem peoples.
On an early morning tour conducted by Elisabeth Faile we were first introduced to the malnutrition area, which is basically an outdoor, roofed meal preparation area bursting with scads of moms and babes. We are well acquainted with malnutrition from our constant village work and saw few children in that horrible state, because they’d already been eating properly for weeks (!), due to the training given their moms by nurses who teach how to prepare nutritious food for their children (from locally available foods) and keep a close watch on the babies’ weight. There Jeff and I greeted a mother nursing triplets who'd been born just two weeks earlier. All girls. When does the mom sleep!?
We walked leisurely through the halls of the hospital as it was a surgical day. We checked out the medicine supplies and were surprised to note they make their own IVs, but not out of coconut milk. One of our American volunteer doctors, during one of last year’s medical volunteer teams was telling me that there was a possibility to make emergency IV fluid out of coconut milk. I’ve still not figured out how to verify that one! The Baptist Medical Center may be in the bush, but not that desperately into the bush!
We poked our heads into the male surgical ward, women’s ward and maternity section where I touched the soft hair of a newly newborn cuddled in his mother’s arms.
Fortunately the children’s ward was nearly empty, but quickly fills during rainy-mosquito-malaria season.
We stepped into a small surgical room where one of the surgical volunteers was preparing to remove a rather large tumor knot from the top of a woman’s head. Standing behind my camera I kept myself rather protected from the reality I was watching as she cleansed the surgical area, injected the sight with several syringes of anesthesia and picked up the scalpel. Jeff and I watched through the first cut then decided it was time to move on…
There are about eleven missionary houses scattered about the compound, with private drives and room to spare. The hospital needs to have, at all times, 4 career missionary doctors, but at the present only have two. The other career staff positions have not been responded to. Although the hospital has several African staff doctors, the work load is unbelievable. All of the IMB career staff pleads with you to pray for them.
After visiting the hospital, greeting staff and patients, we drove to the hospital’s tuberculosis center, which is an entire village of African housing set a good distance apart from any other building where patients and families can live together and receive the needed medications.
Once again in the vehicle with dust inhaling the air behind us in mighty gulps and erasing immediately any trace of our passing as it fell back to earth in exhaustion, we glided through the powdered sand to the under 5 clinic. Staffed by well trained nurses, they minister to the physical and spiritual needs of those who come. On rotation the nurses go out into the villages to weigh children, give vaccinations and to witness of Christ.
So touched were we by this expansive ministry we were ready to drop everything we are already doing and offer ourselves as permanent church planters to help them more adequately witness and follow-up on the thousands that come through their doors every week! But we aren’t called to that task today…
Maybe you are.
Get out of America and serve Christ with the medical skills He’s given you.
Volunteer. Come career. Add Ghana to your medical training.
Just come.
Laboring where the laborers are few,
Barbara and Jeff
CHECK THIS OUT!! A married MK (missionary kid) from West African, William Haun, stayed at the Ghana Baptist Medical Hospital for four months with his toddling son and his wife, Heidi, who is in medical residence. William is an excellent photographer and journalist who journaled their time in Ghana on
If you are interested or not, don’t miss this blog!
The Baptist Medical Center of Ghana has a web site, too!