Zimbabwe
AT Mbuma Mission Hospital the staff has had the much appreciated voluntary help of a nurse from England, Miss Nicola Jempson. She came at the beginning of the very busy season and has been a tremendous help for the past two months. Miss Jempson was due to return to England at the end of March.
In a letter from Mbuma Hospital there are comments on the wonderful rains and of good growth in the fields. Children are seen running to school with long sticks of sugarcane to munch during the day. Watermelon and squash are eaten from the fields as are sugar beans and peanuts. Corn on the cob is the most prized food. Anne Zekveld says, “The Lord has not dealt with us as we have deserved. It is so nice to see everyone with something to eat. The animals also look well fed.”
With the abundance of rain comes the malaria. More than 600 people have been treated for malaria during the last two months, and the wards have been overflowing. Some have been treated as outpatients but others are too ill to be sent away. “We have patients in bed, patients under the beds and patients on the verandah.” The staff is thankful that there have been few unconscious malaria patients.
There have been a few sets of twins born in the hospital. Some have had to be readmitted as the mothers were not able to feed them as they themselves were in poor physical condition. “Last night we had another tiny baby, only 780 grams. So far she is doing well. It amazes us how well they do. At home they would be hooked up to all kinds of machinery, intravenous fluids and in incubators.”
The hospital Evangelist is on duty in the wards and hopes to begin small Bible Classes in the expectant mothers’ ward and in the children’s ward. It is good to have someone to read to the seriously ill patients who cannot go to the hospital worship on the verandah each morning and evening. “There is much spiritual work to do. Would the Lord’s people please pray for a blessing, especially on the little ones, from the Good Shepherd Himself? ‘Suffer the little children to come unto Me’.”
Kenya
At their meeting on 19th March, the Foreign Missions Committee appointed Dr. de Jong from Holland to be the Medical Superintendent of Omorembe Health Centre at Sengera. His present appointment in Holland terminates in June and it was agreed that he and Mrs. de Jong and family proceed to Kenya in September, God willing. Dr. de Jong, who had made known his interest in
our Mission in Kenya some time ago, first felt drawn to the work when reading reports about it.
He and his wife recognise the difficulties in taking a young family to Kenya, but we trust that they will be under the Lord’s care. It is necessary that their children be taught by the “distance learning” method, but as Dr. and Mrs de Jong cannot be expected to tutor them in English it is hoped that there will be a favourable response to the advertisement for a teacher.
Miss Peta van de Ridder, who was a most useful member of the hospital staff in Mbuma for a number of years but who had to remain at home in Holland during her late mother’s illness, has been accepted by the Committee to go to Kenya as a nursing sister. She hopes to leave in May, God willing.
A Dutch nurse, Miss Henriette Burggraaf, who has been doing voluntary nursing at Sengera, was taken onto the permanent staff in January. J.N.