Thursday, November 11, 2010

Praise God for the Rains!

The rains have come to the mountains of Lesotho - actually the whole of South Eastern Africa! This is a critical time for the rains as the people have been waiting and waiting to see if the crops will survive. Most of the Basotho are subsitence farmers, in other words, they depend on each growing season to survive. This is the time to plant corn, the main staple of the Basotho.

Of course with heavy rains and wind comes NO FLYING. So that's not great in terms of getting to the clinics and health posts, but hey, at least with the rain there is the possibility of food and survival.

After two days of heavy rains I did get to fly to the mountain village of Semenanyane with our team. Like my usual mornings, I rode my bike to the hanger for the morning MAF meeting. After the plane was loaded and fueled we got ready to head to the mountains. Semenanyane is a very wind sensitive airstrip so this time the MAF pilot (Melvin Peters) stayed with us at the clinic while we did our patient care. I saw patients while the eye nurse took care of the eye patient referrals and the dental technician saw his patients. We were just about to finish up when I heard the radio call that there was a "Code-1 at Mokhotlong" A Code-1 means a life or death situation and MAF basically drops everything to go and get that patient and get them to a hospital, often to the one in the capital city Maseru. We decided to get to the airplane and head to Mokhotlong - a 20 minute flight. About 5 minutes after landing a double cabin pickup pulled up to the plane with a pregnant woman who had obstructed labor (in other words, the baby was stuck and wasn't coming out without a C-section). Now Mokhotlong Hospital currently has 3 doctors but unfortunately they had no power so they couldn't do the operation. It was either fly her to Maseru (a 50 minute flight) or put her in a truck and drive her 6-7 hours over some rough parts. So we got her situated in the back seat, got ourselves back in and headed to Maseru. The LFDS ambulance was waiting at the hanger when we arrived and whisked her off to the hospital to do the C-section. Tomorrow she'll be visited by the MAF Chaplain (Ntate Sefiri) to get her a blanket for her baby and to share the gospel with her.

It was a great day of treating patients, praying for them - 'meeting needs with loving deeds.' We thank God for how is providing support to the MAF/IMB Lesotho mission teams. We are so thankful to our mission and to our 50,000+ Southern Baptist churches that voluntarily support missions through the Lottie Moon Missions Offering and the Cooperative program.

Lastly, I want to encourage you to take a look at this new You Tube video by MAF about MAF Lesotho. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZmfNCmSPCo) You might see a few familiar faces...