Together in His service
WE ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE!

“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these
brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” ~ Matthew 25:40

When Jesus spoke about the “least of these,” He could have been talking about a Central African toddler named Manga. Shortly after Manga was born, civil war ravaged her small town and her family fled for their lives to an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camp in another region. As one of the 50,000 IDPs in the camp, Manga had less access to international aid and healthcare than an international refugee.

For Manga, this was life-threatening because she was born with a frontonasal encephalocele. This meant part of her brain was protruding through her skull into her nasal cavity. Fortunately, hope was available in the form of a Christian healthcare clinic located near the IDP camp. Manga was 18 months old when her mom brought her there for help.

“When I first saw Manga, I had no idea what to do,” says MedSend family nurse practitioner Ruth Burks, who serves at the clinic. “I didn’t even know any types of medical diagnoses that would explain a mass like this.” Ruth did a basic assessment, asked a lot of questions, and took photos, which she sent to two medical experts. Both agreed that Manga needed surgery that could not be done at the bush clinic. One, an ENT surgeon, agreed to do the surgery – but he served in a Kenyan mission hospital more than 750 miles away.

Undaunted, Ruth set about raising the funds, doing the paperwork necessary to get a mother and child with no official documents or passports to another country and back, and arranging for cell phones, CT scans and a myriad of other details. Two months after visiting the clinic, Manga and her mom flew on a chartered flight to Kenya, where Manga underwent a tedious, but successful, 11-hour surgery to repair her birth defect. When they returned two weeks later, Manga was smiling broadly for the first time in her life.

“The truth is, none of this could have happened without teamwork,” Ruth says. “Multitudes joined hands to help get this little girl on the road to health both physically and emotionally.” MedSend audiologist Stephanie Cox was part of the team in Kenya. She noted that after the surgery, a “completely adorable, simply delightful, bubbly and giggly little personality” emerged.

“As I have watched how the Lord is using His people to pour out His grace and display His compassion and very practical care for one little girl, I have been stunned by the beauty of it,” she marvels. “What a great picture of those whose hearts have been captured by the gospel working together to push back what is broken in the world!”

Thank you for being part of that team. Because you support MedSend, Christian healthcare professionals like Ruth Burks and Stephanie Cox can answer God’s call to serve. That means Manga – and more than half a million people like her – get the healthcare they need and hear the good news about Jesus’ love for them. Just imagine what God will do through our newest class, 18 healthcare professionals whom you can meet HERE! I think you will be moved by the deep commitment of people like Jed and Karen Lamb (names changed for security), who are heading into a high security area in Southeast Asia to serve people who have little access to healthcare or the gospel.

“We want be on the front lines of God’s advancing Kingdom, worshipping him through medicine,” Dr. Lamb says. To do that, they need support from you, believers on the home front whose hearts resonate with God’s own heart for the nations and the “least of these.”