The problem is, Bekadoka is not really a special place. It’s just like thousands of other isolated villages all over Madagascar, all over Africa, with no access whatsoever to health care. There are simply no options, no help. A tumor, even a benign one, becomes a death sentence. A small infection can kill you. The hardest part so far of this year away is simply seeing the large numbers of people we can’t help. Don’t get me wrong, Mercy Ships does a lot, more than I even realized or dreamed. They do over 1,000 surgeries in 9 months, they train local doctors, they empower communities to serve their own people. But for some reason I had the impression that we were getting at least a lot of the surgical needs taken care of. But at the end of the day, the need for surgery is so much greater than the small number of NGOs working for change. 5 billion people worldwide lack access to surgical care.

This isn’t just about having a somewhat bothersome condition you can live with. These people are feeling great daily suffering and pain, many of them die, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for them. How does your good Christian biblical theology work when you fly to a village like Bekadoka, then fly up and away with the patients with benign tumors, but have to leave behind the cancerous ones? It’s true that Jesus didn’t heal everybody, even though He is still the great healer and capable. It’s also true that God makes it clear that suffering is unavoidable on this earth, in this time. But that doesn’t mean we also have to sit and be okay with it either.

The good part of this story is we were able to take three patients back to the ship, including a sweet baby girl named Rosela and her mom. Every time we asked Rosela’s mom how she knew it was okay to trust us with her daughter, she just kept repeating, “I trust God.” It was their first time in a plane and also their first time in a car. I got to see them taken into our hospital and be loved on like crazy by all the amazing nurses and doctors and other volunteers that make this community an amazing place to be. All three patients received life-changing surgery on the ship and are soon returning home, back to that little village called Bekadoka. It doesn’t change everything, but I hope it builds a little faith in that one village, that they aren’t forgotten, that there’s a God who believes in healing. We don’t understand why it’s not everybody, and we don’t understand why it hurts so much now. But we also know we can’t sit around and not do something to join in.

October 19th, 2017

June 1st, 2016

May 17th, 2016

October 19^th, 2017

June 1^st, 2016

May 17^th, 2016