The excerpt below was taken courtesy of the book Faithful Women and Their Wonderful God, by Christmas Piper, Faithful Editor.
Helen had also been tasked with launching a training program for medical staff. The first students began arriving to learn nursing, their age ranged from 18 to 24 years old and their training was equivalent to that of primary school. Among the first-class students was John Mangadima, who would become a friend and colleague during Helen’s years in the Congo.
- Helen hasn’t been trained as a teacher or nurse.
- There wasn’t a program ready.
- All teaching was in French and Swahili.
- None of these languages were the mother tongue of Helen or any of the students.
Did God teach me to teach when the need arose?A patient was on fire with a fever, so we went to a conference on how to use, read and understand a thermometer?They brought a baby with bronchopneummony, and I showed him how to use the stethoscope and how to get to the diagnosis. An endless flow of patients, with an unlimited set of abdominal symptoms, gave us material to discover the use of the microscope and learn to recognize all possible species of parasites.
Mentoring nursing students meant providing extra time for each medical intervention, which would come in the already very short days.
The overwork and the consequent impossibility of taking the night off or going out on weekends have brought me some irritability and lack of patience that have always caused me a considerable loss of sleep, I always had a fiery temperament, but that most of the time was under control?from my conversion to Christ, now the word of anger and fury would escape again, before I could control it, to my great shame. The patients who approached the dining room window while we were having lunch received an acute note from me: “Go to the dispensary and do not bring your germs with us” and a sad look appeared on the faces of the elder missionaries, who treated each visitor in their home with kindness and respect.
The evangelist Danga? He taught me a lesson because of this anti-Christian behavior. Don’t apologize. Call sin sin and anger anger, so face the fact that your white skin doesn’t do you any better than us, you need God’s purification and forgiveness, to be filled and inhabited by Him, just as we need it. You can only show dr. Helen, it’s better to go home: people need to see Jesus.
After eighteen months in Ibambi, the mission committee moved her to Nebobongo because she needed to take over medical work there, then the nursing students and training program went with Helen to Nebobongo, 11 kilometres from Ibambi.
He remained in Nebobongo for ten years, overseeing leprosy and orphanage, founded 48 rural health posts nearby, a paramedic training centre and a 100-bed hospital and maternity ward. literally built from scratch, and the only people who could do it were Helen and her European colleague Florence Stebbing, as well as the students.
Have we learned how to make bricks ?, how to use the bubble level and the proper mixture of cement and sand to make concrete ?, how to cut the beams of a log?How to measure and lift these beams, mount the ceiling and transport the wavy shingles to asbestos?
When the task seemed too great, God provided unexpected solutions; for example, a beam was heavy and dangerous to lift by students and Helen, new to work; they prayed for an experienced roof builder; at that time, a missionary was immobilized by the duration of his at-risk pregnancy. Unexpectedly, Helen asked her husband, “Do you make roofs?” Yes, he did.
Construction wasn’t the only challenge. Every need had its own difficulties.
Have we learned automotive mechanics? Do we need an ambulance vehicle?Truck for construction? And a truck to load food?The only way to make repairs was to go under or inside this car with an African colleague and, in the midst of trial and error, work until you have some success.
We learned Swahili and French and some notion of bangala and kibudu; Then we express medical truths without scientific jargon Do we write our first manual in Suajili?We made dies, and soon a hundred copies were reproduced on an old duplicating machine, in which the pages were individually rubbed and dried. Unpleasant stories could be told of the days when the wind passed through the shutters and spread the pages, in a disastrous avalanche!
Textbook writing should have been a full-time job, as well as the construction of the hospital and medical training center, and medical demand itself went beyond full-time. Helen could not forget that she had felt a doctor’s call. mission, but the other roles continued to run, fighting for priority in the limited hours of the day.
One morning, for example, she was in the pottery oven with her hands in full flesh and out of work when she was called to the hospital for emergency surgery.
I started rubbing my hands and arms: my hands hurt under the brush, I extended my hand to the nurse to add antiseptic alcohol, held my breath firmly when I felt the acute pain and began to whisper in my mind.
Why didn’t God call another missionary to take care of the construction?And so that I could have the freedom to give people the best medical treatment I think I can get?
The following Wednesday, I told the church council all this and asked them to pray that I would not be irritated. A pious man, after leading the group in prayer, smiled at me and gently rebuked me.
“Doctor, ” he said, “when you are the doctor, in your white uniform, with the stethoscope around your neck, speaking French, you are miles from us. “We fear him and say, “Yes, yes,” although I’ve barely heard what you said, but when you’re in the pottery with us and your hands are as rough as ours, when you’re in the markets, talking and making language mistakes, we all laugh with you: this is where we love you, trust you and listen to what you tell us about God and his ways?
In less than a year, the construction of the hospital was completed. There was no building now that took Helen’s time and energy. This was what I expected, but unfortunately I was still not satisfied.
My complaint was overturned, was the hospital up and running and word was out?And you didn’t have time for more than medicine, medicine, medicine?Couldn’t he stop? I hoped to be a good missionary and to be able to sit next to people prostrate in bed, to talk about the good news of salvation. But wasn’t there time for anything but medicine?
Fortunately, once again, I took my problem to the elders of the church, asking for their prayers. And again, not only did they pray and comfort me, but they also scolded me kindly. “Doctor, how many patients come to the hospital each day ???
“About two hundred and two hundred and fifty?
“They certainly come because you’re there! They wouldn’t come if there was no doctor there. So what do we do? All day, every day, where are you going, we go?Doctor, do you realize we have joy?” Do you take five, ten, sometimes even more than ten people to the Lord each week?If you weren’t there, they wouldn’t come!??
God had to teach me to be ready to be part of a team.
There were also lessons to learn from prayer, some of which referred to prayers that seemed impossible and were answered.
A woman died in her birth, leaving a premature newborn and a two-year-old girl. We had no incubator as there was no electricity, and a bag of hot water was the way to keep such a small baby warm on cold, windy nights. But in tropical and humid regions, rubber deteriorates easily. Then, when the last bag of water for the baby was filled, it broke. A nurse was assigned to hold this baby and keep it warm with its own body heat.
The next day, Helen met with the children at the orphanage for the usual prayer hour and told them about the baby who needed to stay warm and the little sister, who was crying because her mother had passed away. Ruth of a year and her own answer to that “impossible” prayer.
God, please send us a bag of hot water. It won’t be good tomorrow, my God, because the baby’s already dead, so please send one this afternoon, and while you’re occupying it, could the Lord send a doll to the girl?the gentleman really loves her
Can I honestly say? Didn’t I think God would do that?The only way for God to respond to this specific prayer would be to send me a plot of my land. He had been in Africa for four years, and until that time he had received nothing from home?
When do I get home? I took him to the orphanage?About thirty or forty pairs of eyes focused on the large cardboard box.
[After taking out a lot of objects], when I put my hand back in the box, did I feel it?Did I take it and get it out? Yes, a rubber bag for hot water, new!Cried?
Ruth? He ran towards me shouting, “If God sent the bag, he must have sent the doll too!?Looking at the bottom of the box, she pulled out the doll dressed in a beautiful outfit. Ruth’s eyes lit up!” have you ever hesitated?
Had this package been shipped five months earlier? In response to the ten-year-old’s prayer of faith for “this afternoon” to arrive.
Some other lessons about prayer related to prayers that seemed to have not received an answer, but at least were not answered the way Helen wanted.
Helen had been trained to be a doctor, but not to be a surgeon. It was scary to think about learning to work through practice, when someone’s life depended on their skills. He refused to have surgery until he faced reality. Some people would die without the operation, and if they didn’t, who would?For the rest of his time in Congo, he prayed that God would take away this fear, but it was not the way God had chosen to keep his mind. alert and his steady hand.
Are these stories of five ordinary women? Sarah Edwards, Lilias Trotter, Gladys Aylward, Esther Ahn Kim and Helen Roseveare, who believed in their wonderful God, as he led them to do great things for their kingdom. Noel Piper presents his lives and achievements as examples of what it means to be truly faithful. Meeting these women will challenge the reader to make a difference for Christ at home, in the church, and in the world.
By: Christmas Piper. © Faithful Editor. Website: editorafiel. com. br. Excerpt taken courtesy of the book: Faithful Women and Their Wonderful God.
Original: Helen Roseveare: doctor, missionary and faithful servant, © to the Gospel. Website: voltemosaoevangelho. com All rights are reserved.