Outgrowing the "McCropder" Name

by Jess Cropsey

As you may remember, last year we announced that a new long-term family would be joining our team. We are excited to welcome Caleb & Krista Fader and their son Liam to Burundi sometime this summer. They are completing their cross-cultural training and fundraising and will soon move to Burundi to begin Kirundi language study.  It has also been a huge blessing to have a teacher with us here this year and she has decided to stay for another year.  We are thrilled!  She’s done a fantastic job with the kids and has also had a wonderful ministry with the medical students.    

Over the last few months, we have also officially added two other families to the team. Darrell & Becky Baskin and Logan & Julie Banks have been accepted by Serge and have begun their support raising efforts to join us here in Burundi on a long-term basis. Both families are in the support-raising/training & preparation phase and hope to go to language school in France sometime in the next 12 months.

Darrell Baskin is a retina specialist that completed his fellowship training at Wills Eye in Philadelphia, where he & John met during John’s residency. He is finishing his final year of service with the U.S. Air Force in a few months. John is very excited to have Darrell join the work in the eye clinic. He will bring many complimentary gifts & skills to the clinic and will also be the very first retina surgeon living in the country of Burundi. His amazing wife Becky and their 6 children are excited for this new phase in their lives.  (Family Blog:  www.baskinbrigade.wordpress.com)

We first met Logan & Julie Banks at Tenwek Hospital in Kenya during our 2 years with the Post-Residency Program. Logan was working for 5 months at Tenwek as part of his international fellowship program. He is a family medicine doctor with specialized fellowships in international medicine and obstetrics. For the last several years, he has been involved in the family medicine residency training program in Missouri. He will be a vital part to the work at Kibuye. As we approach 2 years of service in Burundi, our rotations for time spent in the U.S. have begun and we are realizing that having another doctor that can provide coverage for patient care as well as medical education is hugely important. With his training, Logan is qualified to do that in many areas. In addition, his experience in a residency training program will be valuable as we look to start internship and residency programs in the future. Julie is a woman of many talents (that do not currently exist on our team!) and will bring a lot of creative energy and new ideas.  Their two young boys will be great playmates for the McLaughlin & Cropsey boys.  (Family blog:  www.thebanksoffshore.com) 

We are excited to welcome these new families and look forward to what God has in store for our team and Kibuye Hospital in the future. While the “McCropders” can always be a reference to the 3 families that first started out to Kenya together 6 years ago, we recognize that our team is much larger than this now. Conveniently, Alyssa Pfister & Carlan Wendler both fit into the acronym. With the addition of Caleb & Krista Fader, we now have 4 family units sharing the “- er/-der” ending. We (the CROPseys) are living large with 4 whole letters all to ourselves!  So, with joy for God’s blessings in the expansion of our team, we move on from “the McCropders” and embrace the slightly less interesting “Serge Kibuye Team”.  (For now, our team blog will remain the same.)

Please join us in prayer for these families as they raise support, attend cross-cultural training, pack up their belongings, and begin language study. We understand the unique stresses and challenges of these phases of preparation, but also know how important they are.  

Just in case you were wondering, there are still some specific slots that we’d like to fill on our team.  Stay tuned for more info on folks that we’re looking for (both short-term and long-term)!