Three(!!!) Surgeons

(By Alyssa) 

For years now, one of our most frequent team prayer requests was for more surgeons to join our team here. When our team arrived in Burundi five years ago, Jason Fader became one of only ten surgeons in the entire country. Word quickly spread that there was a skilled surgeon in rural Kibuye and patients began flocking from all over - even from neighboring countries. The Burundian generalist physicians can handle a lot of overnight emergencies for the hospital - C-sections, kids with seizures from malaria, adults with hypertensive crises. But the generalist doctors are not trained as surgeons (other than C-sections), so that means that Jason has been on call every night for months at a time (except for when we had visiting short-term surgeons.) We're so thankful to report that those days are now over! God has answered the prayers of many and provided not one but TWO new surgeons. We introduced the John and Thiessen families on the blog here while they were in language school, but they have now arrived and are settling into life here in Burundi.

The Thiessen family

The John family

Three surgeons! 

Three surgeons walking to the hospital

Dr. Jesh seeing a patient

Dr. Ted operating

The new surgeons have survived their first week of work, but it's a steep learning curve. Only a small fraction of the work surgeons do here in Burundi would be done by general surgeons in the U.S. or Canada. Here, general surgery includes orthopedics, plastics, vascular, pediatric and neonatal surgery, urology, neurosurgery, etc. And they have to learn all the French vocabulary for these complicated surgical cases in order to teach the medical students while they operate and see patients. Please pray for Jesh and Ted as they transition to this missionary surgeon life in Burundi. And pray for their families, too, as they also have a steep learning curve figuring out how to cook and shop and do laundry and watch kids and make friends and stay healthy in rural Africa. We threw them an added curve ball this week when we discovered there is no propane in the country at the moment which means figuring out how to cook without using the gas stoves! But they are persevering through all the ups and downs and we're so happy to have them here. We welcomed them with a combined Fourth of July and Canada Day potluck. 

And the kids put on a show to welcome the arrival of the new families and the return of the Cropsey family. Next pray with us for engineering help!