Not long ago we received the 2017
“White Cross” shipment. There were loads of rolled bandages, gloves,
suture, gauze, uniforms, and infant blankets. Someone had fun
selecting those flannel prints! Stars, trains, teddy bears, clowns,
and bugs adorned blankets carefully hemmed and folded for infants in our
11 hospitals. How grateful we are in Congo for White Cross!
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The arrival of the container is a
much anticipated event, and if it’s a 40-foot container (this one was!),
we mobilize all the willing workers on the Baptist compound.
Our logistical hurdles are like nowhere else. A 20 foot container
we once hoisted over the wall into the compound, but a 40 foot container;
there’s no way!
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So Wayne is conscripted to make
dozens of trips in his pickup truck moving boxes from the container in
the road to the storerooms in the compound.
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Half the container is composed of
reasonably sized boxes of sutures, uniforms, gauze compresses and gloves.
The REST is 131 boxes of rolled bandages each weighing 260 pounds.
It takes four men and brute force to unload them from the container, then
load on the pickup, and then unload them into a store room. That’s
34,000 pounds total!
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Every time I go on supervision
visits to the Baptist hospitals in Vanga, Sala, Kikongo, Boko, Moanza,
Kipata, Nselo, Sona Bata, Nsonga Mpangu, Mulolo, or Bandunduville, I
visit the room where White Cross supplies are stored. Usually the
shelves are mostly empty, and the staff plead for more supplies. They
will soon all be full!
Why is there so much meaning for us in sutures, gloves, and rolled
bandages? | |
Packed into those boxes is the
fragrance of the prayers that follow this shipment and the distinct
reminder to our doctors, nurses, and patients, that they are being
remembered. For servants of God working in far flung and difficult
corners of God’s Congo world, that’s feeling money cannot buy. All
of us say THANK YOU for the gift of White Cross.
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Or send a check to
American Baptist International Ministries
P.O. Box 851 • Valley Forge, PA 19482
Put "ongoing support for Wayne & Katherine Niles" on the
memo line
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