HAITI RECOVERS
> After the Disaster: A word from our Executive Director
> Dr. Chip Lambert with grateful friends in Haiti
> An interview with mission worker Barbara Nagy
> MBF receives bequest from Pennsylvania Church
> Someone you should know...
> Earthquake Response Timeline
and more!

Spring 2010  |  Volume 17  |  Issue 1

After the Disaster in Haiti
A Word From the Executive Director

      The destructive power of the January 12th earthquake in Haiti humbles our imagination. Like you, we are stunned with the instantaneous change in life—in some cases from life to death—of so many people. MBF stands with our partner, the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti, as they suffer with and serve the people of Haiti. Even as the people are devastated, so is the Diocese itself with the destruction of its Cathedral and University and many other of its institutions of education, service and worship. We give thanks to God, nonetheless, for their faithful witness to Christ’s grace and mercy in the midst of disaster. Bishop Duracin, whose home was destroyed and whose wife remains in the hospital, chooses to live with his people in a tent city among the ruins. He has established an emergency committee to lead the Diocesan response and to work with others to give help where possible.
      In this kind of a situation we are reminded that we are but one part of a swirling ballet made up of a host of organizations that offer help in times of great need. We are grateful that we have been positioned to make our own contribution of help in significant ways. Our involvement with the Diocese has been focused for decades on Hospital Ste. Croix and in more recent years with the founding of the FSIL Nursing School in Leogane. These institutions became the base for what we have been able to do.

      We are grateful that the FSIL Nursing School board and the Hospital Ste. Croix board have asked us to handle the $200,000 grant from the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance program to give help in Leogane.
What strikes me strongly is that it is the years of work of MBF and others that lets us be helpful and faithful now. It is the relationships carefully nurtured, the resources gathered, the capacities built, the infrastructure created, the training established, the donations made and the faith celebrated that let us walk with our partners in this time of need. Effective response requires an existing platform of service. For that reason, I ask you to continue to support our whole ministry. There is urgent need in many other places, and the emergency need may be in one of those places next time.

Yours in Christ’s Service,


--Will Browne

Dr. Chip Lambert with Grateful Friends in Haiti

Thinking About "Disaster and Singing"

      A tornado leaves your home in ruins. A river rises beyond its banks and floods your house and belongings. The earth shakes and your house crumbles in a cloud of dust. You’ve lost family members, neighbors, friends.
      How would you react to disasters like this? Would you think that God had abandoned you?
      Some of us might, but perhaps we would react like the Haitians camped outside FSIL School of Nursing and Hospital Ste. Croix after the disastrous earthquake. Suzie Parker, PC(USA) volunteer at the hospital, describes what it is like:

“There are 200-300 people who sleep in that field at night. They sing hymns until almost midnight, and we wake up to a church service, with hymns, a morning prayer, and the apostle's creed.”

      How can they sing? Because they know that God is there—before, during, and after the disaster. One way they are assured of God’s presence is the way God’s people have responded. With your donations to MBF’s Haiti Earthquake Medical Response Fund, you are binding wounds, fixing broken generators, relieving pain, and helping to keep people in Haiti singing.
      And, with your undesignated gifts, people are singing in Malawi and India, in DRCongo and Madagascar, in Bangladesh and Egypt. Thank you!

An Interview with Barbara Nagy,
Mission Co-Worker to Central Africa

We talked with Dr. Barbara Nagy in North Carolina where she is headquartering while she visits PC(USA) churches to tell them about her work at Nkhoma Hospital in Malawi. With her are her three children, Melia, Anna, and Happiness. Nagy is a specialist in internal medicine and pediatrics under the PC(USA) in partnership with the Nkhoma Synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian.

What do you see as the main health problems of children in Malawi?
Dr. Nagy: Our pediatrics ward is overflowing with children who have malaria, but usually children come in with more than one complaint—dehydration, diarrhea, maybe pneumonia—and we test them and find they also have malaria. Pneumonia and malaria are neck and neck for being the most prevalent diseases of children.

Did the community spraying have any effect on the malaria problem?
It’s too early to tell, but the Nkhoma Synod is checking village by village to try to match up the spraying with community statistics. Speaking of children, I just received a request from the Nkhoma Synod for $250,000 for the orphan project the church supports. They register all the orphans and try to keep them within a family system (uncles, aunts, grandmothers) or at least in the church family. The problem is that most families, especially when it’s an elderly person taking on the orphan, don’t have funds to support an extra person. For example, Mr. Z’s family (he’s an employee

at the hospital and makes a very small salary) has taken in 9 orphans! He’s the only one with a salary, so they are finding it difficult to support 9 extras.

How would the money be used?
Part of it would buy fertilizer for the community gardens set up for people with orphans. These are fenced areas where goats can’t get to the vegetables and eat them. Part of it would go for school fees.

What do you consider the greatest need of Nkhoma Hospital?
Medicine. We have central medicine stores through the Malawi government with reduced rates, but they almost never have what they say they have. One of the most crucial needs is HIV testing supplies, especially for pregnant women. The best way for us is to go through a missionary drug center, but it takes 6 months to a year to get the drugs and we have to pay up front. What would really help us is just the basics: simple medicines, a whole bunch of gauze, needles . . . nothing fancy. It costs us $800 a day to run the hospital and 10 health centers.

In your letters on the PC(USA) website you mention your excitement over the grade school that’s being built.
Yes! Most of the people don’t have a high school degree so they can’t take advantage of scholarships for medical training. The new grade school is a step in the direction of preparing a new generation for the future. We need to do more than “put our finger in the dike.”

The people of Malawi appreciate us walking alongside them, giving them a chance for a step up.

Reports Are Coming In: Alternative Giving Works

      Churches who sponsored an Alternative Gift Market during the past Christmas season show that, even in a down economy, Alternative Giving works.
      A church in Arizona reports that at their Christmas Bazaar “The MBF [alternative giving] project was very well received. So many folks said, ‘What a great idea!’ One lady said, ‘My son is a doctor and I never know what to get him. This is great for him.’”
      From a church in Ohio: “The alternative market went better than expected in this down-turn economy. We had 16 organizations represented and the total giving was over $14,000. This is from a small congregation that truly believes in the mission of giving.”
      More than one church thanked MBF for the table top display board explaining how gifts would be used.

Not just for Christmas
      Alternative giving projects are available year-around. Contact MBF at 800-547-7627 or check our website at www.mbfoundation.org to see how alternative gifts can work for Mothers and Fathers Day, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, Easter, and graduations.

MBF Receives Bequest from Pennsylvania Church
George Watson Campbell Fund will Help with Indigenous Healthcare Training

      George Watson Campbell died young, before he could go to medical school as he had planned. A bequest set up by his mother in his name at Morrisville Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania states that the fund must be used for scholarships in the medical field.
      When Morrisville Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania began discussing how to administer the bequest, they contacted Paula Kem at the Presbyterian Foundation. Kem remembered a presentation of the Medical Benevolence Foundation by her colleague, Ann Earnest, who agreed that it was “a perfect fit.” They presented the idea to the church.
      The church agreed. “Our church has really become mission–oriented,” said Drew Hunger, elder and trustee at Morrisville. “The trustees thought this would be a continuation of that.”

      MBF Executive Director, Rev. Dr. Will Browne, thanked the Morrisville Presbyterian Church and The Presbyterian Foundation which will establish an endowment fund that will benefit MBF for generations to come. “One of the key needs,” said Browne, “is skilled medical practitioners. . . Leaving a gift that MBF can use lets us help partners have sustainable programs of training.”
      Looking back on the process of finding the right recipient for the bequest, Ann Earnest says, “It was totally about God. It was God’s intent that this (money) be used for MBF, and all of us were just the facilitators.”

Someone You Should Know...

      Just over a year ago, Catherine Vandegrift packed her suitcase full of Moringa seeds and went off to Zambia with a group from her church in Aiken, South Carolina. For two weeks in Zambia, Catherine worked alongside her fellow church members at the Mwandi Mission and left the Moringa seeds for planting. She says:

“I’m on a mission to get Moringas
planted at Mwandi.”

      That’s not Catherine’s only mission. She is a volunteer for MBF, traveling to PC(USA) churches to

speak about MBF’s work, as well as continuing to be an active member of her church. Catherine’s late husband, Frank Vandegrift, was an MBF trustee. As an engineer, he did significant work on the hydro dam at Good Shepherd Hospital in DR Congo.
      MBF celebrates Catherine Vandegrift and her enthusiastic support of MBF and medical mission. She’s someone you should know.

EARTHQUAKE ASSISTANCE TIMELINE

Tuesday, January 12
7.0 earthquake hits just outside Leogane, Haiti, where MBF partners, FSIL School of Nursing and Hospital Ste. Croix, are located. Only a half hour after quake, injured and homeless begin arriving at Nursing School grounds.

Wednesday, January 13
Dean Hilda Alcindor and her students have set up temporary clinic for the wounded. Word comes that 3 students have died, all PC(USA) mission personnel safe, Hospital Ste. Croix cracked, but standing.

Saturday, January 16
By now, 5,000 homeless people are camped out on Nursing School grounds. Students working round the clock, medical supplies dwindling.

Tuesday, January 19
Dr. Chip Lambert, MBF Director of Mission Services arrives with 3000 lbs. of medical supplies. Sets to work helping students and assessing needs.

Sunday, January 24
People continue to line up outside the Nursing School. More supplies needed. Chip Lambert is able to secure another shipment of supplies.

Monday, January 25 to present...
FSIL School of Nursing and Hospital Ste. Croix. Hospital being repaired. Jimmy Hite, architect of Hospital and Dick Stuber, engineer arrive to help with assessment and repairs. Medical assistance continues...

Missionary Sponsorship & Info

Mission Connection is published by the Medical Benevolence Foundation,
a validated support mission of the Presbyterian Church (USA)
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