Katherine and Wayne serve as seconded missionaries to Interchurch Medical Assistance in Democratic Republic of Congo. Wayne serves as the in-country liaison officer with IMA for financial and accounting matters. Katherine is working with a group of Congolese Christian professionals in training community leaders, urban and rural, to be promoters of health in their communities. The staff of a church-related health center in Kinshasa is also using her expertise to make their medical ministry more holistic as they care for urban poor people.

Katherine writes: Imagine delivering a baby in the dark!  Lightening struck the solar lighting system at the Baptist hospital in Boko several months ago. Since then the staff works by candle light to assist night time deliveries, tend newborn babies and do emergencies.  Serving a population that earns less than a dollar a day. The hospital saw no option but to go on as best as possible in the dark. The Boko Baptist hospital has been without a doctor for two years.
In November Dr. Kapenze who worked with us at the Kintambo Baptist Health Center in Kinshasa agreed to become the medical director there.  A few weeks ago he came back to Kinshasa to purchase medicines supplies and find light for the hospital.  IM missionary Bill Clemmer agreed to fund replacement parts for the solar lighting system, purchase a modest stock of medicines, and to fund a road trip to Boko (a 250 mile trek, with the last 90 over dirt roads) with Dr. Kapenze, as a way to encourage those laboring there.  [Our son] Jonathan and I went along.  We also took a Kinshasa based technician, who would repair the solar light system.

(Katherine then describes the trip and the successful completion of their task – read her journal at http://www.internationalministries.org/read/20022.)

The next morning, with the staff in their work places, Dr. Kapenze gave us an exhaustive walk through the hospital, certain to point out every need and deficiency.  The poverty of the population exaggerates even mundane daily tasks and the quality of services at the hospital have sunk to a minimum level.  Dr. Kapenza faces the enormous challenge of pulling things together.  In each department, we tarried long enough to hear about and appreciate the work done, to encourage each one to do the best job possible, and to reflect God’s light with a word of admonishment or encouragement.  Their struggles are real: patients who can pay little, a 250 mile long and difficult supply pipeline, isolation, debts, things that were, but are no more; even darkness.

The darkness and weight of the poverty experienced by our colleagues from Boko burden their work completely.  Yet, the shackles of poverty go far beyond the lack of financial and material resources.  They are more often a result of the way people think and behave.  How do you fight such poverty?  We fight it with the Light of the World, who penetrates people’s thoughts and ideas and dispels darkness. 

• Pray for Katherine and Wayne as they serve Christ in so many ways in D.R. Congo.
• Pray for those Dr. Kapenza and all who minister in the name of Christ to the poor and needy in the D. R. Congo