(Sept. 29, 2017 - by Harold Goerzen)  Little Cristabel was limp and lethargic when she arrived at the medical caravan in remote village of Yaodonkho, Ghana. She was brought in by her concerned mother who had carried her for miles beneath the hot sun. Irritated and crying, the sick child had a high fever and a raspy chest.

Doctors were especially concerned because Cristabel was unable to take fluids or swallow medicine without vomiting. She barely even reacted when nurses administered a painful suppository for fever along with an antibiotic shot. After rehydrating her, the staff sent the pair back home. Before leaving, however, the clinic team gathered to pray for Cristabel, asking for God’s healing hand before giving them a ride back to their village.

When the car returned 30 minutes later the staff excitedly shared a video clip they had taken when they dropped off Cristabel and her mother at home. To their amazement, the child was in her mother’s arms, smiling and waving as the team drove away. Was it a quick response to the medications or a miraculous answer to prayer? Maybe both. Team members were ecstatic as they rejoiced in the child’s sudden improvement.

Cristabel was just one of the 1,839 patients seen in some 10 villages during Reach Beyond’s annual Akoma Ntoso (Linked Hearts) medical internship in July. The team included nine interns from the U.S. along with about 10 staff members from Reach Beyond who worked alongside partner ministry Theovision. This is a ministry founded by Rev. Theodore Asare in 1989 to record Bible passages in hundreds of African languages and then distribute and play them in a Bible-listening outreach.

Interns worked hand-in-hand with missionaries to screen patients for medical issues, prescribe medications (under supervision), give advice and refer them to specialists in more severe cases. They also prayed and shared the gospel with patients and entertained the children with activities such as Bible stories and games.

“Your encouragement, advice and financial gifts have made it possible for us to treat 333 cases of malaria, and 192 patients received a decent supply of blood pressure medications for their hypertension,” wrote Ryan Thompson, a biology student at Geneva College in Pennsylvania, in a letter to his ministry partners.

“In rural Ghana, it’s estimated that children may experience up to 15 episodes of malaria per year,” noted Sheila Leech, a registered nurse who serves as Reach Beyond’s vice president of global healthcare. “Although malaria is a deadly and debilitating disease, if caught early, treatment is swift and efficient, and patients make a remarkable recovery.”

One of those was a boy named Kwesi who was so dehydrated and feverish that he was nearly unconscious when he arrived at the clinic. Tylenol brought down the fever and oral rehydration fluids mixed with a soft drink quenched his thirst.

“Within an hour he was up and running around, demanding food and snacking on peanuts. His fever was gone!” Leech exclaimed. “Resilience is built into our bodies. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. As we traveled back to our base that night, we speculated about what would have happened had we not been in the village that day. What would Kwesi’s fate have been?”

Thompson added that the team’s doctors also prescribed medications for such things as lower back pain, parasites, infections and viruses, and they handed out reading glasses to those who needed them. “Many young girls who would normally have to miss a week of school every month due to their periods were given hygiene kits so they could still attend class.”

Thompson said he was intrigued to hear the story of a man who had visited the mobile medical clinic last year and returned to see the same Reach Beyond doctor. “He was a fetish priest—a very powerful member of the village known to cast spells and act as a witchdoctor,” he explained. “Through Theovision he came to hear the Bible in his native language and found Christ.”

Anna Bornemeier, a nursing student at Grace University in Omaha, Neb., said she decided to follow the Lord in baptism during the Ghana outreach. “Being here in Africa really opened my eyes to the amazing healing power that Christ has, not just physically but also spiritually. I’m so very thankful that I had the opportunity to be baptized in the Atlantic Ocean, expressing outwardly what Jesus has done for me by dying on the cross and taking away my sins.”

Leanna Lehner, a biology student at Mount Vernon Nazarene University in Ohio, said her most profound experience was assisting Dr. Margaret Mensah, medical superintendent at Theovision’s Tree of Life Clinic in Accra.

“I was a bit nervous because of her fast pace in diagnosing patients. She knows what she’s doing and she is super intelligent,” Lehner explained. “She quizzed me along the way, so that made me nervous too, thinking, ‘I hope I don’t answer this wrong.’ But it was all in preparation for me to see my own patients. By the end of the day I was able to diagnose them and write prescriptions under her supervision. That pushed me way past my comfort zone.” Lehner is now considering serving as a physician assistant on the mission field someday.

“In one way or another, we each eventually had to do something that we weren’t comfortable with, but by asking God to be with us we were all able to stretch ourselves past what we thought we could do,” added Julianna Twigg, a biomedical engineering student at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

Kristen Thiessen, who had served on a previous Ghana internship and is now working as a registered nurse in Colorado Springs, Colo., joined the team again this year to gain more experience in a missions setting.

She said she was pleasantly surprised to finally be able to conquer her trepidations about praying out loud. “I found how easy it was to pray with patients and in front of the group when I just relaxed and let the Holy Spirit take over. With a little nudge from the staff, I was able to overcome these fears.”

“I was able to regroup, refocus and refresh, gaining new insight into what it really means to be in healthcare—what we are called to do in this field,” Thiessen concluded. “I was given the tools, and this outreach really allowed to me gain confidence and understanding. I got good practice that I could bring back with me. I feel enabled.”

Source: Reach Beyond