Friday, July 16th.

The team is on safari and they are having a great time and were very excited to go hunting with the bushman on Saturday am.  The team will be coming back to Arusha on Saturday evening, and I will be happy to see them again.  We fly to Mwanza on Sunday am.

I want all of you that are reading this to take time to pray and thank God for all the blessings that you have been given.  We just don’t understand what it is like to live in such poverty.

This is a photo that hangs outside of the OR rooms.  It is so powerful and is a reminder that God is always with us as we are doing surgery on these patients.

We had a 34 year old patient that came to my outreach clinic because she had been to a hospital because of pain and was told her gallbladder was full of stones and needed surgery to remove it.  This has been this way since 2018 and she had to suffer with pain due to the many stones because of no money.  She arrived at our outreach clinic and I referred her to Selian hospital.  We did surgery to remove her gallbladder and you could not believe the size of the stone and so many of them.  She had to be suffering with so much pain.  I can’t even imagine the amount of pain.  Hope Ministries paid for all her surgery and medical care and I went to see her yesterday and she was being discharged.  She was so grateful for the help and would no longer need to suffer with the pain.  I can’t wrap my mind around the how people are sent home to suffer or don’t get any medical help because of no money.

We had another very sad case presented at one of our outreach clinics and she was our first patient.  I think the team was shocked and saddened by what this women has had to endure.  This women was 34 years old and had been in an accident and had a bad wound in her lower foot and ankle area.  She was hospital and then they did a skin graft that did not take because the wound became severely infected.  Her husband left her and she ended up selling her house and everything she owned to help pay for her medical expenses and then had to move in with her father.  She cried as she told the team her story.  My heart went out to this lady.  I took off the dressings and the dressings smelt so bad due to infection.  I cleansed the wound, put on some topical antibiotic and dressed it with clean dressings.  I then put her on oral antibiotics.  I contacted a doctor at that we would be going to and he said to bring her Selian Hospital and we admitted her to the hospital.  The staff kept asking why is she crying and when I told her story they all felt so bad.

We took her to surgery and cleaned the wound and she will stay in the hospital for a week and then they will do a skin graft.  Thanks to all the donors, Hope Ministries is paying for all her medical expenses.  I pray all goes well and she will be able to build a new life for herself. She has children that she needs to support and her love for them showed and she was blaming herself for their hard life.

Thank you God for always being there for me and guiding me where you know my sisters and brothers need us the most.

Please keep praying for the team as we will be doing total hips and total knees for the first time at Bugando Hospital in Mwanza.  I am a little nervous, because those are some big surgeries, but I know God will be there for us to provide us strength.

Sending a lot of love to my family and friends.  A HUGE THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU FOR YOUR PRAYERS AND YOUR DONATIONS.  I WISH YOU WERE HER TO SEE THE SAD CASES YOU ARE HELPING.

GOD BLESS,

Mama Gayle