Out of this world experience:

 

When things go far above and beyond your expectations!  We ended up taking a red eye bus trip leaving at 10:30 PM Wednesday and arriving in Etoko at 8:00 am.  Etoke is a small village about 30 Km from Mamfe.  We set up shop, prayed, I was the honorary chaplain and began to do surgeries.  During the next four days Dr. Oben, a Plastic surgeon did surgeries on 29 people, 48 different incisions, mostly hernia repair and hydrocele.  I was his assistant in surgery on about 8 surgeries, it was unbelievable, one after another they were prepped, came for surgery then to the makeshift hospital room laying on mattresses they provided, eight deep in both sides of large room.  This outreach was held at the Etoko Medical Center, now going to be called the Etoko Hospital as Dr Oben has a vision to transform it into fully functioning hospital as God Provides.  I saw things that I really didn’t care to see, these people are humble, poor farmers who suffer from large hernias. I provided consultations to about 60 men, women and children, with diagnoses, malaria, filarial, and a host of other problems many of which I had not seen before.  One child needed emergency IV for malaria but by the second day she began to recover. Their families brought in their food  I ate with them, ate there food, yes, Coco yams, Geri, cassava, coconuts, fish and ,any things I was afraid to ask what it was but my stomach survived.  The people were really receptive to the Word of the Lord that I was able to present both morning and nighttime.  They speak, English, Pidgin, and tribal dialect but we all managed and in the end the love we had for each other was truly out of this world.  Aisha means I can relate, I feel your pain and in the end I left with many of them, relatives, children and friends to, affectedly hugging me and making me promise to return, my name there as well as here in Yaoundé is Uncle P.  It was beyond precious.  For a short time we visited Mamfe which is a short distance from the Nigerian border and I was able to climb their famous “hanging bridge. “  Then there was the 8 hour trip back to Yaounde’, we got back at 5 am from the trip which is another story all together.


BY Patrick Gaughan