After witnessing a fire in a Bongolo Hospital warehouse two years ago, Missionary Joanna Thelander’s visiting parents, Dave and Diann Conquest, returned home and purchased a Fire Truck on EBay for $3,175! With the help of the community in Pittsford, New York and local fire departments, the Conquests have collected over $20,000 in donations to help send the truck to Africa. Check out this online article as well as a Utube TV interview taken this Thanksgiving Weekend when the Fire Truck headed out to port in New Jersey, for it’s ocean trip to Gabon via Cargo Ship.
Stories at Bongolo
Fire Truck Headed to BONGOLO!
Special Finacial Needs!
40 foot Shipping Container.
If you would like to give towards the hospital but you are not sure which account to use, please give to the Bongolo Hospital Special Projects account. With this account we take care of many other smaller projects for which there is no fund or we can use it towards accounts that do not have enough money to meet the needs. Thanks.
Several times a year a container of medical supplies is shipped from Cleveland, Ohio to Gabon and the Bongolo Hospital. The shipping costs and port fees can cost around $10,000 each container. If you would like to give toward this ongoing need, please give towards the Bongolo Medical Supplies Shipping Charges account. Thanks.
First Eyeglasses Ever!
First pair of glasses made.
By Dr Wendy Hofman:
We at the Bongolo Eye Clinic have started making our own eyeglasses! Back in June 2010, Eric and I started a conversation with Wooddale Church in Minnesota as they were looking for ideas for their “Generosity!” campaign. We presented the great need for eyeglasses in Gabon, Africa, where we work. Here patients often have to travel to the capital city of the country and spend $300+ that they don’t have in order to get eyeglasses. Many times a day my nurses and I would write out prescriptions for eyeglasses to my patients who needed them, knowing that these prescriptions would never get filled.
First patient to receive glasses.
The result of this conversation was a donation for eyeglasses-making equipment – thank you so much, Wooddale! And thanks to our aviation missionary team partners, we were finally able to transport the equipment from where the oceangoing container had left it, in the capital city of Libreville, to our hospital out in the bush. Finally, thanks to work by our maintenance missionary team partners hereat Bongolo hospital, we have outfitted the eyeglasses-making room (“optical shop”) and set up the equipment. It has truly been a team effort!
And I have spent the last couple of weeks learning how to make eyeglasses along with my resident and nurses, with great success!
Nurse Jean Paul with patient wearing the first pair of glasses he had made.
It is such a joy to have patients come into our little air-conditioned optical shop to pick out their frames, and be able to give them what they need
Older girl can now see the board better.
to see well – without even the risk of having to operate on them! Praise the Lord for his provision and instruction to provide these glasses for our patients.
We are currently looking to hire someone in the community to help us with the backlog of glasses orders we’ve already accumulated. We’ll have to fully train this person, of course, but hopefully we can find someone who is good at arithmetic and has a faithful walk with the Lord. One of the applicants goes to our church. Please pray for wisdom in this hiring process.
"I can see all the way to the river!"
Buffalo Attack!
By Dr. David C. Thompson
His name is Douckaga Douckaga, he’s 52 years old, he’s an elder in the Alliance church in Niali, in south Gabon, and he survived a buffalo attack. On Monday, July 26 a year ago he left the village on foot with his two teenage sons and their dog to check their small animal traps. They carried with them two loaded shotguns, and two machetes. As they approached one of the traps a buffalo suddenly ran by them, dragging on his hind leg a small tree tethered to a thin steel cable. Douckaga ran after him with his shotgun, followed by the dog and his sons. The buffalo ran into waist high grass and as they cautiously approached, charged Douckaga. He aimed at the buffalo and fired point-blank, but the gun misfired. A second later the buffalo threw him to the ground and began twisting his horns through both of Douckaga’s his thighs,trying to tear open his groin. Douckaga grabbed the buffalo’s horns and shouted for the son with the other gun to come close and shoot him. Meanwhile the buffalo fought to throw Douckaga off his horns, thrusting one of horns entirely through his left arm in two places. The dog attacked the buffalo from behind, temporarily distracting him. At that moment Douckaga’s son ran up and thrusting the shotgun against the buffalo’s neck, fired. The buffalo staggered, but then turned on Douckaga again, who was still shouting and clinging to the bull’s horns. His other son then chopped hard at the bull’s neck, and dropped him.
Douckaga checked himself out, and realized that the horns had missed all major arteries in his arm and thighs. They were seven kilometers (5 miles) from home, so he told the boys they needed to start home while he had enough strength. He walked all the way home on his own power. Several hours later he arrived at Bongolo Hospital with his wife and one of his sons. Our surgical residents took him to the operating room, washed out his wounds and dressed them, and told his waiting family that although his injuries were serious, he was expected to recover quickly. By the time I saw him he was resting in bed comfortably and smiling at God’s grace.
That same day, a group of about 30 women from the Alliance churches in Lebamba was scheduled to travel 500 miles to a city in northern Gabon for the annual women’s retreat. Douckaga’s wife was also registered to attend the same women’s retreat. To everyone’s surprise, after he returned to his bed from the operating room Douckaga turned to his wife and told her that he wanted to attend the retreat and not stay with him. When she objected, he told her that he was doing fine, and he wanted her to go! At his urging, she boarded a bus the next morning and went with the other women to the retreat.
The next day Douckaga and his sons ate roast buffalo!
Pure Water!
In February a team of four visitors were on the hospital compound to install a PROFESSIONAL FILTERING SYSTEM that started to filter all of the water that supplies the Station and the hospital! It also chlorinates the water. After a few weeks of this purified water going through the old pipes to clean them out the water was DRINKABLE!
Update: Although the water is now MUCH cleaner than it was before, we have found that the price of paying for Chlorine locally is very high so have stopped using the chlorine. Please pray for wisdom as an alternate source of Chlorine, or another solution is being sought. Thanks.
