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.
News & Events 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!"
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.
1st Annual Bongolo 5K Walk-Run!
The 1st Annual Bongolo 5K Walk-Run took place on July 2, 2011. There were 24 people who participated in this event, with others cheering them on. Missionaries, Africans, American visitors, adults and children on the Bongolo Station registered for the 5K just before 10 am and the then the event started right away. All who finished the 5K were WINNERS!
Get READY, get SET, GO!
