Voices from the Field Rick & Debbie Bardin Get to know Rick & Debbie

In the Midst of a Road Trip

Published on February 26, 2025

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Family reunion time!

Greetings dear friends and family,

Speaking with Rick’s sister Carol at HSU.

Today we are writing from the USA. We arrived on December 16 for a three-month home assignment to report to supporting churches and friends on what God has been doing at Mbingo Baptist Hospital. We have also been able to spend some wonderful time with our kids, their spouses, and our six grandkids! We even squeezed in a quick trip to Abilene, Texas, to see Rick’s sister, her husband, and family, where we were asked to participate in a class on leadership that our brother-in-law teaches at Hardin-Simmons University.

The journey from Cameroon had a frightful start. We had traveled to Bamenda, the closest large city from Mbingo, to stay overnight before leaving the next morning for the airport in Yaoundé (a six- to seven-hour ride). While walking on the Baptist Center compound, Debbie stepped in a hole and suffered a deep gash in her leg. This threatened to cancel our onward travel, but, with the help of dear friends in Bamenda and advice via WhatsApp by friends in the US (a surgeon and a wound care nurse), we were able to care for the wound properly throughout the trip, and the Lord carried us through. The gash is now healed over without complication.

We are currently in the midst of a six-week road trip to speak at churches in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Ontario, Canada. At every stop along the way, we have been very blessed by the kindness and interest of the brothers and sisters we interact with. It is a real privilege to have the opportunity of giving testimony to the goodness of our loving Lord and of what He has done and is doing.

Speaking at Cross of Hope Church.

We would like to make you aware of a new opportunity to help upgrade the pathology laboratory in Mbingo. When we started to process tissue back in 2011, the electrical supply of the hospital was very erratic and often ruined laboratory equipment and other electronic equipment in the hospital. For this reason, we chose to do the processing manually. This method has been in place ever since and has made it possible for us to provide pathology services, but it is not optimal. Now that we have reliable hydroelectric power, it is time to upgrade to an automated system.

A Leica TP1020 tissue processor.

The cost of an automated tissue processor is more than I could expect the hospital to meet, especially with the loss of revenue incurred by the current civil war (going on nine years now). So, our mission organization, the NAB, has agreed to establish a special project to raise $40,000 to go toward the purchase, shipment, and installation of an automated processor. This can be accessed through the NAB website. TO GIVE, GO TO: nabconference.org/give/special-projects, and scroll down to find the project titled “Mbingo Laboratory Equipment.”

In His Matchless Love,

Rick and Debbie Bardin

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