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Rain, Rain, Go Away! Come again another day……
Road to Anyajua
Greetings from rainy Mbingo! We are in green, lush, rainy season here and never leave home without our umbrellas. Makes it hard to plan a hike, but we have really nice temperatures, 60’s and 70’s. August has brought a new event for Debbie (me). I went on my first outreach clinic to one of our remote villages with our department. We went to a village named, Anyajua. It is not far in distance from our hospital, but the roads are so bad it takes about an hour to get there.
The team who traveled to Anyajua
Greeting our one house patient
We began going to Anyajua because many patients from there started defaulting their drug refill appointments because of the transport costs, and therefore some have died due to stopping their medication. We set up our mobile clinic in one of the rooms of our CBC health center in Anyajua that provides basic care. This health center is not able to get ARV(HIV) meds from the government. We saw about 35 patients that day. It was good to see those patients again; I had not seen them since we started doing these mobile clinics in January. We made one home visit that was a highlight for me. It was to one of our patients who cannot walk. She has such a sweet spirit; she is a delight to visit.
The next bit of news is that we will be having visitors in September. We are excited for Jeanna (our daughter) and her husband, Ryan, to be with us for about 10 days. 
Jeanna has been here before, but this is Ryan’s first time in Africa, so he will be able to experience firsthand a little of how Jeanna grew up, even though our home then was Nigeria. We will go back to the US with them to begin our 4 month furlough. We will stop by and visit some friends in Switzerland, the Bergers, who worked here in Mbingo a few years ago, then on to Nashville, TN where we will be based for the 4 months. We have scheduled visits to half of our churches this time. Those of you we do not get to on this furlough we will be sure to visit on our next one. We take short furloughs so that Rick isn’t away from the hospital for too long. So, visiting 27 churches is just not possible every furlough, while also getting any family time in.
Rejoice in the presence of the Lord your God. Deut. 27:7
In His Matchless Love, Rick and Debbie