Torch, Fall 2001

Fall 2001 / TORCH 7 God, I concluded that through this brochure God was giving me my instructions for my life. I was to be a medical missionary to Nepal. And so again I said, “Yes.” Of course, I had little idea what I was getting into. I had been a Christian only two days! Of course, God has a wonderful way of confirming His call. All through my university years Nepal was put more and more into my heart. The most beautiful confirmation of my call to medical missions came on my first day of medical school. There, I met my future wife, Cynthia, literally over a dead body. We’d been assigned as lab partners in anatomy lab. I know it doesn’t sound very romantic, but it worked. After dissecting a cadaver for a few weeks, I got up the courage to ask Cynthia why she had gone into medicine. She said, “God has called me to be a medical missionary.” I said, “Wow, isn’t that interesting, He’s done the same with me.” Cynthia didn’t know to which country God had called her, but I was able to clarify that for her. We were married the second year during the main course of pathology. So we tell our friends that we met in anatomy and married in pathology. We finished our training and in 1970 went off to Nepal to begin our grand adventure with God. When we arrived in Nepal, we were assigned to a small, rural hospital. It was the only modern medical facility for a population of a half-million people. Cynthia and I were two of only three doctors serving 500,000 people. People talk about the needs here in America—and there are needs in the inner cities and in some rural areas—but they don’t compare to the needs in places like Nepal. Many of our patients had to walk 15 miles to get to the hospital. Our typical patient walked a whole day just to get to the hospital. That means many walked two or three days. If they were too sick to walk, they could be carried in a human ambulance—a basket slung on a man’s back or a hammock slung on a pole carried by two men. You could imagine that our patients didn’t come to the hospital at the first sniffle, headache, or toothache. If you had to walk a day over the mountains just to get to your doctor or dentist, you’d put it off, hoping the illness would get better by itself. Just take a toothache, for example. If you had to walk a day to get to your dentist, rather than Opposite page: Nepali tribal villages share a magnificent landscape with some of the world’s tallest mountains. Opposite page insert: At an altitude of 23,000 feet, Macha Pucchare stands over Western Nepal. A former leprosy hospital is in the foreground. Top: First mission hospital in Katmandu. Middle: “1st-class ambulance.” When traveling vast distances, those who are unable to make the journey must rely upon the able-bodied for the trip. Traveling throughout the night is often necessary. Bottom: Many diagnoses and treatments must be done in the field. Village house calls are most welcome — even if needles become necessary.