A birthday thank you from Irene

As I write this, it is pouring rain, the beginning of the planting season here and everything is turning green. We are welcoming the daily rains and the short respites from the hot sun.

Maybe you already know, but there is a great cloud of saints and angels who love this little missionary “out of Africa” into Southeast Asia and remembered her birthday this week. Throughout all this month, my mailbox has had fresh surprises for me every day and when I open my emails there is another surprise. I have felt so loved and special to have so many friends, especially all of you UMW members.

I do have for you a special story.

This week on Thursday my telephone rang. It was a 15-year old with Thalacaemia, a disease where the body makes abnormal red blood cells. Periodically, therefore, he must come to Phnom Penh to receive blood transfusions of healthy red blood cells from Angkro Sang Methodist Church in Takeo. He needed help.

He told me, “We have no food. I cannot go to school.” Sometimes, when the food runs out, parents keep children at home to help find food. Normally hiss mother,a widow who owns no land herself, works on other people’s land for food.

I was thinking, “How can I help?” Usually, I help this family with transportation-to-hospital money, but this time they are asking for food relief. Then I had a sudden idea. In February when he came to Phnom Penh in crisis, he was transfused and we sent the family home with $50 for food because he was so undernourished. So, now was he needing another transfusion?

I asked, “How are you feeling?”

“I’m not well.”

“Ok, you come to Phnom Penh on Monday and I will give you some food money, but can you go to the hospital and get checked first?”

Can you see what was happening? The family had used up all the food money we had given them in February and now (May) it was gone. But now the 15-year-old is unwell again. Because he was calling me, I was able to inquire and discover his need for medical attention.

I am so happy because our new Medical and Welfare Relief Advance is bringing the resources to help people like this 15-year-old. Slowly, with our help, he is learning to manage his illness and to use the hospital services. The church has set up a safety net to assist his family. It is health development in its finest hour.

It makes me happy to share this story with you, both because you can see how important your prayers are, but also how significant simple money support can be in making a difference for a family and their sick child.

Love, Peace and Joy,
Irene

Thank you to CSI Mercy Medical Center

We in CHAD are so grateful for our partners at CSI Mercy Medical Center. This team of compassionate missionary and volunteer medical staff provide among the best care and certainly the best follow-up services in Phnom Penh. Patients consistently express their appreciation for the dignity with which they have received care. It gives pastors and lay leaders hope that they really can reach out and help those poorest sick in their community when they know such an institution exists for those needing referral to the capital city. It is helpful to us (and to dispelling the patronage mentality) to have these new guidelines outlined by CSI for patient contributions.

While as much as possible we ask the patients to cover their portion as outlined in CSI Patient Payment Plan, your contributions to Advance #3020542 give us funds to help folks with transport and logistics involved in getting care and to pay the actual test and treatment costs above patient co-pays that are incurred by CSI-MMC for the people we refer (about $500 per quarter), and additional donations as funds are available. It is a multi-leveled partnership, and we in CHAD are excited to be able to facilitate your help to our pastors who are helping the poor sick to receive dignified, compassionate care from our partners at CSI.

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Dear CSI Mercy Medical Center Referring Partners (RPs),

Just as Jesus sent his disciples out “to preach and to heal” we are pleased to partner with you in the work of proclaiming His good news in word and deed in Cambodia!

Beginning May 4th (the first Monday in May, next week), we are launching a new Patient Payment Program. The intention of this new program is to enable us all to more effectively minister to the needs of poor Cambodians in a way which is as sustainable and empowering as possible. Because there are no increases in costs to you, the RP, we will assume your continued partnership unless you inform us otherwise.

Details of this new Patient Payment Program are attached. Key features and changes include the following:

New “sliding scale” (income-based) Patient Visit Fee: Over the past year, a first-visit fee of $10 and follow-up visit fee of $5 has been assessed to the RP, included in the monthly bill. There will no longer be a different first-visit fee, and the new visit fee will be USD 2.50 for the poor, 5.00 for medium income, and 7.50 for high income patients. We are asking all RPs to determine the patient’s income status as objectively as possible using a scoring system (attached and distributed each time new Referral Forms are distributed) and indicate this on our new Referral Form as a score (1,2, or 3).

New Referral Forms: On May 4th, please use our new Referral Forms as able (we will continue to accept OLD Referral Forms through May 30 only). You may stop by and pick new forms up as early as May 4th.

Option of designating patients as “Self Pay”: Referral Forms require the RP to select whether the patient is sponsored (meaning the RP will be billed retroactively for his/her visit) or self-pay (meaning the patient must pay at the registration window). Sponsored patients have a YELLOW MMC ID card; Self-Pay patients have a PINK MMC ID Card.

Standard Enrollment Period: Patients sponsored by an RP will be sponsored for their first 5 visits only, and then will change automatically to “self pay” status (unless the RP notifies us to continue sponsorship). During those first 5 visits (Standard Enrollment) our goals will be to establish clear diagnoses and most-sustainable treatment plans, provide the patients with opportunity to learn about preventive health and God, and communicate at least once with you regarding the patient’s health.

Finally, we’d like to remind all Referring Partners that we welcome donations to support patient care. The Patient Visit Fees help cover only a portion of the real costs of patient care. The reality is, without significant additional donations we would need to close our doors. Please prayerfully consider: a one-time or monthly donation to support the work of MMC, sponsorship of a staff member, or sponsorship of a special-needs patient. Thanks to all of you who have provided additional donations in the past. We praise God for His ongoing provision and rest in Him to provide.

In Christ,

Doug Collins
Medical Director
CSI Mercy Medical Center

Medical, Dental, and Eye Outreach Clinic in Kratie

For the last two weeks, CHAD has been working in partnership with doctors, dentists, nurses and eye technicians from Colorado and with District Superintendent Rev. Joseph Chhleav Chan and the pastors in Kratie district to host a Medical Outreach Clinic. Here is a reflection from two of the Colorado team members about their experience:

Cambodia, April 17-May 2, 2009

We just returned from our latest medical/dental mission trip, our second trip to Cambodia within two years. We went with an all Colorado Methodist group on a church planting mission to the northeastern part of Cambodia. This was the area where the US bombed the Ho Chi Minh Trail extensively from 1969 until the end of the Vietnam War. There are still quite a few water-filled bomb craters that the water buffalo now find a handy cooling off place in the heat of the day. We stayed in the Mekong River town, Kratie and worked in four villages over nine days about an hour’s drive from there.

Rev. Joseph Chan was our missionary host. Joseph is an American Bible School-trained Methodist pastor who was an ardent Communist early in life but later converted to Christianity while in a refugee camp in Thailand. He survived the horrors of the Pol Pot era, the uncertainty of refugee life, and eventually made his way to the US where he became a pastor. It was his dream to return to Cambodia to evangelize and to build churches and Christian education facilities. After clinic the first day, we participated in the ground-breaking ceremony for the first stage of his ambitious project. During a weekend break, we spent time visiting hill tribes near Ratanakiri, a border area very near Vietnam and Laos. We saw basket and textile weavers at work. The entire process from growing the cotton to spinning and dying the thread and weaving is done right there by tribal members. We also rode elephants along a jungle trail and hiked to nearby waterfalls and lakes.

Another highlight was the chance to work with two Cambodian dentists, Drs. Nee and Kim, and hear their amazing story of survival. Kim finds it too painful to talk about his experiences but Nee was open to sharing everything with us. Kim and Nee were born in different villages. While they were children, the country experienced a civil war between Khmer Rouge and government forces, but was also infiltrated by Vietnamese forces using the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Nee’s village came under attack several times and he wasn’t always certain who was attacking. This was also during Nixon’s “Secret War” in Cambodia, so B-52 attacks added to the mix. US bombers made carpet bombing raids that tore up the countryside with building-sized holes one quarter-mile long. Nee recalls seeing flairs set off by recon planes, knowing an attack was to come, and it was time to flee to the cover of the rice paddies surrounding his village. Helicopter air strikes fired bullets under the stilts the huts were standing on. Nee’s family owned some cattle. Once he recalls tending cattle in a field when a helicopter swooped down, swept them up as fish in a net, and took them away to wherever the attacking force wanted them. Eventually the boys’ families were forced to flee their homes. Each became separated from his family. Nee much later learned that, in all, 32 members of his extended family died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Nee and Kim mostly hid in the underbrush during the daytime and would travel by night. It was necessary to keep out of site as much as possible. They would walk trying to keep in sight of the road, but never walking directly on the road. All along the way it was necessary to scavenge for food. They ate whatever they could find: snakes, rats, dog. People were dying of hunger all around. Somehow the boys found their way to a UN-run refugee camp near the Thai border. This was when they were about 13 years old. The refugee camps started out as large tent cities, but over time the refugees built more traditional homes out of bamboo and straw. The camps housed 10,000 people or more. They lived in the refugee camp for 12 years. Their camp had UN-administered schools where the boys completed their schooling. Kim and Nee even completed seven years of dental studies while refugees. During their time in the camp, they were introduced to Christianity and became converts. Kim and Nee returned to Cambodia at last in 1992. Both have private dental practices in Phnom Penh. They spend much free time doing volunteer dental clinics in the countryside. Having been given so much during their time of need, and from gratitude to God, they have the sense of wanting to give back to others in need. We feel privileged that Nee would share his painful memories with us.

The medical and dental team treated over 2000 patients and provided 253 surgery referrals to hospitals and clinics in Phnom Penh, for conditions like cataracts and cleft palettes. In addition, the team paid for the patients’ needs in connection with the referrals, such as for transportation for the patient and accompanying family.

While on our way back to Phom Penh to catch our flight, we made a brief rest stop at a Buddhist temple. While there, a man approached one of our doctors with the offer to sell his three-year-old daughter. Selling children either for foreign adoptions or the child sex trade is all too common in Cambodia! We wondered: What was the man thinking?

Dale and Mary Ann