A Time of Transition

Barbara Nagy Mission Prayer letter

December, 2016

Dear friends:
Greetings and wishes for a blessed Christmas season from our family and the church in Malawi.  Rains have started in earnest, though there are still several months of severe hunger are ahead for many in Malawi due to the last two years of drought.  We are thankful for the financial support people in the US have given for relief, which has provided emergency food to many of the most vulnerable families in this famine, as well as food for all patients at Nkhoma Hospital until the harvest comes in 2017.  Food is provided in prenatal clinic to pregnant women, sent out with village health workers through under five screening clinics, and also brought by bicycle to some of the most remote communities around the hospital where the drought hit especially hard.   

Our family has been in the US for the past several months, and we were thankful to share the first Advent service with Black Mountain Presbyterian Church in North Carolina.  The message that day was about imagining what it would be like for God’s Kingdom to come fully in our lives and world, and what our place could be in that transformation.  It reminded me that for the past six years, I have had the dream of a vibrant community health system at Nkhoma, where preventive health clinics would be a walkable distance from any village, and village health workers would live in remote communities to provide immediate care for sick children.  That dream took a huge step forward recently due to the faithful support of the Presbytery of Western North Carolina and its Building Hope Campaign, which sent funds for a mobile medical clinic.  Most people who become ill wait several days to come to the hospital because of the difficulty and expense of traveling to the hospital.  A traditional healer, some of which are dangerous, is often consulted, or the family may try equally valueless medicines purchased at a local market.  After several days, or when the patient becomes unconscious or too weak to stand, the family will try to borrow money for hospital transport.  Often it is too late to save the ill person by the time he or she arrives at the hospital.  If the patient is a pregnant mother, her baby will also have suffered severe consequences or died.

Mobile Medical Clinic

Our mobile medical clinic, in contrast, will carry health workers, vaccines, prenatal nurses, chaplains, tents, HIV and malaria test kits, food and medicines to the most remote communities surrounding Nkhoma Hospital.  Plans have been drafted to increase the number and frequency of our clinics from six to sixteen, and to start building small houses for trained health workers in their target villages.  The mobile unit will also be used to supply and support these village health workers, and to enable collaboration between the curative and preventive teams.  Because we have funds to supply test kits and medicines to treat diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia at the village level, it now means that a family can get immediate treatment for these life threatening illnesses before their child gets seriously ill.  Support for sanitation, nutrition, and early care of pregnant women can also increase because time spent traveling from the hospital to these remote villages will be eliminated.  We plan to supply village health workers with sturdy bicycles, so that if a patient does require evaluation at the hospital there is transport at hand.  Some villages have been equipped with bicycle ambulances, but the vast majority of patients needing transport can go by simple bicycle in their mothers’ arms.  These sites can become toeholds for village health committees to identify other health and social problems that villages can work on together without outside help.  Does this sound anything like the good news of God’s kingdom of justice and mercy?  Thank you to all who have supported this wonderful gift to the people of Nkhoma, Malawi.

Many of you have been supporting our family in our transition back to the US after our departure from Malawi for family reasons, particularly educational challenges, and we deeply appreciate this.  We have been blessed with visitors, gifts, prayers and words of support from many throughout our ministry.  After additional time for discernment about God’s path for our family, we feel it is necessary for us to remain in the US for the next several years to address some of these challenges.  We will be resigning from PC(USA) mission service at the end of February, 2017.  We do not know yet what our next step will be, but we encourage your continued support of PC(USA) mission co-workers Luta and Jeremy Garbat-Welch. Luta works with Nkhoma Synod on health issues. You can read about the Garbat-Welches and subscribe to their online newsletters by visiting their Mission Connections page: pcusa.org/garbat-welch-jeremy-and-luta.  If you would like to sign up to receive their newsletters in your mailbox, please write to devservices@pcusa.org to do so.  We also invite you to remember Nkhoma Hospital, Nkhoma Synod, Ebenezer School, and also the good work of Presbyterian missions in other locations in your prayers and giving.  Please also feel free to contact us at any time through email, banagy00@gmail.com.

Thank you more than we can adequately express for your support of our family and the ministries of the Presbyterian Church in Malawi. We would like to ask you to continue supporting us as a family in this time of transition, contributing to our sending and support accounts, but also to give financial support directly for Nkhoma Hospital, ECO# E051772.

May peace be with you,

Barbara Nagy and family