project outreach
Q: What type of ailments are most frequently treated at the hospital? A: Zimbabwe is plagued by an HIV epidemic. Of the more than 90,000 patients who are treated at the hospital each year, about 3,000 have HIV. Counselors on staff help patients throughout treatment. One of the hospital’s projects provides a milking goat to HIV-positive women who have just given birth to prevent their babies from contracting the virus through breastfeeding. People come to the hospital because they can get the medicine and help they need, and they know they will be cared for.
Q: Who works for the hospital? A: Both volunteers and national staff make Karanda Mission Hospital successful. People who work at the hospital could be working anywhere else in the world, but chose to come to Karanda Mission Hospital. They are people who have a vested interest in helping men and women come to know Christ, and their compassion comes through in their work.
Q: How did you become involved with the hospital? A: I came to the hospital in 1962 at the age of six with my father, who was a missionary doctor, and mother. When I was 12, I wrote a letter to the hospital’s director, saying more doctors were needed so that I could spend time with my father. I very shortly realized that if anyone were to come back to the field, it would be someone who grew up there and knew the situation, and I decided it had to be me. So, I told God if He would give me the ability to be a doctor, I would go back and give Him 10 years. It’s been 20 years now.
PROJECT OUTREACH
The Good Samaritan Society’s Project Outreach program began in the mid-1960s as a response to needed aid at orphanages and medical facilities in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Today, the Good Samaritan Society extends its mission through Project Outreach to three continents in order to help more seniors and others in need. The Society supports Karanda Mission Hospital in Africa, the Lutheran Aid to Medicine in Bangladesh (LAMB) mission in Asia, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Colombia in South America.
“Project Outreach helps the very poor,” says the Rev. Greg Wilcox, vice president of mission effectiveness and senior pastor for the Good Samaritan Society. “My sense is that God has a strong desire that we reach out to people in need — the last, the lost and the least in the world.”
Money for Project Outreach is raised through various means, including donations from staff members, special collections at the Good Samaritan Society’s Annual Meeting, and offerings. In addition, friends of the Society have designated funds from bequests to go toward Project Outreach. In 2010, the Society contributed nearly $69,000 to Project Outreach. More than $12,000 of that went to Karanda Mission Hospital. Recently, the Society partnered with
16 The Good Samaritan • 2011 • Vol. 45 • No. 1 South America Colombia,
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