GOD IS GOOD!…

 All the time…

Things are moving forward a little every day.  We had a generous donor purchase 10 mattresses for the hospital!  Soon, we will have a decent place for our community to lay their sick heads while we and God treat them.  If you wish to contribute to this cause specifically, you can send funds to my work fund account at Dalraida church of Christ and put a note with it stating it is for mattresses.

Brayan and baby Promise have continued to see the specialist in Mbeya for their condition.  I am hopeful that they will continue to do well until the special surgeon gets here in June/July.  Anyway, that is when we have be told he will be here…..but I have found in this country that may mean November/December.  Please continue to pray for these two boys.  We are providing baby Promise with special formula and vitamins to help boost his system.

All of us at the hospital continue to evaluate our financials and look for ways to cut expenses as well as increase income.  There are a couple of things we could do, but do not have any up front cash in order to accomplish these things.  We have too many employees and too few patients.  We would like to decrease some of the staff, however, we do not have any cash on hand in order to pay a severance to them.  The union will not let us terminate without a decent severance and we also want to help them with a good severance as well.  We do not want to terminate without helping them to care for their families until they can find another job.  It is not like we have good jobs on every corner.  This option will cost us money up-front, but will save on payroll in the long run.

As I mentioned before, lightening took out the control board to our X-ray machine.  We have looked and looked and have not been able to find one.  We have ordered one, but will take 4-6 weeks (meaning 8-12) it get it,  This is costing us a lot of revenue!

The new operating suite is moving a long.  All of the foundation is down and they are placing the concrete floor now.  You can see the size of the addition pretty well in this picture.

Today will be a fun day.  First, church at one of our village congregations to worship our Lord and Savior. Then I will head to Mbeya (actually to the east of Mbeya which is farther away as we are west of Mbeya) to the airport to pick up the Harding students and teachers!  It is always uplifting to have students/visitors here.  They bring an energy with them that helps us all!  The Tanzanians enjoy teaching others what they do and know.  Friendships will bloom and some of them will last for years.  I continue to correspond and visit with many of the students who I bonded with.

The next big project which I will be helping with is to improve our medication supply chain.  We will make some new procedures in order to control our medications better.  Once we get this new system going a little, I will have some pictures and explanations for you.

I am still reviewing charts and teaching nursing classes every week.  It helps all of us if we look at other charts for the good, the bad and the ugly.  Right now there is a lot of ugly….but hopefully in the near future, we will see more good.  I also spent last weekend reviewing our insurance claims for February.  The insurance company deducts money from our claims for many reasons.  (Just like in America…decline first and only pay if you have to.)  The purpose of this in depth review is to find out why the deduction, who needs help learning how to have less deductions and thereby increase our payments.  The biggest downfall to this review is that the government payments are slow.  So I was reviewing February in May!  That means if someone is making an error that we can fix, we will not see an impact for two months!  By then the government will have found another reason to deduct us!  But we continue to try to get all the money we can.

Below is a picture I took last night with the moon behind my house.  I don’t know why pictures do not show the beauty as the eye sees it, but this still looks pretty awesome!

I thank the Lord every day for the opportunity to be in this place.  I ask Him to help me make a difference in the lives of the people I come into contact with.  I often think about the song “Have Thine Own Way”. “Thou are the potter, I am the clay.  Mold me and make me After Thy will, While I am waiting, Yielded and still”.  I want to be molded each and every day into a new servant for Our King…. To do His Will and not mine.