Our adventure continues.....back to ELWA!!

Our first medical mission trip was to ELWA Hospital near Monrovia, Liberia way back in 1977, between med school and the start of internship  (ELWA stands for Eternal Love Winning Africa). We were fortunate to receive travel funding from the Medical Assistance Program (MAP)-Readers' Digest International Fellowships. We had a wonderful time there and our eyes were opened to the incredible needs and opportunities present in developing countries.

Beginning in 1980, Liberia had many difficult years including a military coup and two civil wars.
During that time, the hospital was looted and essentially destroyed as was Radio ELWA, which was an evangelical voice heard over a large area of West and North Africa. Finally, in 2005, a democratically elected government was installed. Since then, the country has begun a very long, slow recovery and rebuilding process which was complicated by the Ebola crisis that struck about 18 months ago. That crisis has passed with only sporadic cases now, the last being a couple months ago.

In mid 2012, the international relief organization Samaritan's Purse (whose medical arm is World Medical Mission) partnered with the mission organization  SIM (Serving in Mission, formerly Sudan Interior Mission) to begin to rebuild ELWA Hospital.  When I (Dave) recently asked our friends at Samaritan's Purse where I could serve in January, ELWA was the first place that they listed and I have taken that as God's direction that I should go there.

I am now in the final countdown to travel....2 weeks until I leave on January 7. Susie will stay in Grand Rapids to help her elderly Mom. In April, we trade places as she goes to Karolyn Kempton Memorial Hospital in Togo and I will stay home.

Stay tuned for more from Africa!!

Two young doctors at ELWA Hospital, April 1977