The Horn

A few weeks ago Rhett had the opportunity to travel to the "Horn" of Africa (sorry I'm being so cryptic but it is a sensitive area - check your map if you don't know where I'm talking about). Some physicians here have a wonderful relationship with the medical school in this country and make trips every few months to provide classroom teaching and clinical teaching on rounds in the hospital as well has perform many surgical cases. This is basically all the knowledge they receive outside of a book their entire medical education. This country and it neighbors have been ravaged by war for almost 20 years. They went for almost 13 years graduating no doctors in their country which has now left a generational gap in teaching the upcoming doctors not to mention an huge shortage of healthcare providers for a country still at war and constantly on the verge of crisis and famine.

Rhett was thankful to be able to be a part of this ministry to the people in this country. They are very welcoming and thankful for the doctors who come alongside them to help restore their country in many, many ways. There is a person working among these people on a full time basis and when Rhett asked him how many Christians were in this city he said "none that I know of". Rhett also asked him about the relationships he had made in the community and with his neighbors and if he felt like he had any genuine affection or loyalty from those people and he said no. Can you imagine working in a place like this? Rhett likened it to winter in Narnia. Just a wasteland with no hope. Thank God there is hope in Jesus Christ but this is the hope these people are living without. Instead they are oppressed religious laws and a country at tenuous peace as their neighbor (who they have declared themselves sovereign from but no international body will recognize) slips further and further into the abyss of anarchy, radicalism, starvation and brutality. We pray for the light of Christ to bring spring to the eternal winter in this part of the world.