Chidamoyo Hospital in Zimbabwe

Michael with his pizza! Surprising Michael at school with his dad! Yesterday(Saturday) we had a wonderful day. It started at 4 a.m. when I got up to speak to my family on Skype. It was Friday evening their time and it was family game night at my nephew’s so got to speak to several at once and saw them too! By 5:30 a.m. Major and I were on our way to Harare to surprise his son Michael on his 18th birthday. On the way to Harare we stopped at Magunje and hour from here where we were having an area woman’s church meeting. Patience, Major’s wife was there and it was also her birthday—so we stopped by to surprise her with cake at 6:30 in the morning! It was so encouraging to see over 300 women who had come for the meeting and they all came out to greet us! We arrived in Harare about 10:30 a.m. and Michael is in boarding school and so we stopped to ask them if we could take him out for the day. We had told him in advance one of the doctors from Harare was stopping by with something so he shou...

Happy 47- Major! This has been a busy week with both doctors gone from last weekend until Friday morning. Trying to do their job and mine and Major’s all week was a bit overwhelming and thank goodness the week is over. Major has been in Chinhoyi for 2 weeks attending a course. He got to come home last weekend and then headed back 4 a.m. on Monday morning. His birthday was Friday so I sent money to the Administrator at Makonde Christian Hospital, Tauzen Kandungure, who is also in he course, for him to arrange a cake and drinks for tea on Friday. I also sent a gift for the lodge where he was staying to give it to him at breakfast on Friday. People in Zimbabwe love a party and so when Tauzen talked to someone else in the class they decided to have a big surprise party for Major. One of the other Administrators stood up on Monday and said her birthday was on Friday and she wanted to have a party and invite everyone. They set up committees for food, entertainment and decorations and asked ...

Nhasi China (chee-na) means today is Thursday! That is a day that has become a day to dread around the hospital because it is 12 hours of non-stop work! No time for tea or lunch—just work flat out! We have made every Thursday CD4 count day. Now that we have a CD4 machine and Thursdays we usually have electricity (this week we had turn on he generator), we draw blood from HIV positive patients to see who needs to start ART medication and to monitor those on ART meds to make sure they are improving. The CD4 count shows how well their immune system is working. If the number is below 350 they need to start on ART. This past Thursday we drew 87 people! There were 2 people writing the forms and filling out the test tubes while I drew all the blood from babies up to 80 year olds! Then we start getting the results back in about 2 hours and out of those 87 we needed to start 38 patients! So immediately I started prioritizing who we could start that day (those that live far away) and who could b...

Major and Carolyn and Michael The kids and I at Victoria Falls Major and kids at The Kingdom--Vic Falls Mereki family having our picnic at Maopos Michael at Rhodes Grave-Maopos Bushman paintings in Caves-Matopos Emma Takaedza's wedding Youth getting leaving for youth conference--3 a.m.! Our youth left on the Thursday before Easter for their annual youth conference. This year it was at our mission station Dewure (about 8 hours from here). We sent 30 youth in our lorry (big truck) for the 4 day meeting. They had a wonderful time and came in 3rd in the singing competition. Major and family and I took off last Saturday for a wedding of one of our nurses in Bulawayo (9 hours SE of here). We attended the wedding on Sunday and then went for 4 nights to a National Park called Matopos about 50 kms away. We spent days exploring caves where there are bushman paintings from the San people who lived here over 500 years ago. We wanted to show Major’s kids some of their history that they on...