Lots of visitors, container arrives, surgeries, Rhino camp and more visitors!

On June 25^th we welcomed our research team from Stanford and BRTI Labs in Harare. We also had visitors from Gilead Drug Company in San Francisco, CA that is sponsoring our research, Dr. Dennis Israelski and his two sons Alec and Aiden. We put the kids to work on our IT problems and they were a big part of improvement for our research. They left on 27^th after 2 days of hard work by everyone.

On June 26^th we welcomed a new container from Sebastopol, CA. It was full of equipment for the hospital and we were able to start downloading it on the 28^th and have been busy ever since working on it.

Dr. Kajese and Mr. Kudaona (the surgeon) and Mrs. Kajese and Pam came from Harare for surgeries on Saturday the 29^th. They left Harare at 2 a.m. and were here by 6 a.m. for breakfast and then started on their long list of 16 people. They did hernias and 1 lipoma removal. They worked straight through the day until 5 p.m. to finish and then left at 4 a.m. the next day. We are so thankful for their generous donation of their time to help our patients who could never afford a trip to Harare and surgery there.

July third, we welcomed back Jo and Dr. Darick Taniguchi for their 4^th visit with us. This trip they brought their son Tyler and his wife Emma. Tyler is hoping to become a nurse and Emma did some video for us to use in our upcoming trip to the US.

Major's daughter Carolyn who is in the US going to College has been spending her summer with the Taniguchi's. She really wanted to be packed in the suitcase with them to come here--instead she sent her dad a 2 pound bag of Reese's PB cups! He was so happy!

On the 4^th of July we celebrated here with a braai (BBQ) for 16 people. We had hamburgers and hot dogs with baked beans, devilled eggs, Cole slaw, potato salad, corn on the cob and then Apple Crumble and Chocolate Cake for dessert. The doctors and wives came with Major’s family and our visitors and me. We ended up sitting by the fireplace to keep warm as winter is here! We wished we had marshmallows for S’mores!

We put the Taniguchi family to work with unpacking boxes, in between seeing patients, from our new container that had just arrived, and we spent 2 busy days doing that. They also went out for an ART clinic to help and they enjoyed that. They spent an overnight at our rural home in Batanai too.

On the 9^th-11^th of July we went to Rhino Safari Camp for 3 nights and enjoyed time seeing the beautiful animals God has created for us in Zimbabwe. Major went fishing and even though it is cold, he caught enough fish to have as an appetizer before dinner one night.

On the 12^th we arrived home in time to welcome new visitors, final year medical students from Norwich, England. Sophie, Naomi and Deevia are here with us for 3 weeks. We are thankful they brought us a new EKG machine and a HgbA1C machine. These are both very valuable to us and we are excited to have them now available at the hospital for our patients.

On the 14^th Taniguchi’s left us after their quick 2-week visit. We hope to see them back again for 5^th trip soon! We are thankful to all 4 for their work they did for us while here.

Life in Zimbabwe is getting more difficult as the country continues with a severe drought, economic melt-down, lack of money, etc. For the past 2 months we have electricity only from about 10:00 p.m. at night until 4:30-5 a.m. in the morning.

Our X-ray technician and our sterilizer people are now working 3a.m. to noon in order to have electricity to do their job. I am so thankful for the solar back-up we have at the hospital and my house. Even Harare is having the long blackouts too which makes it difficult as we need electricity to get water at the flat—so we have a big drum there for water. Life is very tough for people and we ask for your continued prayers.

Tomorrow 6 more guests arrive. Major and our driver waited 3 hours in a diesel queue to get a full tank to get home with the visitors. Stay tuned…