Here is our Christmas letter! Hope to add the pictures soon!

 

 

 

Merry Christmas from the Kings! This is essentially the same version as our printed note, but with a few extra photos at the end. (Sorry it’s a little late-computer glitches never end.)We give thanks for this year of 2008—for our good health, for our children, for our ministry at Shyira Hospital and above all for the gift of the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  We have been home for just over a month and are writing this newsletter from Darlington, South Carolina, before returning to Shyira in early January.

This year saw Sara, 13, continuing at Rift Valley Academy in Kenya; she has continued to thrive there, and was even elected president of her class.  She is looking forward to returning in January.  Hannah continues to combine going to the local school with homeschooling; she loves playing the flute, and has found flute teachers in very obscure places.  Caleb Jr has been enjoying playing “Capture the Flag” with Rwandan boys.  Although the game was new to them, the Rwandan boys could identify only too easily with the rules involving borders, boundaries, and enemy territory.  Lydia is growing up quickly and is anxious to keep up with her siblings.  Her knowledge of Kinyarwanda, the local language, surpasses ours to the extent that she once told me, “Mom, you speak Kinyarwanda like a muzungu [westerner].”   The orphans continue to do well, too.  Anicet, after helping Caleb with the hydropower project this past year, is on his way to the National University of Rwanda on full scholarship.  Nkurunziza has just finished primary school and awaits the results of his national exam to find out where he can go to secondary school.  Moses is still in kindergarten, but we hope that in a year or two he’ll be ready for the Sonrise School in nearby Ruhengeri.

Caleb’s year was dominated by his involvement in hydroelectricity.   The German turbine for the first project is now on its way to the site.  Plans to develop a second site are in progress.  Our hope is for electricity not just for the hospital, but for the whole area, as well as a profitable project for the hospital that will make it more sustainable.  At the moment, we await further financing from the U.S. government Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC).

I (Louise) continue to work at the hospital in the morning and home school (with frequent interruptions) in the afternoon.   The local doctor who was doing a lot of the HIV related work left for a residency position, so that left me to take up the slack, including hiking to a distant health center, to help administer HIV meds.  There wasn’t a mirror up there, but I could tell by the looks that people gave me, that I was pretty red faced and sweaty on arrival.  I enjoyed the outings, and seeing all the unmet needs that were being addressed.

The hospital continues to grow, with 150 staff on site and another 250 in 17 associated health centers.  We have three new Rwandan and two new Congolese doctors serving with us and a Rwandan dentist who can do fillings and other restorative work rather than just pull teeth. We look forward to being able to offer more Christian counseling services to our patients and to the community in a new center under construction.  This past year we were able to hire some big school-size buses and take 120 of our hospital staff to the genocide memorial in Kigali, and to have some follow up discussions.  In the same period, the hospital staff all studied together Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Life.  All the Anglican churches in our region also encouraged small groups to go through the book, which has been translated into Kinyarwanda, the national language, and saw over 5000 baptisms in the following months as a result.  We continue to work actively with our local church in spiritual outreach to the community.

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. (2 Co 9:8)

For the upcoming year, we ask prayers for:

      Continued health and safety for our whole family

      For our ministry at Shyira, that it will glorify God in all ways

      For a good transition when we return to Shyira

      For progress with the hydropower projects, especially receiving OPIC financing

      For surgical help at the hospital, especially when Dr. Kohls and his family leave in May

      For the schooling of our children—Sara in Kenya and Hannah, Caleb & Lydia in Shyira

      For continued development of the counseling center and mental health program

If you want to find out more details, check out our blog at thekingsatshyira.wordpress.com.

Merry Christmas from all of us,

Caleb & Louise

Photsos: On the Spanish steps at night (Ethiopian Air stop-over in Rome);

in Sicily at Caleb’s sister’s whom we were visiting on the way home;

in Darlington, SC.

For correspondence:

Shyira Hospital

BP 56, Ruhengeri, Musanze District

RWANDA

calebkking@yahoo.com

louiserking@yahoo.com

 

In the U.S.:

1800 S Charleston Rd

Darlington, SC 29532

843-393-2597

 

For donations:

DOCS (earmarked Kings/Shyira)

PO Box 24597

St. Simon’s Island, GA 31522

(Call Caroline 912-634-0065 with questions)

Many people ask us about care packages.  Here are some of our favorite things to get: choc. chips, chocolate in general, pop corn, marshmallows, family friendly DVD’s (check with us before you send them, to see if we already have it), Christian music, sermons, books, news magazines, spices, seeds (esp lettuce and cucumbers)seasonal decorations, and anything else you can think of! Keep in mind that it’s not cheap, so you might want to keep the weight down.  Our address is:

Shyira Hospital

BP 56

Ruhengeri, Rwanda.

Thanks in advance for any packages sent!

PS Sara is at school, and she loves care packages, too!  Her address is:

Rift Valley Academy, P.O. Box 80

Kijabe

Kenya 00220

We are looking for someone to help me with home schooling-currently I (Louise) work in the hospital and then home school in the afternoon.  However, as the children get older, they need more time with home schooling.  Hannah is 11 and Caleb is 9 and Lydia is 6. Caleb Jr and Lydia use the Calvert curriculum.  We are looking for a Christian, who has graduated high school and would be willing to spend at least 3 months with us, between .  If they felt called, they could stay a year, though visa problems become an issue if you stay after 3 months.  Knowledge of French is useful.  We would provide housing and food. There would be time for other ministry opportunities-helping with the church, school.

I am attaching a final report for one of our projects: Houses with Hope. This program provides housing for people living with HIV/AIDS and for the people who care for them.

houses-aug2008finalprofiles

 

We are busily packing to leave tomorrow-certain that we won’t get EVERYTHING done. Here’s what we’ll miss:
   Avocadoes
   Pineapples
   Seeing our dog’s 4 day old puppies grow up
   The satisfaction of working at the hospital and feeling like we make a difference, thanks be to God
   The Kohls
   Lovely short term visitors
   Hearing hymns in Kinyarwanda flitting through the air at any given moment
   Moses

Here’s what we’re looking forward to:
   Ice Cream
   Seeing family, including my 96 year old grandmother
   Seeing friends
   Worshiping in English

Here’s our speaking schedule so far:
   Oct 29: Potential time for speaking at Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia Univ
   Oct 31: Breakfast meeting, Council for Foreign Relations-Washington
   Nov 1-3, family reunion, Pittsburgh; meeting with Bp Bob Duncan, SAMS
   Nov 6: Meeting with Duke Univ Global Health Initiative
   Nov 9: Worship at All Saints Church, Chapel Hill
   Nov 12, 19: Caleb speaks at First Pres, Florence
   Nov 14: Caleb speaks at men’s group, Mt. Pleasant
   Nov 16: Caleb preaches 3 services St. Andrew’s Mt Pleasant (old church)
   Nov 17: Caleb speaks at men’s breakfast, St. Andrew’s
   Nov 18: Louise speaks to women’s group, St. Andrew’s
   Dec 16? : Caleb speaks at men’s lunch, First Pres, Florence

   Other meetings will be set up for St. Matthew’s Darlington, SC and St. Bartholomew’s Hartsville, SC.

I’ll try to update this when I can.
Please pray for these meetings that the Holy Spirit will lead us in all that we say.

 

One of our long time workers here at Shyira (and there aren’t many-there were only 25 workers when we came) is Munyaneza John, or “Good person” John. 

 John is unusual because he is good at so many different things.  He can pull teeth, fix kerosene refrigerators (key for the preservation of vaccines), work in the lab, and he is the best nurse at putting in IV’s in young children.  He only finished primary school, and started working at the hospital in ’77.  Someone took an interest in him and sent him away for extra laboratory training. He told me that during the genocide in’94 he and the doctor locked all the maternity patients in their rooms and hid the keys so that the Interahamwe could not get to them.  

Last year, we lent him some money to buy a field and recently his wife urged him to be less frugal with his money. He replied that they needed to save up their money to pay us back the loan.  She promptly gave him a bloody nose.  Without complaining, he just went to the hospital and received some medical care.  Sure enough, he did pay us back the money.  We were happy for John this past year when he passed his high school equivalency test and is now receiving the same pay as other high school graduates. His 4 year old son is Caleb’s godson, and he attends the nursery school/kindergarten with Lydia.

Here’s another good man: Nzabanita Augustin.  Augustin is one of the hospital drivers and he is a faithful church goer and even preaches occasionally .  We recently discovered that our other three drivers had been stealing fuel from us-over the course of the year, while Augustin resisted the temptation.  It was a disappointing discovery but it does make us appreciate Augustin and that it seems that his Christian faith did make a difference in his life (and ours, too!)

Blessed is the man that does not walk in the counsel of the wicked

Or stand in the way of sinners

Or sit in the seat of mockers

But his delight is in the law of the Lord

And on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water…

Whatever he does prospers.-Psalm 1:1-3

Greetings from Shyira, Rwanda.  We are all doing well.  We had an excellent summer, filled with visits from family and friends, old and new.  We had several short term visitors from St. Andrew’s Mt. Pleasant: the DuPre family helped us out in several ways, including giving a vacation Bible school for a group of Pygmy children and surveying sites for Hospital construction.  Marilyn and Grady Hendrix offered their medical expertise and Jane Bond selflessly served at the kindergarten. We hosted William McMaster, a medical student form SC, and, more importantly, a newly met cousin.  We enjoyed showing our “Houses of Hope” houses to the Ball family from New Jersey—Amy Ball was instrumental in the conception and fundraising for this program, that gives housing to HIV positive patients, and for the people who care for them.  We also appreciated our first (but hopefully not last) visitor from Duke University Medical School Michael Bestawros, who had just finished his medical residency, and helped me (Louise) in the internal medicine ward.  We also had 2 Morehead Scholars from UNC—Eva Archer and Emma Din—who helped at the kindergarten and the hospital.  We had our first Canadian medical students, Matt Chan and Esther Chin from McMaster University.  We also enjoyed a recent brief visit from another Canadian contingent, which included Sharon Ferris, who had helped raise funds for our kindergarten.

 

We especially enjoyed visits from my brother Tim Rambo and his family.  Caleb Jr. especially enjoyed having some boy cousins around.  They were also helpful in assessing our mental health needs at the hospital and our community and they arranged for a well received workshop in Healing from Trauma for the lay counselors who will be serving at our new Counseling Center.

 

At the hospital, we were sorry to see Dr. Théoneste leave.  He was picked to do a four year family medicine residency; he is a fine Christian and we miss him, though his (expectant) wife and son are still here at Shyira.  We have hired two new doctors—Dr. Joly and Dr. Marc—both from Goma, Congo.  Caleb is continuing to move ahead with the hydroelectric project.

  

Right now we are busy getting ready to leave, to go to the US, via Italy, where we’ll visit Caleb’s sister and her family who are there for a year. 

 

 

Here are some prayer requests:

 

 

v  For our new doctors, and for the old ones, too, that we will be good mentors for them and give them a good working environment.

v  Housing for our growing medical staff

v  For safe travels, and an enjoyable time in the US (we will be gone Oct 20-Jan3)

v  For the hydropower project, that it will continue to move forward, even in our absence

v  For Sara at Rift Valley Academy, Kenya—Sara had a little bit of a rough start this semester, as her carry-on suitcase was stolen at Nairobi airport on her way to school; it had in it, among other things, the school’s clarinet.  If you or anyone you know wants to donate a clarinet, let us know and we’d be glad to bring it back with us when we return in January.

v  For the Kohls family and other short termers—for strength for the extra load they will carry in our absence.

v  For the new CSI family arriving next year.  They are slated to help out at the counseling center.

v  With Matthias Kohls going in May ‘09, we would love to have another surgeon or Ob-Gyn join our staff.

 

If you want to contact us in the US-you can still use this email.  You can also check out our new blog–thekingsatshyira.wordpress.com.

If you got this email twice, or would like to be taken off our list, or had this email fwd’ed to you and you would like to be on our regular list, just send me an email.  

 

For correspondence:

Shyira Hospital

BP 56, Ruhengeri, Musanze District

RWANDA

calebkking@yahoo.com

louiserking@yahoo.com

 

In the U.S.:

1800 S Charleston Rd

Darlington, SC 29532

843-393-2597

 

For donations:

DOCS (earmarked Kings/Shyira)

PO Box 24597

St. Simon’s Island, GA 31522

(Call Caroline 912-634-0065 with questions)

 

Blessings,

Louise and Caleb King

Well, as I am sitting here dealing with a frustration-reformatting yet another computer, I might as well write about some of the triumphs we’ve had.  This past Friday I was doing outpatient consultations and the nurse rushed in and said that we had an emergency.  She ushered in a mother, carrying her 3 year old son, who was comatose.  Meningitis? I wondered. Cerebral malaria?  Oh, yeah-let me ask the history first.  “What happened?” I asked the mother.  “He drank ‘Thioda’,”she said.  Thioda is the insecticide that local people use here, in the family of organophosphates.  It seems to be the method of choice that people use for suicide.  Also, this was our second child who had come in with accidental ingestion.  The first child was a terrible case; his mother was not at home, because she had gone to give birth.  She went on to rupture her uterus and need a hysterectomy.  In her absence, the older child found a soft drink bottle which was unfortunately the receptacle for the insecticide. He drank it and later died.This child showed the classic signs of organophospate poisoning-pinpoint pupils, increased lung secretions, drooling, unconsciousness.  We quickly took the child to the pediatrics ward, started an IV, washed out his stomach, gave charcoal to absorb the poison,and gave atropine, atropine and more atropine-the preferred antidote.  With help from a visiting medical student, the other doctors, and the fast acting nurses, the child survived.  This was our first case of Thioda poisoning to survive-hopefully not the last.

The other triumph occurred the same day.  We had been following an HIV positive woman with swollen, painful legs.  On closer inspection, she had some dark spots in her mouth and on her legs, leading us to make the diagnosis of Kaposi’s Sarcoma.  Previously, we had sent such patients to Kigali-a difficult and daunting prospect for the patients.  A few months ago we had a tip from a South African colleague working in eastern Rwanda that it was possible to get chemotherapy drugs from the central government pharmacy supply.  So we had on hand the necessary medicines.  I emailed our clinical HIV supervisor in Gisenyi and he gave me the protocol.  So, on Friday, we gave this patient chemotherapy, without complications.  We pray that it will work well-she still has seven more treatments to go.We are thankful for the small victories, and the opportunities we have to make a difference here.

But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. -

1 Corinthinans 5:17

“Guhindurwa n’Amakuba” or “Transformed by Trouble”-this is the subject I preached on last Sunday at the healing service, taking the idea, and much of the text from Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life, which has been translated into Kinyarwanda.  (In fact, the whole country was supposed to read this book this past spring; our church and hospital staff went through it-for the second time-with a lot of positive results).  We have Healing Service twice a month on Sunday afternoon for the patients and their caregivers.  

I thought this was a good subject for a couple of reasons-Rwanda is really a country that has been transformed by troubles-most notably by the war and genocide in 1994.  It really “hit bottom” and now everyone, no matter which people group, wants to build up Rwanda into a peaceful and prosperous country.  Secondly, on a more personal level, patients at the hospital by and large, have more troubles than the average Rwandan.  For one thing, they’re sick; secondly if they’re sick, they’re more likely to be poor (poverty and sickness are strongly linked); thirdly, if they’re in the hospital, they’re more likely to be HIV positive or have another chronic disease.  I used a demonstration to help make my point: I showed some milk in a jar (I have to confess that I did use cream) and then proceeded to shake it, telling them that signified the troubles of life-how we feel shaken and tossed and turned.  Then I let Caleb take over, and he continued to shake and shake and shake while I gave the sermon (Matthias Kohls also helped out).  A large part of the sermon was on Romans 8:28-29; I also used one of my favorite verses: 2 Corinthians 4:17.  Finally, I ended with Romans 5: 3-5: No only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character, and character, hope.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.   Then people came forward for prayer and we sang some some hymns; in the meantime we were fervently checking the milk to see if there was any change; I was a little nervous, as the milk had not been cooled (see “We Lost our Fridge Today.”)  At the end of the service, low and behold, we had butter.  Everyone seemed quite interested and Mary Buckler, one or our visitors, walked around and showed people.  I reiterated the point that God could bring good out of misfortune.  Of course, I always feel a little inadequate talking about misfortune to people who have had so much difficulty in their lives.  Nevertheless, as I told them, even my life, which seems to be trouble-free has had its difficulties (loss of my mother at a young age, for example).

After the Healing Service, we came home, had supper-soup,which is what we have almost every Sunday night, and cornbread, with, what else-freshly made butter.  

For the past two and half years, we’ve been enjoying a kerosene fridge on loan to us from the hospital (how a kerosene fridge works is beyond even Caleb’s expertise).  Well, it turned out that the hospital needed the fridge back for storing blood, and the price of kerosene has been rising-up to about $35 dollars a month.  So we took the plunge and gave it back.  Surprisingly, the children didn’t seem to mind: “I’m glad we don’t have a fridge anymore,” Caleb Jr said.  “Now we can say we don’t have a fridge!”  Well, it’s back to the basics, I guess; the only thing that cramps our style a bit is that it’s difficult to make butter and yogurt now.  I have noticed that I guard the tree tomato jam less jealously, knowing that it will spoil anyway.  I suppose it’s an attitude I should have for more of our material goods.  It’s a good reminder not to “store up …treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where you treasure is, there your heart will be also.”Matthew 6:19-21

Along those lines, we were interested to read in African Friends and Money Matters (a must read for anyone spending time in Africa) that in West Africa, one people group has a pejorative term for Westerners-“the people who have refrigerators.”  For them, having a refrigerator means hording food instead of giving it away, I suppose.  We do hope to get a solar refrigerator, at some point, but in the meantime we’ll work on using our resources wisely and sharing our excess food.