Coopers in the Congo: By the shores of Lake Kivu & Loads of Village Children

May 30, 2022.

This May 15th marked our 12 year wedding anniversary! We enjoyed time on the shores of Lake Kivu together, swimming, kayaking, eating good food, and just having family time.

So Many Kids

“There are so many kids here! Where do they all come from?” said our current visitor. It is true. There are so many children here in this season, compared to a few years ago. Children are the majority of the many displaced persons living in our community. In the ED/ICU the other day and ¾ of the patients were internally displaced. People are truly moving from place to place these days as the security is fluid. Now we are a safe haven for many-last year this was not the case. A year ago when we bolted the doors to our house shut during a military siege there was doubt as to whether we would return. Yet a year later and here we are again.

Homes have recently been marked with a triangle representing the number of households living in them. I saw one home with 5 triangles today. It is amazing that people are able to make things work under such challenging conditions. We are seeing more and more cases of advanced chronic diseases such as tuberculosis. Many women are coming in late to give birth, many with complications and infections. Our maternal and neonatal mortality rate is quite high; much of it due to lack of prenatal care and trained birth attendants. The insecurity we experienced last year has set our community back for years.

We are finishing up an antenatal ward, a building where women with high risk pregnancies can await the birth of their babies. It is going to be wonderful to be able to offer this to these women. It is simple and has an outdoor kitchen, but it will be adequate for our needs. We are grateful for the help of the organization “Saving Moses” that is helping us to get this program going. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest neonatal mortality rate in the world. We need these kinds of interventions in place to help the most vulnerable women in our communities. It is simply a safe place adjacent the hospital in which to give birth.

Practicing Pediatrics

There are so many stories I could share, of children who have found healing recently. Just two days ago a child traveled with his parents at night, on a motorcycle, unable to breathe with a bead in his airway. They were desperate, otherwise they never would have taken such risks. Warren placed a surgical airway and was able to see the bead and remove it. The child survived! I have seen children with rare genetic disorders-hemophilia. Kids with inherited heart defects making them blue…I always get nervous managing these kids. Then I usually have at least 4 kids hospitalized with sickle cell anemia. It seems like children are the ones coming in with the greatest needs these days.

I wonder what it would be like to practice pediatrics in the USA again. It would be so nice to be able to call a cardiologist! All of these kids would be going to clinics to see specialists and I would probably miss out on managing them. Kids come back for their “hospital follow-ups” and simply show up on the wards. What a joy it is to see them again!

Visitors

We are very thankful for our current American visitors-Iyed and Ellen. They were planning to come a year ago, but our evacuation caused them to cancel their plans. They transported some critical endoscopy equipment here for us (thanks Samaritan’s Purse)! They have been seeing patients and troubleshooting machines. They are our second “wave” of medical volunteers this year. Their curiosity about people and the way people live here is refreshing. Iyed has been training our doctors and nurses in anesthesia and the use of ultrasound for procedures. Their presence has been encouraging to us at a time when we needed it.

Home Life

Emmanuel is finishing up first grade! He has done a great job having his parents as teachers this last year. We have seen him gain confidence in his reading and writing. It has been such a blessing to be part of his development and to see his unique abilities and interests. We have done our best to connect regularly with one of his classmates from last year and his previous teacher Angel. We are so proud of him for his hard work.

We plan to spend a couple of months in North Carolina in late summer/early fall of this year. Emmanuel will attend a local Christian school for a couple of months and then we hope to continue to curriculum throughout the year in Africa. We are “tentmaking teachers” so it will be good to have this encouragement and continuity with a peer group in future years. We’ll see how it goes. Emmanuel has developed a certain proficiency in spoken French. We hope to also teach him written French, but we have wanted to take one written language at a time.

Our puppy Sirius is growing by leaps and bounds! He is now bigger than our 3year Basenji dog named Jacob. We usually have at least one chameleon in in our possession.

We are just plugging along here in eastern Congo with the work that the Lord has given us to do. The needs are tremendous and we believe in being people that promote peace. We would love to hear from you. Please drop us a line.

Blessings for us,

Lindsey

Thanks for our recent 12 year wedding anniversary. We are thankful for each other and the love of God that binds us together.

Pray for peace in DRC in particular North Kivu and Ituri Provinces. It is a very complex environment. There is a new insurgency north of Goma, pray for this region.

Pray that we would continue to have confidence to walk in the will of God. Pray that we would have a voice to speak for peace.

Pray for the plans to come together for our upcoming home assignment.