Megan's Mission Field Moment

Hello from Swaziland! My name is Megan. I am a nurse and I came to Swaziland with the medical team in August to work with the Luke Commission. After the team left, I made my way over to Hawane where I am now working with Jane Bradshaw. Jane is a nurse from the UK who runs a clinic on the farm as well as clinic outreach into the local community. I have really enjoyed my time with Jane so far and I have been learning a lot. I am really thankful for God’s timing of bringing me to work with Jane, because she just returned from a month of leave. In fact, we both showed up at Hawane on the very same day! There is a lot of work to catch up on, and I am so glad to be able to lend a helping hand to such a driven and hardworking missionary.

So far we have done two community clinics, including one yesterday in Lavumisa. Around 90 patients came to the clinic at Lavumisa and all were able to sit down one-on-one with a nurse to be assessed and treated. We saw a lot of patients with respiratory, skin, and pain problems. In addition to giving basic medications and antibiotics, one of the most important things we do is provide individualized health advice and education. Jane, Jude, and I served as nurses while ten local home based care workers (more on that below) from Lavumisa helped as translators, checked patients in, measured blood pressures, and gave deworming tablets. Pastor Sabelo was also there to preach God’s Word and pray with the people who came. Sabelo is the pastor of CLC Lavumisa: a great man, very joyful, and such an encourager. It was great to meet him and many other members of the community as we held the clinic!

One of my favorite parts of Jane’s ministry is that she is training home based care workers within the communities of Hawane and Lavumisa who can help their neighbors when a clinic is unavailable. Jane is training these Swazis in many areas of care such as health and nutrition education and some basic medication administration. We met with two of these workers from Hawane on Saturday to do some teaching and also catch up on needs they had seen within the community. It was so humbling to listen to the needs they presented. I am used to attending campus Bible studies where the prayer requests are college students praying for help on exams. Here the first need and prayer request was for two children whose young father and only caregiver just passed away. These children now had nobody to take care of them. Many of the others were for medical needs that would be routinely treated in the US, or for people lacking basic necessities like food. We not only prayed for these needs, but discussed how we could help meet the needs through our ministry.

Thus, we have also spent a couple of days doing home visits in the local community of Hawane. We visit homes of people whom the home based care workers report as needing help but that are physically unable to come to community clinics. Many times these are very sick patients, and at times we lack the resources we need to truly meet their medical needs. But we are always able to pray with each family and present the gospel to those who have not heard. God is at work in many lives and it is both humbling and awesome to be a part!

In addition to the community outreach, we have also completed health checks for the children who live at Hawane CLC and across the street at Hawane Farm (The Teen Challenge project that initially drew CLC to Swaziland). Each child is seen once a month to be assessed by a nurse. It was encouraging to listen to Jane tell the stories of some of the children who came to the farm underweight or with various health problems, and then to see them now growing and healthy. It was also a good way to meet the kids on the farm.

Tomorrow we are doing another clinic in the community, and Friday we are taking some local patients to be seen by a team of visiting American doctors. Pray for the people who come to our clinics: that we would not overlook their medical needs, but even more importantly that they would be pointed to Christ and understand the gospel. The HIV/AIDS epidemic and the poverty caused by years of drought have caused so much destruction to families and communities in this nation. The transformation that God alone can bring to hearts, lives, and families is Swaziland’s greatest hope. Truly He is any nation’s greatest hope! Also pray for Jane, because she has been going non-stop since she returned from her break. She does so much, I pray for her that God will give her energy and focus as she serves.