The Road to Gimbie Letters

05/04/02

Dear Family and Friends,

It has been a while since I have written a "Road to Gimbie" letter. Let me fill you all in on what has been happening.

Toward the end of 2001, I wrote a message stating that we would be home for Christmas and then I was going to take a Tropical Medicine course. We did both of those things and really enjoyed it.

For Christmas, my oldest son, Christopher, has his last Christmas in America when he was one year old. He just had his eleventh birthday. Ian, my eight-year-old, has never been in America for Christmas. In spite of all the commercialism that happens in America, there are some very good things. One of those is the family get-together. My wife had a family reunion. You must understand that my wife has eleven brothers and sisters, so this was a big deal. Most of them have children, and they were there. [This] was not a single event, but several, including lots of food and some bowling thrown in.

After Christmwas, we flew to London where I took a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the University of London, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. We were not sent by A.H.I. or our hospital, but did this on our own with the help of a private donor who has been blessed by God with a job that allows him to pursue things like this. This makes me realize that God can use everyone in many different ways to forward his work.

Well, the course was intensive. We had classes all day except on Wednesday, which we spent in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London, and on Thursday, we spent at least half a day in lab learning how to do all kinds of fun things like finding malaria in a blood slide, and identifying all sorts of parasites and their eggs in stool. I had a great time. For those of you who are repelled by the thought of looking at someone's stool, it is not as bad as you might think. The stool is processed so that it doesn't have that potent of an aroma, and we only check small quantities.

Doctors have a bit of an odd sense of excitement at times. We get excited over seeing the eggs of a fish tapeworm in stool. By the way, did you know there are all kinds of tapeworm: dog, cow, pig, fish, rat, even a "dwarf" tapeworm (which is named for its size, not where it comes from)? I also learned that there are a bunch of diseases in the tropics that most people, including doctors, have never heard about, and thankfully are not that common. After a course like this, you might think that the world is just seething with parasites and viruses; and you would be right. Thankfully, our bodies cope quite well with most of them and we rarely even know when we have them, so don't worry about it.

While in London, we did have the chance to visit some wonderful places. I had the chance to share with some people what God is doing in Gimbie. We are now getting back to work, though, and the adventure the Lord has in store for us.

Sadly, Dr. Rose and his family have permenently returned to the U.S., so my kids will miss his kids, and my wife [and] I will miss the friendship of he and his family. The hospital is still looking for a medical director/administrator/surgeon. We have a temporary surgeon. Dr. Fetene has left and we have another temporary Ethiopian G.P. We have a new nursing director from Norway, whom I have not met yet, but will tell you all about when I do. There [has] been much progress on the new hospital. There is a roof on the place now and the plan is to have an opening in August.

Change is always part of working out here, but the same holds true in developed countries. We are just lucky enough to see the Hand of God in the process. I will write more later when we get settled in a bit more.

One final important note: if you want to see pictures of Gimbie, you can find them at the following web site: http://www.peaceful-river.com/gimbie.

Sincerely in Christ,

Nick, Phosfe, Christopher and Ian Walters