July 7, 2016

Today we met Sister Clawson at the 7th Day Adventist Hospital to visit with the American doctor and Sampson the physical therapist. This was our 2nd meeting with Sampson and Sister Clawson's first. All 3 of us are in awe of this man. We learned that he has been a therapist for 25 years and has never been associated with a hospital before. He has always done home visits. So when we asked if he would do home visits to Brother Doe he was quite accommodating. AND, believe it or not he only lives a few minutes from the Doe compound. Plus, the American Doctor is willing to do whatever is necessary to treat Brother Doe. The Lord certainly has had His hand in this. Everything is coming together so nicely.

Cholena has gone to great lengths to find on-line medical equipment necessary to stimulate Brother Doe's muscles and has talked to professionals who work with paraplegics to learn what type of equipment we have to have. She and Gabby are coming to Africa the first 2 weeks of August to help set up, orchestrate, and train nurses who will be working for/with Brother doe. He comes home on the 19th!

We attended our first NGO meeting today. We were excited about it. It was supposedly a meeting where all the NGO's in Sierra Leone get together and share information on what they are working on so we can all help each other to do the best possible projects for the African people and not duplicate each other's work. There were no introductions and we learned later that there were at least 3 new NGO's represented. The Ministry of Water for Sierra Leone conducted the meeting. I would guess there were about 8 NGO's represented. The Ministry shared with us their goal for the next year. One of the NGO's said "this is the same plan you presented last year". They continued on. After the first woman made her presentation then a man made a presentation. I was sitting next to the window that had a running generator just outside of it so I could not hear anything.. I saw Don's body go rigid, he sat at the edge of his seat and his face was harsh. The gift of discernment kicked in and Don saw through the façade. After the 2nd presenter spoke two more men made presentations and then they opened the floor for questions. When they acknowledged Don, he bolted up. He acknowledge that we were there for the first time and he would like to have clarification on something the 2nd presenter said. Don then asked if the presenter was asking the NGO's to pay the salaries of the government employees and just consider it a management fee. The man became very defensive and he talked until he wasn't making sense. By this time it had become Chrystal clear to everyone what was happening. I looked at the faces of the other NGO's and they were all straight with no expression except one man who was laughing. The meeting ended shortly thereafter. The man Don went head to head with got up immediately and left the room. Then two very important NGO's (to us) approached us and want to have lunch so we can talk about how to help each other. The outcome of the meeting for us was awesome. We have a couple of projects that just came up that we have no resource for - until now. Another tender mercy!

On the way back to the Mission Office, Don told me that the 2nd presenter told us that he sent 2/3 of the staff to China on a "travel trip" and then he proceeded to ask the NGO's to pay the salaries of the government workers and consider it a management fee. But the truth was buried in the wording and presentation. This is what riled Don.