First of all, I want to give thanks to all who have been praying for me and giving some extra gifts to make my treatment possible. I feel, and the results prove this, that I am on a healing journey.
Health Update
As several of you know, I received alarming signals after I became very ill in inland Haiti, and tests in Florida and California turned out catastrophic because cancer was detected, but no explanation was found regarding the pains that I suffered. Once in Belgium, it turned out that I also had a very resistant infection that is similar to the Super Bacteria.
This problem is not better in Haiti, where we have a primitive hospital not that far from where I was caring for about 200 orphans in the far northeast corner of the country. They also saw that I needed some urgent rest due to an impending burn out. This, they can see on a hormonal level: my anti-stress hormones were very depleted.
So far so good, thanks to God and a multiple medical approach that costs extra money but, I believe, saved my life. The health care structure in Belgium is excellent, and with the help of some people and from my own colleagues, I feel a lot better.
Bolivia in the Spotlight
I have been working in Bolivia since 1986 in the most difficult circumstances you can imagine, in poor State hospitals. In 1990, I went as a Medical Missionary for 4 years in a row, going to the poorest regions in Bolivia first with a 33-year old Volkswagen until we twice won a matching grant to get the needed ambulances.
In the 90's I went on these roads with a Volvo Hospital Truck. This was a very dangerous job, and sometimes our team didn't see any other car in more than a month, not even a jeep. We had supernatural protection all of the time, because we always knew that in the next village children were dying and needed urgent treatment and new hope.
Later, we were able to set up 3 main medical mission bases, in the Andes, the Amazon and among the Guaranies in southern Bolivia, constantly busy with our Medical-Pastoral teams reaching out to these regions that had never seen a Doctor, Dentist or pastor before. We are mostly active high up in the mountains, about 15,000 feet.
We continue now in Bolivia with about 10% of the amount of donations that we received in the 90's. The twin tower attacks were catastrophic regarding donations, and many organizations similar to ours just stopped functioning at that time. I didn't want to leave the people behind, however, and as I also have a Belgian passport, I was safer than most American missionaries.
I didn't have time as a Doctor to make any serious promotions and didn't even have the money to do so. My administration was my Laptop, and there were no real additional costs at all, unlike organizations that run with 20% administrative costs.
Back to Bolivia
6 years ago, we made the decision to work with living stones instead of dead stones, and started to sell pieces of the infrastructure to be able to go on with the Medical Mission outreaches there. The Bolivian mission goes on, be it in the Andes Mountains, Amazon or among the Guaranies, thanks to the great leadership of our local Bolivian leader Dr. Inocencio Ortega and his family.
During the last months, I lost 3 dear friends in Bolivia. Pastor Fernando died at the end of April during an accident on these horrific roads, leaving behind Dr. Esther and her little child of 4 years old. I also lost my old friend Pastor Carlos Campos, with whom I did my first big outreach. And Pastor Romulo just wrote me that our dear friend Mario Baron, who worked as accountant with us, also died. The last two died from cancer just a few weeks ago.
If everything goes well with me, I will travel again to Haiti and Bolivia but for shorter time periods. I am actually planning to go back to Haiti during October and November, and to Bolivia at the beginning of 2017.
We want to continue to go where nobody else will go.
