By Guest Blogger: Dr. Hervé-Tistou Hitimana, Executive Director & Cofounder, Initiatives in Medical Intervention Fellowship
Can you imagine a world without doctors or hospitals? For far too many people around the world, this is a harsh reality.
In Burundi, one of the poorest countries of the world, people living in underserved communities are suffering terribly due to a lack of access to healthcare services.
Children, women, and men all struggle to access that which people living in America may take for granted: healthcare. In order to find the closest doctor, many people need to travel long distances, increasing financial costs and the heavy burden of trying to make ends meet.
Without easy-to-access healthcare, poverty rates are increasing daily. This leads to food and housing insecurity for many families.
My name is Dr. Hervé Tistou HITIMANA, and I am the executive director and cofounder of Initiatives in Medical Intervention Fellowship (IMIF), a nonprofit organization based in Burundi, Africa that seeks to make healthcare accessible to underserved communities in order to communicate the love of Jesus to all.
Holy Beginnings
In 2018, I received a very clear call from God to start IMIF as a way to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the underserved people of Burundi.
I was a medical student at the time God called me. I was sitting in church one Sunday, and I was praying when I heard a voice telling me to go heal the sick and share the word of God with others.
Later, this call would come to me again in the middle of the night. I was awakened by a voice telling me to pray and to read a passage of Scripture:
When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick…So they set out and went from village to village, proclaiming the good news and healing people everywhere. – Luke 9:1-2,6 NIV
That was it for me. I reached out to friends who were also finishing up medical school to tell them what the Lord had called me to do, and I invited them to join me in this ministry. All of them immediately agreed, each having received prior guidance from the Lord about this mission work.
And so IMIF began, relying entirely upon the Lord to guide our steps. He gave us a governing mission statement,
Serving the underserved; reaching the unreached and bringing hope to the hopeless by spreading love with compassion.
We began with a small army of 10 new doctors, each with a heart for serving God and serving others. It would take us until mid 2020 before we got full authorization from the Burundi government to practice. But God was faithful to see us through.
God called IMIF to help the more than 6000 people, most of whom were women and children, displaced by the catastrophic flooding in Gatumba in May 2020. Though we only had basic medical supplies, we trusted that God would provide anything we needed. So off we went!
Through family, friends, and churches, our medical and transportation needs were met. Nearly every day of the week, we would travel (sometimes by foot) to the treatment site. There we would do all that we could to assist those in need: wound care, providing medication, providing rapid testing & ultrasounds, private counselling, and even feeding small children.
After three months, we ran out of medication and had no funds to buy more. Even so, people begged us to stay and help treat however we could. So we stayed.
It was a period of 18 months serving with faithful and an obedient heart, trusting and relying upon God to provide for us – and He never disappointed!
Over time, God was faithful to grow IMIF from a modest group of volunteers in medical missions with other organizations acting as hosts, to hosting our own medical mission outreach clinics.
It was beautiful to see where God could take IMIF as we kept saying, “yes!” to His calls.
And in 2023, God led us to partner with Mission Partners For Christ.
Connecting With Mission Partners For Christ
I originally connected with Mission Partners For Christ (MPFC) during one of their outreach trips to an island in the Indian ocean. It was a moment orchestrated by God to bring our two organizations together because He knew how much good could come out of a partnership between IMIF and MPFC.
I saw firsthand how they held deep compassion for the people they served, and how Sheri Postma, MPFC Founder & President, desired to share Jesus with all people.
That partnership officially began in July of 2023 when MPFC was called by God to bring a medical mission team to Burundi. IMIF agreed to host the medical mission outreach and was in charge of local preparations such as administrative authorization, security, logistics and managing other local volunteers.
It was a beautiful time that allowed for great fellowship between the IMIF and MPFC teams, and for thousands of people to be seen by our doctors. Many accepted Christ as their Savior and we even saw two women released from demonic oppression.
MPFC also helped to fund new clean water wells, irrigation pumps for farmers, and water filtration devices for villages where wells could not be dug.
Since that time, MPFC has become a crucial partner of ours through ongoing prayer, mentoring, and financial support, allowing us to continue offering medical outreach to those most in need.
Before this partnership, we would struggle to serve 1,500 people in a single year, but now we can reach more and more people.
Just this year, we served 3,153 in 4 unreached communities. This includes 29 people who reeived surgery, and we also saw more than 200 people receive Christ.
During missions there are always barriers, even with the best preparations. But when we see those barriers, we have learned to hand them over to God by praying,
“This work is yours, made possible by people who are not here but who prayed for this work. Give us wisdom and let us overcome this situation.”
It doesn’t matter how big the barrier is, we always overcome it.
We believe that the people who pray for us, and who support us in so many ways, do so because their hearts are motivated by God, and with that spirit of compassion, God can do so much.
