When God calls Mission Partners For Christ to serve in a new place, one things is true: God is the only One who is, ultimately, in control. This was a lesson we learned anew during our short time serving four different Zimbabwean communities.
July 12-21, 2024, our team of 13 Jesus followers obeyed God’s call and traveled to Zimbabwe, ready to meet thousands of people waiting for the hope of medical care and the saving gospel message of Jesus.
Prior to our travels, we worked with our partners on the ground to identify four different rural communities that were unreached with the gospel and existing with very little access to medical care.
God Called More Than Enough Volunteers To Help Us Do The Work
We were blessed, also, to have so many local volunteers to help us in each location. We had more than enough interpreters (which doesn’t always happen on these trips!), and enough helping hands that there was never a moment where we needed for anything.
In the end, we had roughly 50 people generously donate their time, skills, and energy, to ensure that our medical clinics & evangelism efforts were successful.
Among those volunteers were four medical professionals: one nurse practitioner, two nurses, and one medical doctor (who travelled from another part of the country to volunteer alongside our team). At the end of our time in Zimbabwe, we donated our leftover medical supplies to the doctor who will be continuing out outreach efforts.
Medical Memories
While every trip has multiple memories of treating people in our clinics, there is one memory from this trip that will live on in our minds for many years to come!
One young girl sticks out in our minds. For a year, she was unable to hear. No one could figure out what was wrong with her, so when word got out about our free medical clinics she was brought to see our doctors. Dr. Kim took a look in her ears and, much to everyone’s shock and surprise, she found a cockroach! Once the little critter was removed, this young girl’s hearing was restored. Can you even imagine?
The Smiles Of Little Children
One great highlight of the trip was when we got to play with the young children who call Zimbabwe home.
Knowing that children everywhere enjoy being children and playing wherever fun is to be found, our team brought a few non-medical supplies with them on this trip. These supplies included:
Soccer balls, beach balls, bubbles, and balloons (that were destined to be turned into a variety of animals). During downtime at the expandable shoe section of our outreach clinic, Josh (our resident musician) took special delight in blowing bubbles and inflating balls for the young children to enjoy.
Have you ever taken a moment to really watch a child at play? The joy and wonder in their beautiful eyes speak so loudly. God created those precious babies to live lives filled with love and wonder. It was such a good reminder that when God calls us to make medical care and health education accessible to all, we are helping to create a world in which the precious little ones can grow up and thrive in a world where they know God loved them so much that He called a medical team from the USA to come and care for them and their communities.
How Sheri Learned to Trust God During Tough Moments
Sadly, even medical missionaries get ill sometimes too. A couple of days into the trip, MPFC found Sheri Postma began to feel unwell, and ended up having to miss a little bit of the trip. She felt sad to be unable to lead her team like she normally would, but felt God speaking to her in the midst of her frustration.
God reminded Sheri that He had chosen the medical mission team, and He knew what He was doing when He called each and every one of them. Then the Lord asked her to place her trust fully in Him to be the one who would lead the team. So Sheri committed the medical mission into the hands of God and waited to hear what He would do in her absence.
As you might very well expect, the Lord did not disappoint. All went swimmingly well and that was the day that the village chief of Chinhoyi made the decision to accept Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior!
Thankfully, Sheri was able to rejoin the team quickly, but the lesson remained. God was truly the one in control no matter what happened, and we are so thankful for His wisdom and guidance.
Every Soul Matters
A few years ago, nurse practitioner Rosemary, who has served on multiple occasions and started her own nonprofit organization to support pastors and missionaries in Africa, started praying for members of a religious cult in Africa known as “The White Robe People,” named after their unique and identifiable garb. People from this community can often be found meeting alongside the road.
The members of this organization do not believe in the Good News of Jesus, and Rosemary was given deep love and compassion for these people. So she began to commit to praying for The White Robe People.
While we were serving in Zimbabwe, on the third day of our mission trip while we were still in Chinhoyi, a couple of people from The White Robe People group came to see us and not only asked to know more about Jesus, but also requested that a church be built in their community so they might know more about the God who loves them and worship Him.
What made this miraculous even more special was that this happened on Rosemary’s birthday – what an incredible birthday gift!
Birthdays in the mission field
Rosemary wasn’t the only person who celebrated a birthday during this trip. Sophia and Alisha both celebrated turning a year older while serving. Everyone agreed that celebrating birthdays in the mission field in Africa is a beautiful thing, and all of us were so blessed to be able to celebrate along with them!
Thousands Were Seen At Or Clinics, And Many Were Saved!
The villages we were called to serve were:
Patchway: we treated 419 people and 34 accepted Christ
Stanley (Part of Chegutu): We treated 448 people and saw 74 people saved
Chinhoyi: We treated 709 people, and 58 were saved (including a village chief!)
Murombedzi: 607 people were treated, and 17 people accepted Jesus as their Savior – including two former Muslims
In total, we treated 2183 patients and saw 183 people saved.
We are praising God for every single person that we had the privilege of ministering to, whether we were medical professionals providing care or non-medical volunteers bonding with villagers through handing our expandable shoes, praying with people, or playing with the kids