To say that having the folks from Bethlehem Baptist Church (our home and sending church) short-term team here is and has been a blessing, would be an understatement. We have loved having them here and have been SO blessed and encouraged by each of them!!
Their trip is almost done, and they will be flying out tomorrow night. But I wanted to give you an update on the first part of their trip, which consisted of six days of training in basic hospice techniques for six different churches that have gone through the CROSS Project curriculum over the last two years.
81 former CROSS Project students learned about:
- Hand washing and Sanitation: how to properly dispose of wastes
- Wound care: very basic without access to any fancy dressings
- Giving a bed-bath and making an occupied bed
- Positioning someone in bed and safe transfers/walking
- Nutrition and hydration: before someone is actively dying
- Pain management, shortness of breath, and dying process
Based on some of the comments that we heard from many of the students, they found the information to be very applicable to their lives and living situations. Many people in Lusaka’s poor communities as well as outside in the rural areas have to care for the sick and dying due to lack of good health care facilities. But many of them have don’t have the skills and have never been taught how to do this in the most safe, healthy, and helpful way.
These were some of the comments I heard: “We thought we were helping people, but we were only hurting them and ourselves in how we were taking care of them.” “My boss died of a bed sore, because we didn’t move him for over two weeks after he was injured on the job – we didn’t know we were suppose to reposition him.” One lady commented at the hand washing and sanitation station about the difficult situation she and her family are in – “We are seven families against one pit latrine where I live.”
Please pray that God would plant and help people remember what they have learned from these workshops and that God would be glorified as these 81 former students seek to help people physically, share the gospel, and share this important information with others!
Bethlehem has also been blogging about their trip – you can find it here!
Below are some pictures of BBC in action.
Derek and Kristin Dearth 
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