Ebola Follow Up

The American news is so fickle! We have heard virtually nothing about the Ebola epidemic in West Africa for many weeks. However, the epidemic still has been present there. The good news is the number of Ebola cases is decreasing.

In fact, there is a possible vaccine for it now, but it cannot be tested due to the decreasing numbers of cases. The bad news is that Ebola is now present in West Africa and will probably periodically crop up in the future. We are taking advantage of the interest in preventing Ebola to teach general health concepts in these countries.

Last March, Hugh Davis and I taught students from a West Africa seminary to be health teachers. I was also able to return in September and give them further training in Ebola prevention. In the U.S. in February I was able to meet with church leaders from the region. During these meetings, the leaders shared how the students trained in September have taught in a variety of settings. They have plans to do health and evangelism outreach to 25 towns. This will be a mixture of Ebola teaching, general health teaching, and evangelism. I will be joining them in the next few weeks as they reach out to five of these towns.

It is such a delight to see these churches have such a spiritual zeal and also a zeal for helping those they meet throughout their communities. In addition to the above projects, I was able to go to a "new" country and train their church planters to be health teachers. Their goal is to offer help to all throughout their country. They also would like to have a course on "Serving in the Community" which we have taught in a neighboring country. I am praying that another missionary living in this area will teach it with me, enabling more duplicating of ministry.

Pray the outreach of the national Church that the listeners will take the health teaching to heart, and that God's word will also penetrate their hearts.

John Sexton is an MTW missionary and nurse practitioner. If you're a health educator and want to learn more about volunteering, email [email protected].