The San Antonio River
walk is one of the most popular
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tourist
destinations in all of Texas.
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Just 20 feet below street level,
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it's like a
different world down here.
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The sights and
sounds of San Antonio
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and much more coming up next
on "Global Mission Snapshots."
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Just before He
went up to heaven,
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Jesus gave us a command.
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He gave us a mission.
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Jesus said, "Go"
"Go unto all the world."
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Telling them of His love.
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This is our mission.
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This is our Global Mission."
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Hello and welcome
to today's program.
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I am Gary Krause.
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The San Antonio River
walk is a network of path ways
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in downtown San
Antonio, that makes its way
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along the banks of
the San Antonio river.
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It's a beautiful area
where tourists love to come
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and just walk
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and this river
walk goes under bridges,
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around
buildings, through streets,
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connecting and
intersecting the community.
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And for me that's a wonderful
metaphor of the Christian life
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because we too are
called to connect and intersect
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with our
communities just like Jesus did.
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On today's program
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we will meet a
young missionary doctor,
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who has been
fighting Ebola in West Africa.
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We'll also talk
with Doctor Richard Hart
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the president of
Loma Linda University,
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which supports
medical work around the world
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particularly in
very needy areas.
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But first up, let's
visit some Waldensian students
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making a
difference in the Middle East.
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We are here in
the Waldensian Valleys
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in Northern Italy.
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It's so incredible to be
in such a historic place.
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Ellen white herself visited
here on numerous occasions
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and she wrote that it was "here,
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the light of
truth was kept burning,
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amid the
darkness of Middle Ages."
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I'm privileged to
be at one of the caves,
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where Waldensian
people used to come
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and worshipped in secret.
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For centuries these mountains
where home to Waldenses,
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who's simple faith
in God and the Bible
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endured through horrible
hardship and prosecution,
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freezing winters,
sheltering in rough caves
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and witnessing the
massacre of friends and family.
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One of the reasons why
Waldensian were prosecuted
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is well, because
they couldn't keep
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the good news of
gospel to themselves.
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They felt that God
required more of them,
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than to just simply just
preserve truth in its purity
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in their own churches,
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that a solemn
responsibility rested upon them,
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to let their light shine forth
to those who are in darkness.
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This is the old
school where young Waldenses
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came to receive
training as missionaries
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and then they were
sent out as students
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to many universities
in Italy and France.
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Their clothes had
secret compartments
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where they could
hide precious manuscripts,
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portions of scripture,
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that where the results
of months even years of toil
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and when it was safe
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they shared those precious pages
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with the people they met.
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Today, in Middle East
and North Africa union
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Adventist young
people are going out
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as modern day
Waldensian students.
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They attend universities
in areas where it is not easy
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or not possible
to preach the gospel.
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They mingle, they make
friends and when possible,
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they share their faith.
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These students come
from all over the world.
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They learn the local
language they can study
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but it also helps them to share.
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Sam talked with some of these
modern day Waldensian students
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and because of
where they're working
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their identities
will remain hidden.
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We go to
universities and meet students
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and we share about gospel.
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So your primary purpose is
to study or to meet people.
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Meet people,
study is second thing.
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So you're like a
secret agent. Kind of.
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Okay, so you're there to
specifically try and mingle
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and mix with people and
how has that been for you,
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has it been easy to try
and connect with people?
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Of course, first time not
easy but always when we ask God
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we want to meet
friend and you know,
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this is not our work,
this is heaven's work,
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so you have
responsibility to meet people,
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when we pray God,
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He'll always
give us some friends.
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Right, right.
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I've got some
opportunities but people come--
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usually people come and ask
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because they are curious, I see.
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I'm thinking of one
friend in particular.
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We were sitting
and in class one day,
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the teacher was
absent for being sick
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and so we are just studying
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and we struck up a
conversation together.
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She told me that
she has been seeking
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to understand God better.
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I shared with her that,
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the best way that I've
been able to understand God
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was to look at Jesus
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and to see His
love and compassion.
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At the end he asked
me, "Do you have a Bible?"
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He asked you for Bible?
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Yes, he asked me and I got one
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and I put some verse
in the Bible about Jesus
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and I gave the Bible.
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We went to-- in this
Mall Street in the night
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and the last
day I gave the Bible
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because he was soldier.
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This is like a
scene out of the Bible
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like your
Nicodemus coming by night;
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this is like OO Agent stuff.
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It's exciting.
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Yes, and I was little bit afraid
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because he was a soldier,
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he was my friend
but you'll never know.
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So that why I always ask God.
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And when you ask God?
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Please help this
friends open eyes to you.
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Is there something
that we need to do more?
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Yes, of course,
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when I was there I was thinking,
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oh, the church, they
need to send more people,
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we need more help.
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There's a lot people there
that they want to listen more,
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love Jesus really
and-- but there's no people.
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He cares
individually about each of us.
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I firmly believe
that He is already
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powerfully
working in this country
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before I ever set foot there
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before anyone
else has ever come.
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I'm delighted to
introduce to you,
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Doctor Gillian Seaton
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who is one of the
infection control directors
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at SDA Cooper hospital
in Liberia in West Africa.
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Thanks, Gillian. You're welcome.
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You know, over the
past several months,
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the whole world has
been focusing on a country
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which many people had
never even heard of before,
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Liberia with Ebola,
we use the word crisis,
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and I guess, it was a crisis,
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I mean, can you
just describe for me,
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what it was like living
in Liberia during that time.
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It was a bit of chaos
and a bit of a same old story
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of something going wrong
without the resources to fix it
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that happens very often.
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Unfortunately,
this was an outbreak
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that you would only think
about in terms of Hollywood,
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the drama, the
danger, etc., etc.
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It was a bit unreal through
the whole crisis actually.
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It was difficult to watch others
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struggle with
the fear of diseases,
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you know, I like to
think that I understand
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that the science
behind the disease,
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that the risk of contact
etc. but for most Africans,
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they don't really
understand germs and viruses
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and what that means to
them in terms of the risk.
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So you have this significant
threat without actually being--
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something you could focus
the blame or the anger on.
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You just have this
thing that's happening to you,
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in your family,
in your community.
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And it was so wide spread
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so far reaching
that not many individuals
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escaped some grief.
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Most of our workers
had family or friends
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that died of the disease.
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The medical
community was decimated,
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doctors, nurses, aids, cleaners
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so many people
died due to exposures.
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Even security
officers of the hospitals,
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would often lend a hand
to help patients in and out,
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take care of them,
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where all sort of
significantly had risk of that,
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without really understanding
how there were getting it.
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And so it was this huge
struggle with education,
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distribution of
resources to help,
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even just a pair of gloves
can make a world of difference
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in terms of your exposure risk.
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But those were not
routinely distributed
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to hospitals and
clinics and so they were facing
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this out break
without any training,
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without any of
those basic resources
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that we take for
granted here in US.
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And so it was just massive
struggle to try to get people
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to continue in their
life saving capacities
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and yet not put their
lives at such high risk
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as well as their family lives
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because if one
person become sick
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the entire family is
likely to be exposed.
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It wiped out whole villages,
whole families, you know.
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One family member might survive
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but then there are
neighbors, there are carpenters,
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their extended
family were all be at risk
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of getting the disease.
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There is a lot of denial,
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the first three to
five months of the outbreak
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that people didn't want
to believe Ebola really exist
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and it was a conspiracy
of from the government
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to get money from the West.
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It was a curse, it
was-- people stealing bodies
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for spiritual
rituals in face of politics
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and soon to be elections.
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That was difficult because
people didn't want to believe
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that they could get this disease
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by helping someone else
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and so they would go and
reach to the family members
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take care of them,
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without any protective equipment
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or soap or chlorine
to wash their hands with
00:10:13.81\00:10:15.71
and so the
disease spread further
00:10:15.74\00:10:17.48
and further and further.
00:10:17.51\00:10:19.61
For me, I felt like I
can understand the risk
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and so I can
take calculated risks
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or take measures
to protect myself.
00:10:25.52\00:10:27.92
But everybody else didn't
really have that assurance,
00:10:27.96\00:10:30.83
and so for them it was hard
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to watch them go
through that fear
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and answer that fear
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and really put
their lives on the line.
00:10:35.13\00:10:36.83
Their bravery in
the phase of all this
00:10:36.87\00:10:38.40
was pretty profound.
00:10:38.43\00:10:39.77
Yeah, now during this time,
00:10:39.80\00:10:42.40
what were your
working hours like?
00:10:42.44\00:10:45.97
They escalated pretty rapidly.
00:10:46.01\00:10:49.31
We struggled with the
idea of whether we would close
00:10:49.34\00:10:51.45
or stay open in the
phase of the crisis,
00:10:51.48\00:10:54.82
be it some more people
who are willing to risk,
00:10:54.85\00:10:56.58
we decided to stay open
00:10:56.62\00:10:57.95
but be a non
Ebola treatment center
00:10:57.99\00:11:00.36
and that mean we
treat malaria and strokes
00:11:00.39\00:11:02.69
and traumas and other things
00:11:02.72\00:11:05.39
that might come up
on a day-to-day basis,
00:11:05.43\00:11:08.63
most of the other
hospitals in the country closed
00:11:08.66\00:11:11.57
and that meant that we were
00:11:11.60\00:11:13.00
the one of the
that few facilities
00:11:13.03\00:11:14.37
that were actually had
normal capacity, capabilities.
00:11:14.40\00:11:17.37
So operating room,
00:11:17.41\00:11:19.07
the laboratory
and things like that.
00:11:19.11\00:11:20.44
So the only reason I
didn't work 24 hours a day
00:11:20.48\00:11:23.24
is that the President
enacted in 9 p.m. curfew,
00:11:23.28\00:11:25.31
which people couldn't get
transport to the hospital.
00:11:25.35\00:11:27.35
They'd have to
wait till next morning.
00:11:27.38\00:11:28.85
So generally until
about 8:30, 9 o' clock
00:11:28.88\00:11:31.79
we would be treating
patients as fast as we could
00:11:31.82\00:11:34.12
and then at 9 'o'
clock things would slow down
00:11:34.16\00:11:35.86
then the only thing we
have to worry about overnight
00:11:35.89\00:11:37.26
was it'll be emergencies
00:11:37.29\00:11:38.76
that maybe we'd already admitted
00:11:38.79\00:11:40.13
and still had to deal with.
00:11:40.16\00:11:41.80
And that was
exhausting very quickly
00:11:41.83\00:11:44.20
but the curfew alone
saved us from sheer burnout.
00:11:44.23\00:11:49.67
Now talking about burnout
beforehand you were telling me,
00:11:49.70\00:11:52.14
how many days you work
straight without a break.
00:11:52.17\00:11:54.91
Well, I was very
lucky in the sense
00:11:54.94\00:11:57.05
that Loma Lindan HI
00:11:57.08\00:11:58.71
contacted some of the previous
more experienced doctors
00:11:58.75\00:12:02.48
to come and help and
we had three volunteers
00:12:02.52\00:12:04.75
that had
previously worked in Africa,
00:12:04.79\00:12:06.15
James Appel, Greg
Saunders and Greg Shank,
00:12:06.19\00:12:09.12
and they all provided
significant relief for me.
00:12:09.16\00:12:12.43
We were generally so
busy when they were there
00:12:12.46\00:12:14.10
that took both of us
working as fast as we could
00:12:14.13\00:12:15.90
to manage the issues.
00:12:15.93\00:12:18.43
And then after that
00:12:18.47\00:12:19.80
we actually had
a volunteer intern
00:12:19.83\00:12:22.14
come over for three months.
00:12:22.17\00:12:23.51
And her work was
profoundly appreciated,
00:12:23.54\00:12:25.44
she took our lot of infectious
control, contact with NGOs,
00:12:25.47\00:12:28.74
that were coming in to
help and things like that.
00:12:28.78\00:12:30.48
But as she didn't
had full training yet,
00:12:30.51\00:12:34.12
she'd basically did
out patient in clinic work
00:12:34.15\00:12:36.25
and I took care
of the in patients,
00:12:36.28\00:12:37.62
which meant that I was on
for 70, 80 days work in a row.
00:12:37.65\00:12:40.82
Unbelievable.
00:12:40.86\00:12:42.19
Yeah, So how does a doctor
00:12:42.22\00:12:45.13
trained at Loma
Linda end up working there,
00:12:45.16\00:12:47.96
why not just set up
practice here in United States?
00:12:48.00\00:12:51.17
Well, there are certain
disadvantages working there
00:12:51.20\00:12:53.20
in the United States.
00:12:53.23\00:12:54.57
Malpractice being one of them.
00:12:54.60\00:12:55.94
Medicare, documentation,
00:12:55.97\00:12:58.71
there is a lot of
work without necessarily
00:12:58.74\00:13:02.74
an equal distribution
of payment for doctors.
00:13:02.78\00:13:05.68
which is bit of the struggle
00:13:05.71\00:13:07.05
because you get
paid a healthy salary,
00:13:07.08\00:13:08.42
which is not necessarily
00:13:08.45\00:13:09.78
reflective of
the hours you work.
00:13:09.82\00:13:11.29
But why Mission service?
00:13:11.32\00:13:13.19
Because I felt like that
was a way that I could work
00:13:13.22\00:13:15.89
the same amount of
hours and get paid less.
00:13:15.92\00:13:18.69
But I wanted my work
to mean something directly
00:13:21.40\00:13:24.73
not that helping
people in this country
00:13:24.77\00:13:26.47
is less rewarding
than it is other places,
00:13:26.50\00:13:28.54
but these are
low resource areas,
00:13:28.57\00:13:30.61
especially, in
terms of surgical care
00:13:30.64\00:13:32.07
and I'm willing to provide that.
00:13:32.11\00:13:34.01
So why wouldn't I go to
those kind of scenarios.
00:13:34.04\00:13:36.51
And the rewards
are definitely outweigh
00:13:36.54\00:13:39.01
the disadvantages in my mind.
00:13:39.05\00:13:40.72
Fantastic, well,
Gillian, thank you so much
00:13:40.75\00:13:43.18
for what you have done
00:13:43.22\00:13:44.55
for the people of
Africa for Mission services,
00:13:44.59\00:13:46.65
just quickly for anyone
00:13:46.69\00:13:48.02
considering being
a missionary doctor,
00:13:48.06\00:13:49.72
recommend or not?
00:13:49.76\00:13:51.16
Absolutely, but I think the key
00:13:51.19\00:13:53.36
for any job
that you pick in life
00:13:53.40\00:13:55.26
is that you're sure
that's what you want.
00:13:55.30\00:13:57.53
All right, one
doctor gave me advise,
00:13:57.57\00:13:59.27
if you can imagine yourself
happy doing anything else,
00:13:59.30\00:14:01.10
do that other thing.
00:14:01.14\00:14:03.07
And I would say that
it's true for this too,
00:14:03.10\00:14:04.44
when you certain you
are, where you supposed to be
00:14:04.47\00:14:07.01
then it makes handling
all the challenges doable.
00:14:07.04\00:14:10.48
When you are sure
that God called you to be
00:14:10.51\00:14:11.98
a certain type of person
or certain of professional,
00:14:12.01\00:14:15.18
certain type of missionary,
00:14:15.22\00:14:16.85
then you can handle what comes.
00:14:16.89\00:14:19.45
So I think it's just a
matter of an individual making
00:14:19.49\00:14:22.72
that choice yourself,
00:14:22.76\00:14:24.26
certainly made
my life survivable,
00:14:24.29\00:14:26.80
is that I knew,
beyond a shadow of a doubt
00:14:26.83\00:14:29.16
that God wanted me in
Liberia for whatever reason.
00:14:29.20\00:14:32.53
He lead, clearly
lead me in that direction
00:14:32.57\00:14:34.90
and so that meant obviously,
00:14:34.94\00:14:36.87
I was supposed to
be there during Ebola,
00:14:36.91\00:14:39.24
for a while now afterwards.
00:14:39.27\00:14:40.61
So we'll see what he has next.
00:14:40.64\00:14:42.44
Fantastic.
00:14:42.48\00:14:43.81
Thank you so much
for sharing with us.
00:14:43.85\00:14:45.18
Sure.
00:14:45.21\00:14:46.55
We'll be right back
straight after this break.
00:14:46.58\00:14:47.92