Miles In Missions

Might sound like a great book idea, huh? However, there really is no book that can entirely prepare you for missions… However, you can do missions if you are a dummy!

The proof recently arrived at Egbe Hospital. Remember the man that helped do the discipleship trainings in our most recent blog? Well, he and his wife also brought 24 dummies with them. No, I’m not talking about a team of missionaries that came and acted like fools that we had to send packing because they messed everything up. No, I’m talking about actual dummies! Training dummies for CPR at the hospital.

The wife, a great nurse in real life, knew from conversations with the medical team on the ground that she would be a great fit to teach the nursing staff on many subjects. She thought, “What if I could teach CPR? Do you have any training dummies?” We told her no and she went on a “mission” to find dummies all on her own. On the surface finding dummies around you might seem like an easy task, but for her dummies were suddenly in short supply. Asking and searching for months, she had no luck. Finally, the miracle dummies appeared. Just a few days before her trip to Egbe, the Louisville Fire Department called her and said, “Come and pick up these 24 dummies. Our training people just brought us 24 brand new ones and we have to get rid of the old ones.”

She was blown away. “What a huge answer to prayer”, she said. Then in the same instant she realized she had to get eight adult, eight child, and eight infant dummies from Louisville, KY all the way to Egbe. She couldn’t fathom how that would work and certainly didn’t want to spend $200 extra for each piece of luggage coming here.

So, dummy miracle #2 happened. They decided to go to the airport the day before to talk to a manager of their airline and see if there was any way to get some of the dummies in their luggage. They tried and talked to the desk agent for about 20 minutes. The answer was always, “No, you will have to pay for the extra baggage.”

Soon a long silence set in and the woman at the counter asked, “Do you go to Southeast Christian Church?”
They replied, “Yeah we do actually.”
She said, “Well your pastor always flies our carrier and I check him in all the time. Even when someone else checks him in, he always greats me by my name. I can’t believe he always remembers my name.”
Another awkward silence filled the air and then she said, “How about five pieces of luggage?”
The husband asked, “Total?”
She replied, “Each. 5 checked bags each.”
He went further, “For free?”
She said, “Yes.”
He went even further, “Ten bags total for free?”
She replied, “Yes”.

The husband and wife couldn’t believe their ears. They felt like shouting in celebration and grabbing the woman to hug her! But they thought it might cause a huge scene in the airport.

They now had enough baggage to stuff all of the dummies into, bring their own belongings, and even bring a few treats for our family. What a blessing! I can’t imagine what the airport screeners thought when they x-rayed these bags. Seeing little shapes of babies, children heads, and adult heads! That had to be a laugh!

The wife has completed CPR training with many of the nurses in the hospital and the trainees have gotten certificates proving their education. She even had time to train a few nurses to be trainers themselves. Leaving the dummies, literature, and dvd programming for them to use in the future. The hospital will now always have dummies around. How wonderful!

So there, wether you’re a dummy or not, you can do missions!

Thank you to this great and supportive couple for coming out to invest into the Egbe community, the hospital, and our family. Thanks also to the Louisville Fire Department and Delta Airlines for helping along the way!