Bill and Wanda’s Incredible Journey

Is Kisiizi Hospital a protestant monastery in the jungle?  It calls itself a Christian community – with some

After Chapel.

justification.  We meet daily each morning for Chapel.  We seek to minister to the community around us, to the sick and poor.  There are daily services to the patients on each ward, led by ordinary staff (including Bill, and Wanda).  We are a centre of healing and learning.  Like the medieval monasteries of St Batholemew, and St Thomas, we are religious centres of healing, (and perhaps like like Lindisfarne or Iona, many would regard us as being in the middle of nowhere).

It may seem a fanciful idea.  Kisiizi Hospital as a protestant monastery.  But when a team visited us the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Trust, those from non-religious backgrounds found this diet of religion tough.

We go in pairs to lead the morning ward services.  Bill or Wanda accompanied by a local member of staff to lead with prayers or hymns (in Ruchiga language) and then Bill or Wanda to give a simple and short “word”.  We have found these times when we’ve been on the wards real blessings.  People will sit up from their sick beds and cheerly sing, from memory, their hymns with gusto.  Once in 2 or 3 months, we go in pairs in the evenings to give witness to patients, and ask for free sharing.  We’ve been involved just once so far. We missed another chance when on business in Kampala.  We were very nervous when we went, but it was a moving ocession.  All sorts of people will stand up in the ward and share their testimony, or share a blessing.  One woman said how she had been freed from local withcraft, the effect was that she could now attend this Christian Hospital and get her condition properly treated.  Another women testified how she was told by God to wake up and attend her poorly daughter immediately, whereupon, she rushed her daughter to Hospital – an action that saved both the daughter and her unborn child’s lives.

One hears these stories in magazines or books.  Indeed, they are the fodder of mission mags.  But perhaps these kind of spiritual action are more common in places like Uganda, simply because tghere is [1] more simple faith around, more expectation, and [2] they have very little else (poorer access to health care, poorer health education, poorer Christian education.  And certainly, many patients welcome these little daily services.

What is the mileage to be had about thinking of ourselves as a Protestant Monastery?  After all, the local people have a very strong sense of being a local community, and most people round here have a Christian faith.  However, being a community comes naturally  here and would happen even iff they were all Muslims or Aftican Tribal Traditionalists. Being a village of medical workers is not the point, though some are content at being just that.  Thinking of ourselves as a Protestant Monastery will heighten our sense of spiritual discipleship, that our jobs and our beliefs are part of our on-doing daily personal discipleship, that our work is a part of our faith journey.  Hard work, professionalism, and sense of service to our patients will naturally follow.

As Bill said to a new member of his staff – you get to serve God, help the poor, advance your career and get paid for it.  What a good deal!