In our weekly round-up, Eternity looks at what some of our Australian missionaries are up to each week. 

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Nerida Butcher, Mercy Ships Australia

Nerida, who is in the process of moving from Newcastle to Sydney, is back from her third period of service on the Africa Mercy, the world’s largest charity hospital ship, operated by Mercy Ships. She spent her time on board as Assistant Plastic Surgeon during the ship’s current assignment to Guinea, one of the world’s poorest nations. Nerida met Mercy Ships founder, Don Stephens, when he was visiting Australia a few years ago.

“I then felt and continue to feel that God’s desire is that I should use the skills he has given me as a doctor to display the love of Jesus in action. It seems that emails I sent home from West Africa have opened up doors in the hearts of friends and family members. They have been touched by the stories of beautiful and brave patients who came to the ship for life changing surgery to correct disability, deformity or blindness.”

“Working on the ship is addictive.  I was given the opportunity to return as assistant to a leading Plastic Surgeon, Dr Tertius Venter, and I just couldn’t say no.  During that time we carried out many surgeries to remove facial tumours and cleft lip repairs.”

“There were so many highlights from my recent time on board. To see a beautiful 13-year-old girl who had a tumour removed from her face smile for the first time broke my heart into a song of joy.   I also watched a young seven-year-old girl see her face for the first time after a cleft lip repair.  She stared at herself in a mirror for ten minutes in amazement.  Tears of joy began to stream down her face.  She realised she was healed, and loved. So I ask God to allow me to continue using my hands and my heart and show me the way to keep using my work as a doctor to share love and healing to others,” Nerida concludes.

Jono, Amy, Lilli, Isaac, Brie and Abe Vink serving with CMS in Musoma, Tanzania

Musoma is located on the shores of Lake Victoria.

Jono lectures at Bunda Bible College (BBC), training pastors, evangelists and lay leaders so they will better know, teach, preach and live by the word of God.

Amy home-schools Lili, Isaac, Brie and Abe, teaches Girls’ Brigade and leads a Swahili ladies’ Bible study group. Together, with Mama Bishop, they have set up and oversee the Rehema (Mercy) Café and Rehema Card Project as income generation for local women.

Lilli Vink shares what her life as a missionary is like in this video:

 

Craig Oliver and Dale Harlan, missionary engineers in Bolivia

Craig, a missionary engineer from Australia, is serving with SIM. He’s working together with Dale Harlan as engineers among very poor communities.

Craig has been assisting Dale Harlan in Bolivia working on a hand held water pump. Dale Harlan, a veteran of water ministries in Africa and South America, has spent three decades figuring out how to give the poorest of the poor a cup of water in Jesus’ name—a cup free of parasites and pathogens. His most recent engineering innovation involves designing a hand pump for use in rural Bolivia, a nation where water-borne disease remains the number one killer.

Harlan says, “We tested our pump from the second floor of SIM guesthouse. Craig Oliver, our new SIM Australian missionary, and I have worked long hours for two weeks to modify the design to accept the inconsistencies of local materials. Our new design works! Praise the Lord that the pump works even better than we had calculated! Using a pressure gauge and flow constriction we simulated pumping from a 30-foot deep well (normal well depth in Vacas). After a bit of tweaking, we could pump about 50+ gallons every ten minutes—more than enough to meet our design goals! A unique feature of the pump is that the water exits through one side of the T-handlebar allowing users to attach a garden hose to the handle and then pump water to a rooftop tank (for supplying an indoor sink) or for pumping to vegetable gardens.”

Sixty communities now have the option to seal their wells and install these brilliant and locally-sustainable hand-pumps. The next task is site visits and community training.

Harlan has asked for prayer: for wisdom as he assists Craig to better understand the unique challenges they face; for new ideas in how to share the love of Christ clearly—having built a highly respected platform for ministry. Pray also that they would fill their urgent need for an Associate Engineer for Rural Community Water Supply Ministry in Bolivia: an engineer with an evangelistic heart. (For more on this project click here).

We know some missionaries work in sensitive countries and we’re setting things up so that they’re not compromised. Got a missionary we should know about? Email us here and we’ll follow them up.

Header image: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1170737