Christmas Day

One of our family's favorite Christmas traditions in Impfondo is distributing gifts to the patients.
Pastor Paul, the chaplain, organized and purchased the supplies.

Mama Sarah was Santa
She stayed with the truck and handed the supplies to her elves at each patient ward

Pastor Paul and one of our guards singing for the patients in surgery

This young lady really wanted her picture taken.
Amanda posed with her, and it seemed to cheer her up.

Caleb in the pediatric ward

Christmas Eve

We had our annual missionary team Christmas Eve party at the Harvey's house.
We shared a meal, sang hymns, read a the Christmas story for the kids,
and lit the last Advent candle.

We ended the evening with presents!
We each draw a name and then buy that person a present.
You don't know who has your name until they hand you your present.
The whole procedure is very entertaining.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Wegners!

Christmas Sunday

Our church Christmas celebration was this Sunday. We had special music and scripture readings, and the usual children's theatre of the Christmas story. This year, we also had a baptism service and communion. A very special Sunday!

Pastor Paul, his wife and daughter singing a song.
They are such a musically talented family!

Mama Melanie, Mama Melanie, Roger Maskey, and Mama Anne singing together

The audience singing led by Mama Anne.
She has a gift for singing well and getting others to join in with enthusiasm

The children's pageant

Mary in the children's pageant

Follow up

Now that we've been in Impfondo a while we are starting to see familiar faces when we go on outings to the market or to visit others people. this is a pretty fun. One particular familiar face was particularly satisfying to see. He was one of our patients in the hospital when we arrived in November. He is a refugee who has not let his life circumstances dictate his view on life. He was shot as he was fleeing the Democratic Republic of Congo and ended up losing his right arm secondary to infection and tissue damage.
I showed a picture of him in our Christmas post and he continues to do well. Since it is not safe to go back to his home he began a "boutique" here. We stop by often and try to buy things from him to help him a little. He also has come to church several times as well. Continue to pray for Gerrard and other refugees as they heal physically and leave the hospital. Pray that they continue to remain rooted in God's love. Thanks for you continued prayers for us as well.

A heaping HELPing 12 days of Christmas

One way to cope with stress is to find some humor so I redid the ole Christmas classic "The 12 days of Christmas" and turned it into the heaping HELPing 12 days of Christmas. HELP of course stands for Hôpital Evangélique le Pionnier or the Pioneer Christian Hospital

On the first day of Christmas HELP gave to me.....a case of salmonella typhi.......
On the 12th day of Christmas HELP gave to me
-12 gunshot wounds
-11 kids on oxygen
-10 operations
-9 blood transfusions
-8 nosy visitors
-7 dressing changes
-6 kids with flu
-5 refugees
-4 power outages
-3 amputations
-2 malnourished kids
and a case of salmonella typhi!!!!

Merry "Roc"in Christmas

Tis the season to be...???? Jolly? Content? Hot? Evacuated? Yes all the above are possibilities for the Wegner family in the ROC this Christmas season. I wrote last update that the situation had calmed down a bit, but since then there have been some "rebel" attacks on some of the boats coming up the river and this past Thursday there were some R.O.C. troops involved in some shooting as well. There are lots of refugees along the river and it is good to be able to help them, but there are always more. For a sampling last week, we evaluated a woman after a rape and her husband for a spear wound to the thigh, there was another child who came in with 9 days of malaria and a hematocrit (blood count) in the teens. (normal is in the high 30's and 40s) then there was the child with malnutrition and the woman who need an operation for an abscess and.....I could go on. Suffice it to say that we have a lot of work here and there are is now fighting to the north and to the south of us as well but all (so far on the Democratic Republic of Congo side of the river. Our team has mad some evacuation plans to be prepared, and we have some bags packed (just in case) although i must say we feel pretty safe so far.
So continue to pray for our situation here, it is very fluid and can change very fast.
We also have a small epidemic of premature births here. They keep getting smaller and younger but by God's grace they are doing ok.

I also wanted to post some happy holiday Christmas pictures for you from our Christmas service this Sunday.


Here are the "Mary and Joseph of the Christmas play.









Here is one of the refugees singing praises. He has made a remarkable spiritual and physical recovery. One of his songs today he sang was "Jesus M'aime" Go Club Jeunesse of Sherbrooke.






Here is the required children's choir. We actually had a lot of singing today, and the only songs that were not full of joy and excitement were those with European origins (like silent night).





It is sometimes a little to much singing as you can see with Caleb here.











But we are all happy to be celebrating the birth our Savior who was born into a volatile situation of his own. From our family to yours Merry Christmas!