# LCMS Convention Workbook_St. Louis Missouri_1975_S25 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) MISSIONS 25 and others. Our minimal annual contribution of $3,000 (half from Wheat Ridge and half from the council) is not in proportion to the benefit derived from this planning and coordinating agency. We also offer thanks to God for the service and Christian witness of American Leprosy Missions. Although two members of the Synod are serving on its board of directors and even though considerable help is received from this interdenomina- tional agency in training, planning, and program development, especially by sister churches in India, Papua New Guinea, and Nigeria, ALM receives no regular support from The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod. It is in humility and even embarrassment that we give thanks for the Lord’s blessings for the Christian Medical College and Hospital at Vellore. India. With two members of the IELC on its management Council in India and with three LCMS repre- sentatives on its supporting board in the United States, this the world’s largest Christian medical school receives only token support from us, and most of this is provided by the Wheat Ridge Foundation. The majority of medical personnel serving with health-care programs of the IELC have been trained at Vellore. The overall Christian witness of this institution through its staff, patients, and students throughout the Indian subconti- nent is indeed profound. The Healing Ministry of Sister Churches “O give thanks unto the Lord: for He is good: for His mercy endureth forever’ and ever and evermore. The rapid transition from missionary management to national administration and the change from reliance on foreign per- sonnel to having make do with locally available staff at a time of spiraling inflation has been a challenge to all phases of the work done by our struggling sister churches in the Third World, but none has been affected more adversely than their health care programs. Many of these problems date back to misconceptions of the past. If the future of our healing ministry is to be assured, correction and changes will call for determined joint efforts of both the Synod and its overseas partners. We are grateful that in His goodness and mercy God has blessed our work in spite of many past mistakes. The things that went wrong include the following: 1. Under the mistaken concept that “Western medicine” was “good medicine,” health-care programs were introduced that lacked cultural relevance, were difficult to relate to the local economy, and were dependent on foreign medical personnel or local staff trained like them. 2. Missionaries occasionally tended to work in isolation from public concerns and failed to prepare national co-workers suffi- ciently for essential and unavoidable cooperation of services with local communities and the national government. 3. The withdrawal of foreign personnel and the turnover of authority and responsibility to national church bodies took place far too abruptly, often seemingly dictated more by prevailing philosophies and economic problems of the “sending church” than the interests and demands of the mission and ministries of national church bodies. 4. The sudden transfer of administrative authority and finan- cial responsibility for medical institutions built and maintained by foreign funds to hapless sister churches without a prior estab- lishment of professionally competent and financially solvent national trust associations was an injudicious folly still waiting to be corrected. 5. Present health technology has clearly demonstrated the importance of greater utilization of primary health care and the need to involve the health-care consumer and his community intimately in the planning and decision-making process of services offered. These are concepts not yet sufficiently recog- nized. India Like other church bodies in India, the members of the IELC are facing an acute shortage of food and the effects of an eco- nomic crisis that might soon become catastrophic. Runaway inflation has halved the purchasing power of church salaries within the last 4% years, salaries that even before inflation were marginal at best. So far no hospital or any other Lutheran health care program has had to be closed. This alone is a re- markable accomplishment at a time when an institution as prestigious as the Christian Medical College and Hospital at Vellore has had much of its service paralyzed by labor union strikes for the past half year. If we are unable to locate addi- tional resources, the same could happen to us. With the excep- tion of the much-appreciated TB programs funded by the Wheat Ridge Foundation, charity for the poor had to be cut back se- verely, and the layoff of nonessential staff is being considered. In spite of these threats, all health-care programs have con- tinued to serve and witness to the love of Christ. Three na- tional superintendents have been appointed: Dr. (Mrs.) Char- lotte Manoharan for Bethesda Hospital at Ambur, Dr. D. Lionel Rajasekharan for Karunalaya Hospital at Wandoor, and Dr. (Mrs.) Rathina Reddy for Bethesda Rural Hospital at Reddi- valasu, an extension facility of Bethesda at Ambur. We thank God for these new and dynamic leaders. people who are keenly aware of the need to develop alternative health-care methods to multiply the output of existing institutional services, and the need to compensate for the disproportionate increase in general operating expenses. Wheat Ridge continues to support thoracic TB surgery at Vellore and TB treatment programs at Ambur, Vaniyambadi, Wandoor, Malappuram and at the C.S.I. Hospital, Neyyoor near Nagercoil. The Christian Welfare Centre at Malappuram is a good exam- ple of what competent leadership with some outside encourage- ment might be able to accomplish and how good work attracts outside funding. Until recently the Christian Welfare Centre was a small, sleepy dispensary operating out of ancient facilities as part of Lutheran mission work among the Muslim in that area. The appointment of Dr. (Mrs.) Victoria Mathews as medical superintendent and her husband Tharyan as social coordinator 3 years ago changed that. The number of patients tripled, some friends gave money for construction of a nurses home, and Wheat Ridge adopted support of an imaginative 6-year pilot program in community health. A grant of $25,000 for the produc- tion of high-protein baby food under the auspices of a local charitable ladies society was made available jointly by the Cana- dian High Commission of India, LCMS World Relief, and Cana- dian Lutheran World Relief. Some $35,000 was allocated by Canadian Lutheran World Relief and the Canadian Inter- national Development Authority for a loca! demonstration proj- ect for supplying potable water and adequate sanitation facil- ities. In addition a grant request for $57,000 is pending with the International LWML to provide urgently needed new clinic facilities and a 20-bed children’s ward. We are confident that the investments made in the work of this center of the Lutheran mission and ministry to Muslim will generate manifold returns and will serve as an encouragement for others in this service. O give thanks. Philippines Lutheran Hospital at Abatan in the mountains of Northern Luzon is in good hands under the competent leadership of Dr. Andres R. Bugnosen. This small institution is doing an excellent job. It has been materially helped recently by a gift of $8,000 raised by the Synod’s Stewardship Department among various youth groups for the installation of an urgently needed water supply system. Stringent government regulations and the prevailing attitude of rigid professionalism and institutional thinking common throughout the Islands have tended to confine the service of the hospital within its own walls. To help encourage the staff to think in terms of total community needs and to demonstrate the feasibility of noninstitutional programs, two 3-year pilot projects in child welfare service were started by LCP last year, one using as its base a Lutheran congregation at Urdaneta in the lowlands, the other as an outreach venture of the Abatan hospital. Part-time project coordinator is Miss Annie Voigt, a pediatric nurse practitioner with 8 years of missionary experi- ence in Nigeria. Funding is provided by individual grants from within and beyond the membership of our Synod. Initiated as a memorial to the late Marie-Louise Gebhardt Dustin, the Coun- cil for Christian Medical Work is interested in this pilot venture because it responds to a real need, utilizes short-term specialty staff, depends from the very outset on full national participa- tion, and does not rely on budget resources of the Synod. Whether the project will accomplish a change of attitude and manage to become self-supporting within a short 3 years remains to be seen.