LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1975, Page 25

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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.