Blog
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Generous People Making A Difference
October 29, 2010
As most of the members of Eastern Hills Bible Church in upstate New York were still sleeping, in the village of Duk Payuel in South Sudan, a small charter plane was landing. This plane’s landing in Duk was made possible through the support of those church members. As they were just waking up in the U.S., two mothers, Elizabeth and Martha, were getting on the plane out at the dirt airstrip. They were headed for the nearest surgical center, more than 100 miles away in the state capital. Even during the dry season, the trip across the dirt roads takes 6 hours, and now, during the rainy season, getting there is only possible by plane. The plane, a six-seater, was chartered through AIMR AIR, a non-profit aviation organization. With a team of volunteer pilots, AIM AIR serves missionary and church-based groups throughout Africa, providing air travel in places many commercial flights either won’t go or for which would charge a high fee.
As these things tend to just happen in Duk by Divine intervention, the pilot said that the plane happened to be available for the day. The plane was sitting in Rumbek, just a hundred or so miles from Duk, when Clinic staff reached out to see if a last-minute flight was possible.
One of the mothers had walked to the Clinic a few days before through knee-deep standing water for more than 25 miles. She had already had six pregnancies, four of which resulted in a miscarriage. She was now pregnant again, and came to the Clinic hoping and trusting in the Clinic staff and services provided here—the best for more than 100 miles around. She was having prolonged labor and needed an emergency C-section, a function for which the Clinic is still unable to provide.
The other mother had come from just a few miles away, and unfortunately, her child had already died in the womb. She’d been bleeding for several days since then. Without surgical facilities, now her own life was in serious jeopardy as well.
After the flight took off, the Clinic staff waited news of what happened. The next day the Clinic Manager made a phone call using Skype (since there’s no cell phone network in Duk) to a caretaker who had accompanied the women. He gladly reported that both mothers were doing well, and one had given birth to a healthy baby boy. The staff breathed a sigh of relief and laughed that neither went into labor on the plane.
It was all made possible by the dedicated act of generosity from koye miooc (“generous people” in the local language) 5,000 miles away, whom these mothers will never meet, working to change things in South Sudan.
