Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep984: CURE International: A Holistic Medical Ministry in Africa with Peter Kyalo

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Peter Kyalo serves as the Chief Program Officer of CURE International, a Christian non-profit organization that operates a global network of eight children’s hospitals providing world class surgical care and intentional spiritual care to children living with treatable disabilities. CURE has hospitals in Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Niger, Ethiopia, Zambia, and the Philippines. Peter holds an MA in global healthcare management and leadership as well as an MBA from the United States International University. Outside of work, Peter spends his time with his four children and serving at his church mentoring young couples. He is married to Jackie Ngigi and together they have four children, one son and three daughters. I had a chance to visit the Kenya location last June with my family and was blown away at how much kingdom impact this ministry has!  To support CURE, go to: https://cure.org To learn about Peter: https://cure.org/directory/peter-kyalo/ –––––– PROMOS Save 10% on courses with Kairos Classroom using code TITR at kairosclassroom.com! –––––– Sign up with Faithful Counseling today to save 10% off of your first month at the link:  faithfulcounseling.com/titr or use code TITR at faithfulcounseling.com –––––– Save 30% at SeminaryNow.com by using code TITR –––––– Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review. www.theologyintheraw.com

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. In case you haven't heard, the digital version of the Exiles in Babylon conference is now available for sale. You can learn about race and racism, sexuality, gender, politics and the gospel, and different Christian views of hell. Check out theologyintheraw.com to purchase those videos. And if you want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. But actually, I would love for you for this episode to support Cure International. Peter Chalo is my guest today. He serves as a chief program officer of Cure International, which has locations in Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Niger, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Philippines. Peter previously served as the executive director of CURE Kenya,

CURE Zambia, CURE Malawi, and the interim executive director of CURE Uganda. He holds an MA in global healthcare management and leadership, as well as an MBA from the United States International University. He's married to his wife, and they have four kids together, around the same age as my kids, actually. And I met Peter last June when my family and I visited Cure International, a gospel-centered hospital doing... I try not to be over the top, doing some of the most amazing kingdom work I've ever personally experienced. And that's what this whole podcast is about. Peter's going to unpack that for us. Just our one day that we visited Cure, I walked away and just stunned at the level and depth of the kingdom impact that this ministry is doing and just

found Peter to be an absolute delight. And the way this ministry is run is just off the chart amazing. And I'm still, this is a year ago when I would visit it, and I'm still just reeling from that experience. And so I'm so excited for you to get to know Peter Chalo and the ministry going on at Cure International. So please welcome to Theology Unwrath for the first time from Nairobi, Kenya, Peter Chalo. All right. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in a Raw. I am so, so, so excited about this conversation with my friend. I'll say friend, even though we only met briefly in Kenya, Peter Chalo, who is part of a ministry called Cure International. And last summer, last June, my family and I went out to visit a few ministries in Nairobi, and one of them was Cure.

And Peter was kind enough to show us around the hospital. And I was, Peter, I was so blown away at the level of kingdom impact that you guys are doing and hearing your thought behind the whole thing and just the level of theological thoughtfulness that has gone into your ministry. I just told my wife the other day, I'm like, I'm still, when I think about here, it's just so unbelievable what you guys are doing. So anyway, thank you, Peter, for coming on the podcast. Tell us who you are, what you do, and I'm sure we'll have lots of time to unpack what you are doing there at CURE International. Well, thank you very much. And thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to this discussion. So my name is Peter Chalo. And I think when I think about myself, and that's always an interesting question. So just tell us about yourself. You know, I do a number of things. My wife and I have four children. Our eldest is in college. And then we have three little girls. And so we are a busy household. So I try and balance all the different responsibilities that I have, being a father, being a husband, working for Cure, and also being an active follower of Christ.

I think that is important and is important and really informs sort of my thought process, what I do, the things that I'm involved in. And so my wife and I are involved at church, and we help mentor young couples as well. So, yeah, so a lot on my plate, but I think above all, just grateful that the Lord gives me the grace to be able to just live every day at a time. All right. So tell us about Cure International. When did it start? What's the mission behind it?

What is it that you guys do? So Cure International started in 1998. And it was started by Dr. Scott and Sally Harrison. And Dr. Harrison was a businessman who was involved in missions. And he started going to Malawi, where actually one of our hospitals is, in 1986. And so he went there. And every time he went, it was almost very interesting because there were a number of things that were consistent. So every time he went back, there were more patients that were waiting for him. Two, the hospital sort of infrastructure and the support just kept getting poorer and poorer. He had to do really complex operations. And then he wasn't

able to do all that he was trained to do and he could do because hospitals did not have the equipment, did not have the manpower and so on, did not have stable power. Just some things that you might take for granted. I think it's important to be able to have electricity when you're operating and when you don't have that becomes problematic. And then he went with his wife. And as they continued to meet with their parents and the mothers, it was interesting because the mothers had so many questions.

And their stories were just heartbreaking because, you know, one mother would say, my husband left me because my child was born with a disability. Another mother would say, you know, I'm not allowed to participate in sort of the activities of the village because they think that my son, my child, my daughter is cursed. I'm a bad omen. I'm this. And so, and it wasn't like just one parent, you know, it just kept happening over and over. And so, Scott and Sally, they did several trips. And he was involved in the US, he was in business, and then was able to turn around a business that he was involved in. business that he was involved in. And then he retired and he, you know, he was blessed and he had some resources and he kept praying and asking the Lord, what really do you want me to do? And then in around 1997, he went to help a hospital in Kenya where a missionary doctor was an orthopedic surgeon there.

And so he thought, you know, at this point he had retired. He hadn't been involved in active practice of medicine in orthopedics for a while. And he thought, hey, this will be a good trip. I'll go and see some lions, do a safari, and slowly ease into the practice of orthopedics again just slowly and when he got there of course you know the hospitals had informed patients hey there's an American doctor that's coming to really help and treat you you know very high level individual. And so the first patient that he met, he sort of had his story and read who Dr. Scott Harrison was. And the parents of this young gentleman told him,

hey, this is an American doctor who's going to heal you. And when he just, you know, evaluated the patient, what had happened is that the young man was out on a farm and a tree fell on his back and he sustained very serious back injury. So, he was really on a wheelchair. The prognosis was really, bad and uh dr scott harrison really in his own words say that he really regretted that he was that patient's only option and and because really nobody could do that operation so long story short he was able to read he was able to do a lot of research and um really just uh you know by god's grace, treated that patient and, you know, did the surgery, the surgery was successful. And then he thought about it, you know, just his life up to that point. And he asked himself a question that if I'm the only person who's able

to do this, that's just not sustainable. And then he started playing sort of from 1986, going to Malawi, the issues that they kept seeing over and over again. And so through prayer, cure was started and cure was started to help children that are born with physical disabilities. And so what we do is that we do corrective surgery. We do a range of things. We do things in orthopedics, correcting bones, crooked bones, in plastic reconstructors, things like cleft lips and palates, burn contractures.

In neurosurgery, children that are born with water in their brain, open spines, and so on. So really the mission of cure, and it's very simple, it comes straight from Luke 9.2. And so our mission is to heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom of God. And we combine those because we realize that a human being is not complete if it's just the physical. So we have to think about the physical. We have to think about the emotional, the spiritual, and also help the patient and the parents be able to go back to society and leave as members of society. leave as members of society. So that's the reason why CURE exists. And like I said, we've been open for the last 25 years. We have eight hospitals across the network, seven in Africa and one in Asia, in the Philippines. And just looking at the last 25 years, we've done over 300 surgical procedures. In terms of outpatients, just patients coming through our doors, we have seen over 5 million patients.

Five million? Five million, yes, that's correct. We've reached over 1 million people with the gospel. Wow. And we'll talk about that and out of that we've had about 200,000 people that have given their lives to Christ

and so very intentional about not only just treating the patients but also taking the opportunity to share the gospel with the patient, their parents, everybody else that would care to listen to us. And another very important thing is so many patients that need our care.

And like I said, it just got harder to just single-handedly treat all the patients. And so for the last few years, we've gained about 25,000 people to do what we do. And so that is medical doctors, whether it's orthopedic surgeons, whether it's neurosurgeons, whether it's nurses, trainings, continue to preach the gospel. We want to make sure that we are not only fishing, but teaching people how to fish. Yeah. I think we're having some connection issues.

So I hope my audio guy can clean this up a little bit. But you mentioned it a little bit already, but I'd love to have you really unpack the stigma that can surround somebody born with a physical disability, clubfoot or something. Because it's one thing, I mean, just healing somebody's physical disability, that alone can be life-changing.

But in the African context, you were describing that this carries a really widespread social stigma that the physical ailment alone can be difficult. But there's a social, economic, religious thing that surrounds these disabilities? Can you help us out? Because most of my audience lives in a Western context where they might not have the same kind of issue. Can you unpack that a little bit for our audience? This even, you know, dates back to sort of biblical times. If we remember the story of Jesus and people coming to us who sinned. And in the African culture, I think there's a lot of emphasis on people being quote-unquote normal. You know, you have your limbs, you have, you know, you look like your neighbor. Is it the mothers? Is it the fathers? Is it the community? Is it the family? And a lot

of the time what happens is that people go to the witch doctors to try and get answers. And the answers that they get from the witch doctors are, it's, you've been bewitched. Somebody cast a spell on you. It's your brother. It's your sister. And so a lot of the times people will think that a disability like that probably will be contagious. Or if I interact with somebody who has a disability like that probably would be contagious. Or if I interact with somebody

who has a disability, then the same curse that they are under would also, you know, either come on myself or my family. And so people do not want to associate with people that are living with disabilities. And in some of the African communities, what used to happen in the past, In some of the African communities, what used to happen in the past, and some really, really terrible things, a child born with a disability will be thrown into the cow pen, for example, and then just allowed the cows and the livestock and animals there just to trample on the child and die. A lot of the times, children born with disabilities will be taken to the forest and left there so that a wild animal will come and eat them. In some communities, what would happen is that they would give a child tobacco, you know,

so that the lungs are perforated so that they would die. In some communities, what they would do is that they would give the young child milk from like a camel, which is very high in cholesterol. And that cholesterol just, you know, sort of goes and blocks things inside and then the patient dies. And so why do people do that? It's because they want to be able to be a part of the community. Nobody wants to be stigmatized. And this even extends to the point where, and we hear this a lot of the times, where even husbands would leave their wives because they've given birth to a child born with a disability. And so it's incredibly difficult.

And you can imagine, and maybe let me try and paint the picture this way. You all live in the same place. You know your neighbor, you know your neighbor, your cousin, and everybody. You go to the same well to get water. You go to the same farms to help each other, you go to the same church, you go to the same school, and then you're sort of like the black sheep and everybody knows about that. And then nobody wants to associate yourself. So people then are forced to do just very hard things so that they can fit in, so that they can be accepted.

And so really our ministry is to be able to change that, to be able to work with the communities. And one of the things that probably will be of interest is that we are even working with churches and pastors to teach them. And we've developed the theology of disability. What's God's view when it comes to disabilities? How does he see sort of like a person who has straight legs and somebody whose legs probably are crooked? What's God's view?

How does God see them? And then what then is our response? How should we see them? And then what then is our response? How should we see them? And so, we're trying to teach pastors and teach community leaders so that they can understand that. And once they understand that, then it becomes a lot easier for those children even to be accepted in church and to be able to go to school and to be able to do so many different things. So for us, we realized that we just do not want to treat the child and take them out of the village and then sort of plant them back. We want to be able to work through that ecosystem so that when somebody else has a disability, then they know what to do, how to treat them, and how to

love them. I would love for you to share, I mean, maybe even have a to do, how to treat them, and how to love them. I would love for you to share, I mean, maybe even have a specific story, or I'm sure you have probably thousands of stories you could share of like a child with a disability, stigmatized, the family stigmatized, they find cure, they bring the child, week later, two weeks later, a month later, the child comes back healed. Can you describe the impact that that has on that family, the community, the gospel, the church? And we have lots and lots of stories. And I'll probably just tell two stories very quickly. One of them was a young girl gives birth to a child that was born with clubfoot.

Clubfoot, you know, is treatable. It happens, you know, one in every 1,000. So, you know, there are probably, you know, 2,000 clubfoot children, I mean, children born with clubfoot every year in Kenya and some of the countries that we operate in. How do we treat them? When they're young, you put a cast, six to eight weeks. It's a fairly simple procedure. And then you do a very minor thing just to fix their tendon at the back. And then you put them on braces.

And by the time they're two years, the clubfoot is corrected. So this mother gives birth to a child who has club foot and the husband leaves her. And then the other very powerful thing that happens in the African community is that you are named. If, for example, I'm named after my grandfather, my sister is named after, you know, my grandmother. And sort of that's how we name children. So the first son boy is named after the, you know, father's dad. And it goes on that way. And so the grandmother to this child looks at the child and say, no, no, no, no.

This is not from my family. And you can never name that child after me. And so the father leaves. and then, you know, she's completely lost, eventually finds a place where CURE does run mobile clinics. So we actually go to the villages to look for patients. And so this mother finds a clinic, they come to the hospital, they're treated. And four years later, fast forward, the child is completely healed. The father comes back and asks for forgiveness. The mother, the grandmother says, this is my child. This is my granddaughter. I want her to be named after me. who was a flower girl at the dad's and mom's wedding. She is the flower girl at the wedding.

So the whole family has come together because of what we were able to do. And so that is just one story. And there are many where we find families coming together. We find that there's reconciliation. We have to take them through sort of that whole process. And we work with different people so that they're able to hospital, we treat them, and then, you know, they are working, they come to the hospital, they meet Jesus, and then they go back to the village, and the villagers cannot believe it. And then this family from a Muslim community invites our spiritual director from the hospital to go to their village. And guess what?

They plant a church. A lot of the people come to that church. They come to know about Jesus. And almost the entire village comes to know Jesus through this family. And so, when we hear things like that, I think they just, it's exciting because, you know, it goes back to our mission to heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom of God. We've healed them. And then how do we proclaim the kingdom? How do we demonstrate that? How do we teach others to be able to do that? Another very quick, quick story is one of the staff members who works at one of our hospitals develops scoliosis.

The spine was bending. They went to many hospitals. They could not find a cure. And then what happened is that they went to the witch doctor. And the witch doctor, of course, you know, asked for a chicken and this and a goat. And then the witch doctor says, I know the problem now. Who's causing this? And he tells the father to this young boy, the problem is your sister. And the guy looks and says, no, I don't have a sister, because he just, you know, he had, you know, brothers, he had no sister, sisters. And then he's like, this guy is a fake. And as a result of that, he goes and starts looking

for other solutions. And, you know, by God's grace, they come to a mobile clinic where cure is, they come to the hospital, the boy is treated. Many years back, you know, comes, goes to college, finishes his education and works at the hospital as a patient advocate. It's funny because when the patients are not exactly sure whether they should go through surgery or not, he says, look, I'm exhibit A. I went through surgery. I came here. It happened. And you don't have to worry. So those are probably 300,000 stories like that of transformed lives. Yes. Well, probably the most impactful thing you said, or it might have been your call. Who was the other guy that showed us around you and there's another guy that

was there the real wise sophisticated like I felt really I felt really ignorant in his presence like he just he just exuded like wisdom yes probably well I don't know probably is a person who's in charge of patients' relations and patients' recruitment. Okay. Yes. One of you said that you kind of compared it to pastoral ministry in a church. If somebody, a non-believer, comes to church or meets a Christian, we have to kind of work really hard. God is good and he loves you.

And a lot of it's just kind of abstract. And I don't want to deny the power of just telling the truth of the gospel. But you said, we don't need to convince people of the goodness of the gospel because we lead with a revolutionary thing that's just mind-blowing. So when you say God is good and he's the one that is doing this, you don't need to do any convincing. It's like it's's there. There's no, it's a tangible argument, you know. Can you, I'm probably not summarizing it right, but can you unpack that a little bit? Just the pathway that's really cleared through the healing to be able to share the gospel with people.

At the end of the day, you have somebody who is searching, somebody who has an obvious physical condition, and then they're asking questions. They're trying to figure out what happened. Why me? And when they come to the hospital, we're able to say, look, we might not understand the why. We might not understand, you know, all the reasons that a lot of these things happen. But one of the things that we understand is that God called us to be here for such a time as this for you. And we see that every patient that walks through our doors as a divine opportunity for us to be able to share the gospel and love them in a way that's tangible. And we feel that the Lord has called us into this ministry because we can say, look, we want you to be whole. And how do we do that?

We want you to be able to actually love God and be able to understand why did He create you. And so, working with patients through that journey, and they can be able to see, hey, this is how I was like, this is how I am like now, you know. It's almost like, you know, in the Bible, you know, people that came to know Christ and say, you know, says, oh, I was blind, now I can see, you know. I don't understand everything else, but this was me and this is, that was me and this is me now. And sort of, that's what we do. We want the patient to be able to say, I had clubfoot, was treated by people that love Jesus, and they told me about Jesus. And they told me why they do it.

And they felt that I was sent to them because God loves me. And I think that's just life-changing because we feel that, you know, every patient, everybody just needs to know Jesus. Because, you know, a lot of the times we might not have the answers, but our Heavenly Father does. And we want to be able to set you on a path that you can communicate to your Heavenly Father. You can ask those questions. Like David had that intimate relationship where you ask questions, you cry to the Lord. And we feel that when we do that, then we are leaving our mission. We're healing the sick and cleaning the kingdom of God.

I don't think we've mentioned this yet, but they don't pay anything, right? Like the surgeries are free? No, I think it's important also for us to be able to understand why. A lot of the people, a lot of the children that come from families, I mean, from the families that we treat, come from very poor families.

A lot of the times cannot even afford the bus fare, the transportation to get to the hospital. And that's why we do mobile clinics so that we can go and find them. We can go to the villages and tell them about the good news. And so it becomes very incredibly difficult to be able then to say, hey, please, you know, pay when that family probably had not even had a meal for, you know, for a couple of days. How do you do that? And so we feel that we are called to the marginalizedize the most vulnerable children. And so we do not ask them to pay anything. We take care of them.

And do they not believe you when you say that? Are they suspicious? There are some that actually go like, is this like a joke? So like just waiting, thinking that it's a dream. And then they just come and realize, yes, that's who we are. That's what we do. That's what we did yesterday. That's what we will do today. And that's what we'll do tomorrow. And we actually tell them to go and tell others. And very interestingly, is that there are lots and lots of people who've gone back to the village and told people, hey, like the Samaritan woman, you better go to that hospital. They feed you well.

They tell you about Jesus. They take good care of you. And yeah, what else do you need? But for us to be able to do that, obviously, we have to work with donors, people that believe in a mission so that we can make that possible. Because without donors and the people that support this our mission so that we can make that possible. Because without donors and the people that support this ministry, it just becomes a dream. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was going to say this at the end, but I'll say it now and at the end, but I mean, on your website, you have a really clear donate button. So if anybody is, you know,

and I didn't bring you on to like solicit funds or whatever. I wanted people to hear about your ministry, but it goes hand in hand. So I love your point that you can't do that without people donating. So if anybody has moved to donate, please visit. Yeah, is it just Cure International? I mean, if you Googled it, it pops right up. Yeah, just C-U-R-E dot org, C-U-R-E dot org, C-U-R-E dot org. Yeah, and there's a donate button there do you remember

that family we visited when we were there can you describe his situation it was and you talk about yeah

poverty I mean they were I can't even describe what they were living in I mean just almost like a just cement block

like not even I wouldn't even call it a house it was just like a shell I mean, just almost like a cement block. I wouldn't even call it a house. It was just like a shell. I mean, yeah, seeing the kid that you guys treated was just to see him smile and walk. And yeah, that boy was born with clubfoot and, you know, had gone through, you know, rejection, was only living with a grandmother. The dad had left them. They did not know where the dad was.

And then the daughter had to go and, you know, look for work. And then the old grandmother who had no work is left with the little boy to take care of. And so actually, so the grandmother is the one that was trying to figure out what do I do with my grandson. And through one of our mobile clinics, he was able to find us and then came to the hospital. We did the surgery for free, told them about Jesus again, and, you know, we've continued to follow them.

Because every patient that we treat for us just becomes part of the Kuma family. You know, that's one of us. And it's usually very interesting. And sometimes you go to some of these clinics and some of these homes and say, hey, your kids are here. You know, your son is here. So they all call all the children our children. And we are their parents and their uncles and aunties and grandmothers and grandfathers. And so that little boy, we treated him now he's able to go to school because that's the other thing. Because when you have a disability, it's very difficult for you to go to school. A lot of the schools in Africa are three, four, five miles away. So if you're born with a club foot that gets painful, how do you go to school? If you're born with bow legs, it's just a matter of time before you drop out of school.

And, you know, education, like we all say, is one of the greatest equalizers because then you go to school, you probably have better prospects for employment and many other doors are open. And so when you're born with a disability, you're not able to go to school. It just compounds the poverty problem. And so that young boy is going to school and really he can have his life back. What are some challenges that you face like in the rhythm of your ministry, week in, week out? Is it, I mean, is it finances? Is it too many needs that you just can't meet at all?

Is it getting enough doctors to volunteer their time? Because that's, you get doctors, right, that are volunteer, they come on their own. Or do they get paid or do they have to volunteer? Is it all volunteer or? So both. So we have challenges at different levels. So if you look at trying to get patients, for example, a lot of patients do not want to come out in the open.

They do not want to – some of the children are hidden. So how do you find them? And so we are constantly driving miles and miles to go and look for those patients. You know, patients that are sometimes chained to a tree because the mom needs to go and work. Chained to a tree? They do not want to leave the child by themselves because then what happens? Yes, yeah, that's correct. Somehow that's quite challenging just being able to go out into the villages and, you know, tell people about cure and the fact that, hey, you do not need to do this.

You know, you can come to us. And so in most places, patients just walk in and, you know, they get treatment. And then even when the patients go back home, it's very expensive for them to come back to the hospital. go back home, it's very expensive for them to come back to the hospital. And so we have to think about follow-up. How do we follow up a patient? Because, you know, you do very good surgery and then they don't come back for their doctor's appointment. The plaster comes off. So then we have to figure out ways of being able to follow up those patients. So through mobile clinics, sometimes you go to hospitals that are closer to them. And that's just one huge challenge. The other challenge is just, you know, we live in, you know,

our hospitals are in Africa and in, you know, developing countries and things like electricity, you know, we do not have stable power. So you have to figure out, you have to get a generator, one, and sometimes you have to get another generator that becomes a backup to the backup. It's just, you know, it's just the reality of it. Of course, when you look at the, just the number of doctors that there are in the countries that we serve in. And I'll give you an example of Malawi. Malawi is about 20, 25 million people. It has less than six orthopedic surgeons in the whole country. Five of those work at the cure hospital. So, you know, so we are it. So, we have lots and lots of needs. And a lot of those countries just don't have the manpower.

They don't have enough doctors for us to hire. So we actually hire people so that they can work with us full time. Our model is slightly different because we do this from Monday to Monday. We operate every day apart from the weekend. And so for volunteers, they come to help and augment what we do, but we do not rely on volunteers 100% because then, you know, sometimes the hospital will be open, then it will be closed depending on when the volunteers can come. And so all our surgeons are employed by us because we want them to be there when the patient comes. And then, of course, the other challenges, like running the hospital, their finances,

their systems and sewer systems and water. Where do you get water from? How do you clean that water? How do you train people? And how do you get water from? How do you clean that water? How do you train people? And how do you get the right people that are missionally aligned, love Jesus, love children, and want to do what we do? Because of the demand and supply, for example, the doctors that would like to hire in country, for example, have a lot more options. They can go into the big city, get into private practice, make a lot of money. And then how do you attract, you know, people that really just feel that this is their calling? That's a huge

challenge. How do you then get somebody who not only wants to do that, he's well-trained, loves Jesus, wants to live in a country like Niger where it's 100 degrees almost every day. You know, people talk about sub-Saharan Africa. Niger, where a hospital is in Niamey, is in the Sahara Desert. You know, it's hot, it's dry. doesn't you know it's it's hot it's dry you know you don't have enough schools for some of the expatriates that would come so it's a huge sacrifice and so being able to attract people that would actually give of themselves someone give up some of the what's to be able to do this it is always it's always a hugement, being able to get the right equipment,

being able to service the equipment, you know, that's huge. And lots of organizations have done research because there's a lot of donated equipment to Africa. And then after two, three years, it just stops working because there's no preventive maintenance. Where do you get the technicians? Where do you get people to be able to maintain some of this equipment?

So, I mean, my role is actually to run the hospital, so I can write a book about the challenges that we face about running the hospitals. I know you're stressing me out just describing all the things that probably a lot of hospitals take for granted, like clean water and electricity. Can you talk just a little bit about the... Another thing I was really impacted by is the holistic nature of the hospital. It's not just a hospital, it's a hospital, but it also has a lot of time and resources and personnel devoted to spiritual formation, discipleship. And that's a key component of the ministry. I mean, just the healing alone

has a profound spiritual component, as we've been talking about, but big emphasis on just the holistic nature of the ministry. So what does that look like at the hospital? So we have what we call like triple M. So there's medicine, there's management. Of course, you have to think through all the things that I was talking about. And then there's the ministry. So those are the key pillars.

And our medical ministry, we have three pillars. One of them is ministry to ourselves, the staff. So every morning we start with that devotion. Once a week the whole staff gets together for a chapel. We sing, we praise, and then the rest of the days the departments meet together. We have a common theme and like an annual plan to be able to learn and really feed ourselves

because we believe that if we are not well fed, then we are not able to do the same. We're not able to feed the children and the parents. So we want to empower everybody so that spiritual ministry is just not only for the spiritual director and the people that work in that department. The cleaner, how do you clean? How do you minister? How do you do that in a way that honors? How do you, you know, as you're

cleaning, take the opportunity to be able to share the gospel? And I'll use an example. When you go to the lab, a sticker that says, hey, thank you for coming. And as I draw your blood to do tests, have you heard about the blood that cleanses everybody? Have you heard about the blood of Jesus? As you come in at reception, as we're registering you into our EMR or a book, we're like, hey, thank you so much for coming, but have you heard about the book of life? And then there's a sticker there, and so people ask questions. So we want every staff member to be able to share the gospel, and we equip them to be able to do that. Then we have ministry to the patients on the ward. So we have ward fellowship with music, there's sharing, there's videos, we show the Jesus

film, there's one-on-one, there's counseling. So it's constant, you know, just getting people to really understand the kingdom. And then there's now what we do, what we call community engagement. How do we teach and equip pastors and churches to be able to welcome the people that give their lives to Christ? How do we teach them to be able to embrace these patients and the mothers and the parents of children? And I was talking about the theology of disability. How do we give them the tools so that they're not perpetuating, continue to perpetuate some of these beliefs that this child is not cursed. They're created, made wonderfully in God's image. And how do we

respond? How do we love them? And so those are the sort of the three pillars of our spiritual ministry. And there's a lot of intentionality and a lot of work that goes into all of that so that we are being effective. One of the things that we are now moving more towards into just more evaluation and trying to understand, okay, so now that the mother has given their life to Christ, do they really understand what that means? And then, you know, two, three, four years down the line, you know, can we trace them and just see if they're still involved in church? What's their impact in the kingdom? And just continue to encourage them. So we are moving more towards just trying to measure impact a lot more so that it's just not about activities, but also thinking about what our impact is. And not just on the spiritual ministries, but also on the medical side, the surgery

side. I was going to ask about that. When somebody, you know, their son gets healed and they come to faith in Jesus, like the follow-up, like, yeah, one year, two years, five years down the road. Are you seeing a good level of ongoing discipleship among the converts? I'm sure it's a mix. Yeah, it's mixed. But what we've been trying to do is that we are engaging the churches a lot more. So that we say, hey, Preston, you gave your life to Christ.

Hey, we have, you know, Pastor Chalo, who's ready to walk with you, mentor you, pray with you, and, you know, just incorporate you into his church. And then now we can follow up with the pastor and see, okay, how are they doing? Please let us know, you know, what tools do you need? And we're able to provide them with some of the materials so that we can follow up. And so that's just something that we are getting a lot into and trying to be a lot more scientific and gather data so that we can analyze it and know also, you know, how to do things better. Because, you know, we've been, like I said, open the last 25 years. And so we have to constantly ask ourselves, how do we do this better? How do we share our impact and be able to share some of the data?

And not only for ourselves, so that if there are other ministries that are thinking about doing the same, we can give them the tools and tell them, hey, don't do this. We tried it. That's a mistake. And just, you know, lessons learned and be able to share with other ministries as well. with other ministries as well. We do not, in any sense, want to fight, you know, be territorial at all, whether it's in ministry, whether it's in, you know, service, we want to train people, we want, you know,

as many people to know Christ and want to train others to do the same. So it's important for us to mention that. Yeah. Do you work with a wide range of denominational churches or are you connected with one? What's the church scene in, just to give people a picture, like what kinds of churches are in your area in Kenya? There are so many churches and, you know, sort of like traditional Presbyterian, you have more charismatic and new churches. And so we work with everybody. And we're actually very deliberate because we want to be able to give them the right tools.

Because one of the things that we've been doing, for example, is as we train pastors, we do just a quick research and ask them some basic questions like, and ask them some basic questions like, do you believe if a child is born with disability that their parents sinned? Yes, no, maybe, maybe not. Do you think that children, parents and people that have somebody, you know, living with a disability in their home should be involved at church. Yes, no. And it's been very, very interesting because these are pastors, these are people that are leading churches, and sometimes they say, yeah, we believe that they're cursed.

We believe that they sin. They sin. We believe that, you know, they should not be involved in church. And then we take them through between three and five days of just, you know, trying to teach them about, you know, God's view. And then at the end of that, we give them the same questionnaire and see if, you know, we've changed their mindset and the way that, you know, they see things. And it's been very, very interesting just seeing the sort of almost 360 turnaround in a lot of these pastors. And these are pastors, so we want to be able to equip people that way. And so that has actually been very, very interesting as we gather that data. And then we sort of, that helps us streamline sort of our curriculum, what we teach them, what we say.

So that, again, we can engage as many people as possible, and then we feel comfortable and confident that they're going to a place that teaches a correct theology. So that view that somebody with a disability is cursed by God, that's inside the churches, in some churches you're saying. Wow. That is inside the God, that's inside the churches, in some churches you're saying, wow. Absolutely. That is inside the church, yes. So forget about the people in the villages who might not have education, but this is actually happening in the church. So most of your patients that come,

they're not coming from like a Christian background? Or what kind of religious, what's the common religion of the villages? I would, I would, is it Muslim or not? Not too much. It just depends on the country,

but a lot of that, it's, it's mixed. So we have people that, you know, Catholic Protestants, Muslims, some people that don't,

don't go to church and people that believe in the African belief systems, hospital in Niger, that comes over 90% Muslims. So, of course, over 90%, 95% of our patients will be Muslims. Yeah, and we also have particular interest in patients that come from Muslim backgrounds because we also want to teach our spiritual ministry staff and give them the tools to be able to share the gospel with people that come from such backgrounds. Because it's slightly different because they have interesting questions. So you say that Jesus is a son of God, so did God have a wife? How do you handle some of those? They know, they believe in Jesus, but Jesus was a prophet in the Islam religion.

So we say let's equip our people at the hospital to be able to understand all those issues. And then when a Muslim patient comes, they're able to interact with them in a way that they can relate and understand. In the more Muslim context, are you still seeing a good percentage of conversions to Christianity? Or is it, I would imagine it's more difficult, but. It's definitely more difficult because it's,

it's just not about that patient. You know, it's about the family and, and, and, and for them, it's the, some of them actually pay a huge price.

It's, then you become a Christian and your family disowns you. Then where do you go? And some actually do that. And, you know, we've seen mothers who tell us, look, I believe in Jesus. I have a husband. I come from a community. And so what I'll be is that I'll be a Christian in the closet. And we're like,

you know what? We accept that. We've told you the truth. Yeah. And we just help them be able to leave that. So it looks different. And so, and it's very challenging. I mean, how do you, you know, I mean, you also have to sympathize with that mother who thinks that, okay, if I go and declare to my village that I've become a Christian, where do I go? I have absolutely nowhere to go. I will have no family. I'll love nobody. I have no job. And, yes, so it's incredibly difficult.

And yet in some instances in some other countries, it's free. People give their life to Christ. They're excited. They go tell everybody in the village. So, yeah, so we just work with everybody based on where they're at. I wonder, how do I ask it? So sometimes Western missionaries to Arabic countries face the hurdle, so I've heard, of Christianity being a Western religion. And when white people go to Arabic countries, they have to really work hard to say, no, this isn't a conversion from your culture to a Western culture. This is Christianity, this isn't a conversion from, you know, your culture to a Western culture.

This is, you know, Christianity isn't a Western religion, you know. I would imagine that you probably don't face that hurdle as much, that it really is a religious conversion, not, or do people perceive, do Muslims in Africa perceive Christianity as still a Western religion or? I think it's a little bit of both. There are those that still believe that, you know, that's the white man's religion. Okay. But for those that, because of what we do, we're like, hey, this is your fellow countryman

who's telling you this. This is your fellow countryman who's, you know, changing your, doing your dress change. This is your fellow countryman who's putting you to sleep, giving you anesthesia, giving you drugs. This is your fellow countryman who's praying with you and feeding you. And so that definitely does help because then it helps to contextualize everything and say, look, yeah, here I am. Can you tell us what are some ways,

if somebody wants to be involved with Cure, what are some ways they can do? So we've already mentioned just donating money is a huge way that it could be an essential need in your ministry. So again, you can look at the CURE website, cure.org. And yeah, it's really easy. I was just on it, and it's really easy to do that. What are some other ways in which people can be involved? One of our core values is just our commitment to prayer

because we realize that what we do is incredibly difficult. And we understand that we sort of treat, but God heals. And I think just being able to pray for the work, being able to pray for the people who are in EJR, you know, being able to pray for the nurses, being able to pray for the patients, because we only share, but we believe that the Holy Spirit works in and through people. And so just praying that our ministry will be effective, I think that in itself is just huge. There are many other ways that you can get involved, whether it's sort of like your donations, like you said,

you can go to our website, see the different ways that you can plug in. We do get a lot of donated things like medical equipment, and whether it's beds or whether it's medication, that's huge as well. People also do volunteer, whether it's doctors, whether it's nurses, whether it's administrators, and so on. So, yeah, there's so many different ways that you can plug in and be a part of the ministry. And one of the interesting things is that you can even just go to the website and see the children that are at the hospital now and follow them, send them a prayer card and say, hey, we're praying for you, write them a letter.

And then, you know, we take that and read with them. So you can be a part of CURE. And, you know, whether you're, you know, involved financially or not, but just being able to know what's going on and telling as many people what we do. I think that's very important. That's a great, yeah. So even this podcast, obviously people are listening because they're listening. Share it on your social media sites and just spread the word. Yeah, I mean, getting the word out. It's always helpful. I know there's lots of ministries out there.

And I think people, from my understanding, like people in the West have huge hearts for developing countries that have multiple layers of needs that people in the West don't always experience, sometimes they're overwhelmed, I think, by there's so many ministries out there and they're not sure who to trust or what to get involved in. It's just kind of like you just kind of collapse under the pressure of it all. So yeah, that's why I think this kind of conversation is helpful so people can really hear the heart. One of the hospitals in Zambia, so it's just outside of town a little bit, and then you go up a hill,

and that hill is called Zanimone, which is local for Zambian, which actually literally means come and see. And a lot of times I use that phrase and just tell people just come and see. Come and see for yourself that phrase and just tell people, just come and see, come and see for yourself. You know, you can visit, you can go to any of our hospitals and experience what, what you experienced when you came and you can, um, you can be able to actually,

you know, just see what, uh, you sort of see on the website, but, uh, you know, actually experienced that when it's happening. And, uh, and, and I think that that's powerful. Just, just come and see. Yeah. Yeah. Visiting the patients was remarkable. And I probably, the thing I love the most is the, on the hallway, all the before and after pictures you have. Oh man, that's just, it was, it was mind blowing. It really was at my, it was all of our kids or my son, my son, after he visited the patient you described with the cleft foot, um, he went out into the car and just started bawling his eyes out. He was just so blown away at how, how happy that the kid was, um, and, and knowing what he went through and how still incredibly poor he was,

but how happy he was because he's like, but I'm healed, you know, and like see him kind of dance around and everything. It was touching. So Peter, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for the work you're doing. I almost feel bad that I kept you an hour from your very busy,

your overwhelmingly busy life. But yeah, many blessings to you and your family. My pleasure. Thank you so much. And thank you for listening. And God bless you. God bless you. overwhelmingly busy life but uh yeah many blessings to you and your family my pleasure thank you so much and thank you for listening and uh god bless you god bless you Music Music Music Music