Methodist Mission in Kenya, Africa

Valley View UMC is a Covenant Supporting church for Bill and Jerri Savuto, who are missionaries working in Maua, Kenya at the Maua Methodist Hospital.

Below are links to copies of their previous letters to the churches/people who support them.

15 November 2008

Dear Friends and Family,

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Looking back over 2008, this has been an amazing year with so many reasons to be thankful. I hope as you look back over 2008 you too will be filled with awe and deep gratitude. This is a list of those blessings that I can remember.

1. In September Maua Methodist Hospital won the NNAK Lievens Lankman Award for the Best Nursing Care and Cleanest mission or private hospital in the country. That had us competing against Nairobi Hospital and Aga Khan Hospital, both large, private hospitals in Nairobi with all services provided and priced much like the US. They are also considered to be the best hospitals in the nation. (You may remember we charge approximately $150 - $200 for a 7-day stay).
2. The hospitals rebate from the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) increased from 1800/= ($24) to 2100/= ($28) a day due to the increased quality of the hospital. 2200/= is the highest rebate we can receive in our hospital category.
3. We are so grateful to many of you who have given to the Service Fund and allowed the hospital to continue to pay for the life saving medical care of our critically ill poor patients. Without you that would be impossible.
4. We have had physicians/dentists who have come for 1 – 3 months to help us continue to provide our excellent care: Dr. Sarson, a surgeon from GB; Dr. Stan Topple an orthopedic surgeon from the US has come twice; ENT surgeons from Sweden who come for a week every year. Terry and Sabrina Butler are presently here from Round Rock, TX. They are both dentists and were coming for two weeks until they heard our dentist had died and then they extended their time and are here for three months with their nurse daughter, Blake. We also have Maria, a pharmacist from Germany who is helping us for 3 months as she does yearly and a German volunteer, Tianna, who is working for the Disabled Program for 6 months.
5. We had three very brave teams, that despite the violence in the early part of 2008 in Kenya, dared to come and brought us important and needed medical supplies, money for building, and workers to help us build. Best of all they brought MMH and the community hope – hope that we are not alone in our struggles but there are people willing to give up their comfort and travel 8000 miles to express their love in action and support us. They built a new NHIF Office, a minor theatre in our Outpatient Department, and refurbished our laundry drying area. We also had a Bush Clinic which provides free care for a village, and VBS for the children at St. Joseph’s Methodist Church. Each team brought us one or two doctors who provided wonderful education, supplies and equipment and expertise.
6. We had friends and family visit us this year in Maua and they made a big difference here in what they brought us, left us and have sent us.
7. We have received so many incredible gifts this year: funds to start our four story staff apartment building; a brand new industrial sized washing machine; 50 used computers and a server; and 71 new Nursing books from Pearson Education/Prentice Hall.
8. We have a promise of funds to pay for the BSN Degree of my replacement and to help fund the superstructure of the next floor of our staff apartments.
9. Our Giving Hope program just keeps on growing and bringing hope and life to so many young men and women in our area. We have also been able to increase the number of AIDS Orphans we are helping with food and education. Thanks to all of you who gave to the AIDS Orphan’s programme. We also built 6 AIDS Orphans homes.
10. We have a new Medical Officer In-charge, Dr. Inoti, who is the answer to our prayers and an Eye Surgeon who has a dream of making MMH the eye center for Eastern Kenya.
11. Koome, the baby boy that was abandoned at the hospital and stayed one year in our nursery was placed in an SOS home and is doing very well.
12. The Strategic Plan is almost finished!!! and is being used in our budget preparation right now!
13. The Methodist Church in Kenya opened their amazing new Conference Center in Nairobi.
14. Our church, St. Joseph’s Methodist Church, moved into its new children’s Sunday School class. This coming January, St. Joseph’s is starting a pre-school using that classroom.
15. Though it may be a bit premature, we had asked in my last email for prayers for rain. The very next day it started raining and hasn’t missed one day since then. Everybody is so excited because it looks like we may have a good rainy season and thus good crops that will feed our people.
16. God continues to bring the most amazing people, events and opportunities into our lives, like Linnet who lost both arms and had 25 cuts all over her body from panga wounds when her husband tried to kill her. (In 2009 you will be hearing much more about Linnet).

“I will sing of God’s love for ever” echoes the feelings in my heart for this year. Have a blessed Thanksgiving Day! May God’s hope and thanksgiving overflow from your lives and infect many others with His love!

This past Saturday, 8 November, the mission partners took the 5 volunteers and a Danish medical student to Meru Park for the day. Bill and I had never been to the park during the rainy season as it was never possible before this. We had never seen the park so green or the rivers so high. It was a great day though we saw very few animals. We did see a creature I had never seen nor even heard of until I saw the movie, “Ice Age”. No we didn’t see a dinosaur but a ‘dung beetle’. Actually we saw several and all were pushing dung.

In case you have never seen a dung beetle, it selects a section of dung (at Meru Park the dung selection is quite good!) and takes a piece of dung and begins to roll it with its back feet. I watched one roll a large piece of dung across the road and up a hill and it took only seconds. The hill caused some difficulty but this beetle’s perseverance was amazing and he succeeded and then disappeared in a hole I had watched him dig.

Dung beetle pushing his dung ball	Industrious dung beetle pushing the dung up hill

Shortly after seeing this very ambitions beetle, I watched two dung beetles fight over a dung ball. I found this particularly surprising since they were not 3 feet away from a huge pile of dung. They fought for sometime, with one beetle pretending he was giving up only to return to fight as soon as the other one turned his back to push the dung ball.

The large pile of dung and a dung beetle pushing it	until another beetle came to fight him

Fighting over dung sounds preposterous to us and yet have you ever seen sale shoppers fighting over that perfect purse or article of clothing? Have you ever bought anything because it was on sale and though you knew you couldn’t use it, it was just too good a deal to pass up? Have you ever left an all you can eat restaurant so full you could hardly breathe and you suffered all night? Do you spend all day Saturday taking care of your precious things and so much money insuring them? Can we make decisions about when enough is enough or do we just pay a monthly fee to store our goods or buy a bigger house rather than share with those who have very little. St. Jerome said, “Everything in nature has a size which it cannot exceed except for greed. There is no limit to greed!” (I can use the above examples because I’ve done them all.) I have such a hard time letting go of stuff and yet daily I can see that having less stuff is not a negative but a positive. It gives a person more freedom and joy, less worry, less responsibility, less up-keep and maintenance and much more time and money to care about others. The ball I’m rolling up hill may not be dung but in the light of eternity it is probably of less value than dung. (Elephant dung in our area is full of seeds and produces bushes and trees galore a great gift to any land that has lots of elephants!)

In the last several months Bill and I have made trips with our Administrator, Mr. Munga’thia looking at incinerators. Our hospital is desperate for a new incinerator and it is an absolute must. We had been especially interested in an incinerator that was built in Kenya. However, in our travels we have realized that those incinerators do not last and are not functioning appropriately. Actually, the last one we saw at a large government hospital wasn’t functioning at all as an incinerator. We saw two incinerators that were great. One was Italian and brought to a small Catholic Hospital by a donor. The other was a gift to the Provincial Blood Bank by USAID. However, they cost between 3.1 million Kenya shillings ($41,300) and 4.8 million Kenya shillings ($64,000). We have been looking for funds all this year and have about 1 million shillings ($13,000). I know this is a huge amount but just in case you have some extra funds I wanted you to know one of our most urgent needs.

Have a great Thanksgiving and remember to count your blessings?

In His grip,

Jerri & Bill Savuto
savuto@maf.or.ke
Maua Methodist Hospital
Box 63, Maua 60600
Igembe, Kenya

"The unthankful heart - discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!" Henry Ward Beecher

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