A Heart to Serve Read online

  Samaritan’s Purse had established a reputation of integrity as a humanitarian, Christian relief organization, so Kenny Isaacs and his team were asked to consider providing medical help to the region. They began working in Lui in late 1997, just months before our surgical mission team landed. By that time, the village’s population barely topped 250 people. There was no commerce, no stores—just a church, the abandoned hospital, and the deserted schoolhouse.

  Samaritan’s Purse transported metal sheets all the way from Nairobi, Kenya, to make a new roof for the school. Inside, they set up an examining room and a makeshift operating area and cordoned off a couple of wards, crowded with about twenty beds—all this in what had been a two-room schoolhouse.

  After a lot of grunt work, the facility was finally ready for patients. But the people were still scattered in the bush. Nevertheless, as soon as Samaritan’s Purse brought in a surgeon, word traveled quickly, and people began to come out of the bush. When a family brought a sick relative, they quickly threw up a tukul—a mud-walled, thatched-roof hut—to stay in. By the time we arrived, the tukuls surrounded the abandoned school, and Samaritan’s Purse had put up a fence made of cane, sticks, tree limbs, and twigs to define the hospital compound.

  Our hosts led us to the tukuls where we would be staying. We noted the sign posted above the entrance gate: “No spears, daggers, guns.” Pulling aside the cloth that served as a door, I ducked inside the tukul and glanced around. It was a space about ten feet in diameter, with a mat on the hardened ground and a fire pit in the center in case the weather turned cool at night, as it often does under the clear African skies. I dropped my backpack and headed immediately to the hospital. Dick, David Charles, and I were curious to see the place we’d be working for the next week.

  We were walking toward the schoolhouse when somebody called out, “Stop! Don’t move!”

  We froze as the voice continued to call out. “Stay on the path! There are landmines everywhere.”

  One of the Sudanese staff members walked up to us and deliberately explained, “If you hear an airplane, run for the outcropping of rocks over there,” pointing behind the building. “Or dive into one of the bomb shelters you see dug in the ground near the tukuls,” he pointed. The “bomb shelter” was nothing more than a pit, five feet deep and three feet wide. “Seek cover immediately,” our host said. “Our protectors don’t have any planes, so if you hear one, you can be fairly sure it is not a friend. The bombers usually loop around the hospital, getting their marks, and then it takes about two minutes for them to circle back to drop their bombs. So you have two minutes to reach safety—no more! But whatever you do,” he added, “stay on the path! Landmines can be anywhere. We’ve had many people killed and a number of people badly maimed by shrapnel.”

  Dick, David, and I proceeded, walking gingerly toward the hospital, our eyes now glued to the narrow, well-worn dirt path. Once inside the schoolhouse, with the old, large black chalkboards still hanging on the far wall, we met with the Samaritan’s Purse doctor at the hospital, who informed us about several of the patients on whom he wanted us to operate the following morning. As I listened to the doctor present the patients to us in the dark room (of course, there was no electricity), I wondered how in the world we would be able to operate in these primitive conditions. There was no anesthesiologist, no trained nurse, no electricity (except what we could produce with the small generator we’d brought with us), no array of surgical instruments to choose from, no gloves or gowns. It was a long way from the modern facilities I’d grown accustomed to at hospitals like Boston’s Mass General or Nashville’s Vanderbilt.

  And then there were the cases. I was trained as a general surgeon and specialized further in chest and heart surgery. But the cases being described were way beyond what I’d read about in my modern surgical books—pathologies that I didn’t think could exist in the twenty-first century. But they do, not just in Sudan, but all over the developing world.

  That night, as I lay my head on the mat in the tukul, searching for some much-needed sleep, I thought, This is going way beyond anything I have ever done. Talk about being out of my comfort zone.

  The following morning, I awakened long before dawn. Dick and I took a run, being careful to stay on the beaten paths. Then I took a cold shower under a bucket tied to a tree before heading over to the hospital. At the makeshift operating room, we boiled some water in a tin coffee pot, then let it cool enough to wash our hands with a bar of soap, trying to maintain as sterile an operating environment as possible. With no electricity or running water, and with windows open to counter the sweltering heat, the buzz of mosquitoes in our ears, and occasional animals wandering by just outside the room in which we were operating, true sanitation was simply not possible, but we did our best.

  We had no shortage of patients, not just from the surrounding bush but from all over southern Sudan. Word spread fast that you could be cured in Lui by some American doctors. Patients arrived with diseases and medical conditions that had been neglected for years, as well as with newfound hope for treatment and possible cures. The clinic built trust.

  A typical case we encountered was a man with a massive hydrocele—a testicular mass as large as a football. The young man could not work in the fields or even walk without the aid of a wheelbarrow-type contraption that he’d made to carry the mass as he stumbled along. You simply don’t see that sort of extreme pathology in America, but such cases were not at all unusual in Africa. We worked for several hours to remove the mass and fix the hydrocele, allowing the young man to function normally, work in the fields, and provide for his family once again.

  As Dick and I were operating, the assistant who’d helped prepare the patient for surgery told us of her seventeen-year-old son who had died because of an obstruction in his intestines due to a hernia of the abdominal wall. No treatment for the boy’s malady had been available anywhere in the region. We soon learned that throughout southern Sudan, especially among certain tribes, there seemed to be a congenital weakness of the abdominal wall that led to a proliferation of inguinal, or groin, hernias. Incarceration of these hernias, whereby intestines get trapped in the narrow opening of the hernia and lose their blood supply, was the leading cause of non-war-related deaths among young Sudanese males. A hernia repair is one of the simplest operations I know—yet such basic life-saving medical treatments were largely unavailable here.

  We operated in the tiny schoolroom all day alongside the local Sudanese assistants who were learning the procedures. We were astonished by their indefatigable energy. When the sun went down, we worked by flashlight. One person held a pair of flashlights over the patient while the rest of us hurried to complete the operation before the batteries went dead.

  Such was the week: long days of work followed by quiet nights around the outdoor dinner table, talking with the faith-based mission team who provided support for the clinic—an amazing group from around America who were spending their lives in service to others.

  During our last case on our final day before departure, a message came to the operating theater that a patient in the recovery room wanted to see “the American doctor.” By that time, all I wanted to do was to go back to my tukul, wash up, tumble onto the mat, and fall asleep. But I couldn’t refuse this last request. Dick, David, and I walked next door to the one-room hut that we were using as a recovery room. In the darkness, I could vaguely make out the silhouette of a man lying on a bed in the corner. Drawing closer, I saw white bandages covering the stump of what had been his left leg; a similar dressing covered his right hand.

  But what drew my attention was not the man’s injuries, but his bright smile, a smile that, even in the darkness, seemed to illuminate the man’s dark brown face. I noticed a Bible beside his bed, not an unusual sight at a Samaritan’s Purse clinic. I leaned over, put my hand on the man’s shoulder, and through an interpreter, I asked why he wanted to see the American doctor.

  The man told me his story. Two years earlier, his wife an
d children had been murdered during the war. Even as he spoke of the atrocity, he continued to smile, and his eyes remained bright. I nodded as I listened, my own heart breaking at the thought of losing my wife, Karyn, and our three boys in a senseless, seemingly endless war. I knew there was no way I would be smiling.

  “Then eight days ago,” he said, “I stepped on a landmine. I lost my leg and my fingers.” He raised his hand slightly, so I could see that most of his hand was gone. And yet he continued to smile.

  I nodded again, trying desperately to understand. I listened as he told how he had been brought to the hospital at Lui from about twenty kilometers away, and how the American doctor had saved his life.

  Finally, I couldn’t resist the obvious question. “Why are you smiling?” I asked. “Or should I say, how can you possibly be smiling?”

  “Two reasons,” he said through the interpreter. “One, because you come to us in the spirit of Jesus. And two, because you are an American doctor.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  The man rose up on the bed as best he could on his mutilated limbs and uttered words that would remain indelibly impressed in my heart. “Everything I have lost,” he said, his eyes bright in the darkness, “my family, my leg, my hand—will be worth the sacrifice if my people can someday have what you have…in America.” He paused, then spoke as if uttering a prayer: “Freedom. Freedom to live and worship as we please. The freedom that America represents.”

  I swallowed hard. I looked up at Dick and David, and I could tell that they, too, had been moved by the man’s statement about the values that so strongly characterize the United States.

  Over the years, I’ve been back to Africa many times. I’ve made medical mission trips to the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, and Mozambique. I’ve never seen that man again, and I probably never will. But I’ve never forgotten his smile and his heart.

  Moreover, in recent years, I have become increasingly convinced that medicine can truly be a currency for peace in our world—a way for America to reach out in friendship and compassion, creating lasting partnerships with people on every continent. Looking back, the awareness of that truth may have begun in that dark room, fostered by a man who had lost nearly everything but his faith in God and his hope for freedom.

  Long after Dick, David, and I boarded a plane and flew back to America, Samaritan’s Purse continued working in Lui. I would go back there regularly every year or two on mission trips to do surgery. In 1999, the hospital moved from the schoolhouse back over to the original hospital, the area around it finally cleared of mines. And then, after locals could fully assume all of the responsibilities of running and staffing the hospital—ten years after our original trip—Samaritan’s Purse transferred control of the hospital to the local community.

  That first trip to the Sudan opened doors of personal and spiritual growth for me. I’ve discovered that serving other people who have no means to pay you back is addictive in a strange, almost incomprehensible way. I’ve also made a point of bringing one of my three sons each time I go to Africa. I want them to see the raw humanity, the resilience of the human spirit, the poverty, the squalor, and the disease up close, firsthand—so they’ll understand how much we Americans take for granted, and, more important, so their hearts will be moved with compassion and recognition of the joy one gets in serving others.

  Several years later, Franklin Graham met personally with Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir. “Mr. President, as you know, Samaritan’s Purse has been helping the people of Sudan in many ways,” Franklin reminded him, “not the least of which is the hospital in Lui.”

  Al-Bashir looked at his aides and caustically asked, “Didn’t we bomb that hospital?” The president and his aides burst out laughing.

  Franklin’s response was ready. “Yes, Mr. President, you did,” he said. “But Mr. President…you missed!”

  In fact, after my first trip, the area around the hospital was bombed seven more times, and many lives were lost and much property was destroyed, but the local survivors—with the help of Samaritan’s Purse—made repairs and carried on. And as the hospital grew, so did the community.

  Over time, the village of Lui has grown to more than fifty thousand permanent residents. Samaritan’s Purse constructed a new ward in the hospital, a tuberculosis treatment facility a few kilometers away, a chapel, a nursing school (the first in southern Sudan), and an extremely active outpatient treatment center—an open-air, thatched-roof sort of veranda that is constantly crowded with patients. They drilled three wells to ensure the supply of clean water. By 2009, the hospital had expanded from a twenty-bed facility to nearly one hundred beds.

  Today, the hospital at Lui is one of the best-equipped medical facilities in southern Sudan; almost three thousand patients from all over southern Sudan are cared for every month at the facility. Each month, more than a hundred patients have their tumors taken out, burns excised, spears removed, bones set, and hernias repaired in one of the two operating room theaters. In the process, Samaritan’s Purse has trained local men and women in management and the prevention of HIV/AIDS, as well as modeling compassionate care for those already afflicted. Interestingly, except for tribal conflicts, the fighting in that area has stopped. Medicine breeds understanding, hope, and peace.

  When we first started going to Lui, no market or commercial activity existed there. Then, as the hospital proved that it was in Lui to stay, families set up a few tables in front of the facility, from which they sold a bit of tobacco or maize. Sometimes, patients’ family members conducted their business outside the hospital as they waited for their loved ones to recover. Over time, the few tables increased to more than twenty. The following year when we returned, I noticed people at a series of stalls selling not just maize and tobacco, but produce as well as homemade apparel and sandals. Eventually, the local merchants expanded to peddle many other items. It was a return to civilization, to commerce, and to normal, hopeful living. And it all began with a dream and a deserted schoolhouse.

  I’m convinced that the growth in Lui is a model of what can be done to build trust on a larger scale around the world when medicine is used as a currency for peace. Since this trip to Lui, I have made annual medical mission trips to the developing world. I go as a doctor…as a volunteer. I don’t go with security. I don’t go with press. I’ve had the opportunity of operating on the complications of tuberculosis in Mozambique, treating patients for extreme dehydration in a cholera hospital in Bangladesh, giving vaccinations to children in Darfur, and repairing life-threatening hernias in southern Sudan. And in Botswana and South Africa, I witnessed how a single virus HIV could hollow out society—an observation that I would soon take directly to the floor of the U.S. Senate and to the president of the United States. In the Congo and in Sudan I’ve learned a useful lesson: People don’t usually go to war against people who helped save their children. While the world often sees America’s tougher side—our military might and our economic prowess—when people around the world see America’s more compassionate, humanitarian side, the barriers come down, and peace becomes possible.

  America’s humanitarianism and the innumerable volunteers from organizations like Samaritan’s Purse rarely make the headlines or the evening news. Yet this is one of those things that makes America great—the fact that we are a country filled with people who care for those who are less fortunate, people who will give of themselves not only monetarily, but with their very lives, people who actively demonstrate a heart to serve.

  2

  A Legacy of Caring

  Everyone is shaped by their family, and I suspect that in my case, it’s truer than in most. So to help understand what makes the Frist family tick, let me take you back to Meridian, Mississippi, a railroad town of about fifteen thousand residents, where in 1914 my grandfather, Jake Frist, was the stationmaster at the local railroad yard.

  Around 1906, my grandparents, Jacob and Jennie Frist, had moved from Tennessee to Meridian, locat
ed midway down the state, fifteen miles west of the Alabama line. Grandfather—an average but likable fellow, ambitious, and industrious—had struggled to work his way up from conductor to become the new stationmaster for the New Orleans & North Eastern Railroad.

  February 3, 1914, dawned cold and overcast, but typical of most busy winter days at the Meridian terminal. By 2:45 in the afternoon, boxcars and passenger cars from earlier runs had backed up on tracks one and two, where they sat waiting to be connected to other trains. Shortly before 3:00 P.M., an Alabama Great Southern passenger train clamored into the station on track four. Grandfather realized that track three, the track in between the idle cars and the Great Southern train, was obscured from the view of people leaving the station waiting rooms. He walked out to the platform between tracks three and four to keep an eye on the main concourse, where the Great Southern train was now boarding. While he was standing there, he heard the whistle of the Mobile & Ohio, bound for St. Louis, approaching the station on track three.

  Grandfather headed up the platform to warn those passengers walking in both directions along the boardwalk about the incoming train. That was when he realized the Mobile & Ohio was coming in fast, too fast, possibly as much as eighteen to twenty miles per hour, a fine cruising speed, but far too fast for entering the train station. Worse yet, Grandfather knew that the passengers streaming out of the waiting rooms had not seen it—and could not see it because of the train blocking their view—or heard it above the noise of the other trains already in front of the station. He broke into a run alongside the incoming train, shouting ahead and waving at the crowd to clear the track. Most of the waiting passengers noticed him and stepped back—all except one, an elderly woman carrying a baby bundled in her arms.