Meet Gabriel Mahisu, for the past
almost 10 years now, Gabriel has been the Rural and Primary Health Director of
Nazarene Health Ministries. I have worked closer with Gabriel the past
year in the Admin office of Nazarene Health Ministries, as we have been a part of our Administrative Teams,
but this past week I got to see what he does when he isn’t in the office.
While I was seeing patients and
working with the staff, Gabriel was a maintenance man, a community relations
man, and an encourager of the staff. He was fixing water pumps, lawn
mowers, figuring out a way to connect gas to the stove, sharpening tools, and more.
He spent hours standing talking to the community about various issues
that have come up over the past year, and working with them to come up with
solutions to the problems. He oversees our 6 health centers, but doesn’t
live or work at them regularly, so when he has a chance to visit them, he
maximizes his time, doing all that he can.
He tries to get to the Health Centers
once a year, but it doesn’t always happen, most often due to budget
constraints. It is pretty expensive just to get to all the Health
Centers, which are scattered throughout PNG, many in very remote areas, only
accessed via MAF plane. It is even more expensive to send in supplies to
these facilities to keep them stocked or help to repair things when they are
broken. Despite the budgetary constraints, he makes it work. We
have 6 health centers which are up and running and seeing many many patients
each day, serving those who otherwise would have no access to healthcare.
We also have 4 more health centers in the works, trying to get them
registered and funded and established to continue to help patients be cared
for, and the gospel of Christ to go out.
If you would like to learn more about RHS, and the work that they
do, you can go here.