Our hospital is in the middle of the country of Papua New Guinea - so we get people who travel a long way to come to us. Some come to us because we are "their hospital", even though it may take them 2 days to walk to us, others come, because of our reputation and want to see if we can help them. Recently, we have had a number of folks who have come out of the "bush" to see us. We had a young girl who had swelling of her abdomen, legs and face and was found to have renal failure. After trying multiple attempts to help her, nothing seemed to be working and she was getting worse and so the family asked if they could take her home.
We had a middle aged man who came who was found to be anemic and we gave him blood, but he also had renal failure and despite our efforts, he passed away.
I saw another middle aged man this week who came with a history of seizures. It took him 3 days to walk to us. He came because he is still having seizures and he wanted to know if we could stop them. Unfortunately, I can't, and so I asked him where his closest Health Center is that he could keep getting medicines from and he said 1-2 days. I did my best to explain that he really needs to take medicine each day, and that I would give him as much as I could (6 months in this case), but then he is going to need to walk to that health center as the supply is finishing to get more.
These patients come hoping for help and may spend a lot of time and money to get to us, and often we can't help them physically - it is either too late or there is just nothing we can do. I don't know exactly what they are coming for, I don't know what their definition of "help" is. To some it might be actual physical healing, to some it might be just hearing what the nurse or doctor says to know what they are dealing with. I know at times it might be discouraging to them or to us, if we are only looking at how well we help based on physical improvement, but I am thankful that we are able to offer more. There are many times when physical improvement isn't going to happen, and I hope they are helped by knowing they are loved by us and the the Lord, as that is the best help we can give them. 
