Today, the Tenwek Community Health and Development (TCHD) program little resembles the original program begun 40 years ago. That is a good thing! The goals of the program haven’t changed, but the strategies certainly have evolved.

When we decided to attempt a public health campaign for pediatric pedestrian safety, we opted for an emphasis on community and solidarity, believing these cultural values were more likely to anchor the message beyond one cycle of road traffic accidents.

Just months before the end of our four-year term in Nepal, a young mother died at our hospital. Though our staff did nothing wrong and worked tirelessly to save her, those local leaders took advantage of the situation to foment hostility. Before we knew it, a volatile, angry mob was at our door, making demands and threats.

I am a family medicine physician three years out of residency seeking to rejoice in what I am suffering for the sake of His body. I live with my husband and our three young children, with a fourth on the way, in a Central Asian country run by a terrorist group very much in need of the gospel.

The hospital lacked a blood bank, providing only refrigeration for limited-time storage in sterile glass bottles with rubber stoppers. The nearest blood bank, a three-hour round trip bus ride away, was too prolonged for emergency transfusions. Relatives routinely refused to be donors. They developed mysterious illnesses, or denied family affiliation, or simply ran away.