Dear Friend,

I hope you got my email a few days ago thanking you all for helping us get a Land Cruiser for our work in South Sudan. The new program in the Renk region has gotten off to a great start, but there have been many villages that our trainers couldn’t get to for lack of a solid, 4-wheel drive. Can you imagine trying to drive your car on the “road” in the picture here? I took it during my most recent trip to DR Congo, one of the eight countries where we work.

Having a vehicle that can get through difficult situations is personal for me. When I lived in Africa for almost five years, we had challenges nearly every day with transportation. One time we had to get out and walk across logs to get to a remote village. Another time our car was able to save a life.

We were driving on a dirt road, and a man ran out in front of us, waving his hands wildly to stop us. He was putting his own life at stake for a good reason. We hopped out, and at his request, we went into his one-room, thatched-roof hut. On the dirt floor his wife was lying on a mat, holding a screaming newborn, still connected by the umbilical cord. She had just delivered the first of two twins, but then her labor stopped. They didn’t know what to do, but they knew the second baby might die.

We grabbed the mother and the baby, and we loaded them into the back of our Land Cruiser. During the next 45 minutes (which seemed like hours), I drove so fast on those dirt roads that some of our staff hit their heads on the top of the car.

We arrived at a hospital, but on that Sunday afternoon, there were no staff available with keys to get to the supplies. No forceps, no latex vacuum extractor, no Pitocin to re-start the labor. Fortunately, there was a vintage extractor from the 60’s on the counter. The old vacuum unit—which looked like a basketball pump—hadn’t been used in years, so the plunger was so dry that it no longer made a vacuum. I was grateful that it was easy to take apart and had plenty of extra grease inside. So in less than five minutes, the extractor was back in operation and the second twin was out, screaming a healthy new baby’s cry.

If we hadn’t had our Land Cruiser that day, the second baby would almost certainly have been still-born.

Thanks be to God for everyone who, in your generosity, give the gift of life-saving transportation.

With heartfelt gratitude,