The people of Zimbabwe were the inspiration for the foundation of PAPA Missions.  When the founder of PAPA Missions visited Karanda Mission Hospital with his family in the summer of 1999, he found a place of hope and rest for the suffering of Zimbabwe.  Karanda Mission Hospital is a 150 bed hospital in rural Zimbabwe that served thousands of patients every year.  It's two full-time surgeons are a father and son team that welcome any help they can get from traveling physicians who are willing to take call or see a patient.  The hospital, while well established and permanent, is undersupplied and often in need of the most basic medical necessities.  PAPA Missions has made it our goal to help Karanda by sending medical equipment, medications, and non-durable medical supplies that keep the hospital running.  PAPA also sends at least one of physicians and other volunteers to serve at Karanda every year.  

For almost ten years, the founders of PAPA Missions have been traveling to Karanda Mission Hospital in Zimbabwe.  The 2008 trip was a huge success.  The eight team members served the hospital by sorting medications and organizing storage, building a concrete platform that will hold containers when they arrive at Karanda, and taking call for the exhausted physicians who work there year round.  PAPA also delivered a crate of anesthesia gas (isoflorene) worth $8000 that will allow surgical operations to continue. 

While it was a blessing to be able to give aid in these ways, we find year after year that we are the recipients of blessings beyond our expectation.  This is a time of great suffereing in Zimbabwe, with inflation rates at two-million percent, unemployment close to ninety percent, and the prices of food staples our of reach for even those who are well-employed.  Many Zimbabweans live in contant fear of being dragged from their homes in the night to be tortured or killed because of their political leanings.  The hospital is full of people who have injuries too grotesque to speak of here.

But in the midst of this suffering, we find once again that Christ remains as all joy and hope for Zimbabwean Christians, who are a source of hope to all in this dark place.  When asked if he was afraid, one man said to me, "we want to fear God, and not man."  We are enxouraged by the strength of these people who press on, trusting God as their only sustenance.  Because of the hope they see in Christians, those who do not know Christ are anxious to have the hope that comes from the Good News - it may be the only good news to which they can cling.