To all of our family and friends who love and encourage us so well, we hope this update finds you well. We are very thankful for all of you around the world who support us in so many different ways and allow us to continue being part of the ministry here in Togo. We want to wish you a Merry Christmas and happy new year! We aren't sending Christmas cards this year, but we did have a chance to update our family picture this past summer during our time in the US.
Our time stateside was a great encouragement, seeing many of you and our family. The three months passed extremely quickly. One highlight was catching up with some of our supporting churches, and in particular our sending church UBC in Beavercreek, Ohio. We were able to work with them on planning a team who will be coming here in January 2023! We hope this will be the first of many, and that some of our other supporting churches might also come and be a part of the ministry here in the future.
In addition to the team coming in January we have many things happening here in the next few months. In just a few days, we will be welcoming Bryce's sister Aimee and her family and are greatly look forward to celebrating Christmas and New Years with them here in Togo. Another great excitement and long awaited answer to pray is that our PAACS program (5 years of surgical training and discipleship) will officially begin on January 1st. Our first two surgical residents will arrive in Togo a few days after Christmas. We are waiting with great anticipation for this opportunity to invest in the lives of these young men and women. This year we selected two residents. One of our residents Yannick did his medical school in Congo. He is recently married. His wife is completing her medical school education in the Congo and then plans to him here in Togo.
Our second resident for 2023 is Sweni. He is coming from Cameroon where he did all of his medical training in English. Since Cameroon is a bilingual country he also speaks French.
We would really appreciate your continued prayers for this program. It has great potential, but it is also a large undertaking. We pray that God blesses and uses this program to accomplish great things for His glory.
We would like to highlight a special opportunity for giving for those looking to make an end of year gift. We are starting a surgical benevolence fund for cases that could be helped by a surgery that we cannot perform here in Togo. My first year in Togo, I (Bryce) met a young women that had a very advanced mass extending from her mandible. It was very difficult telling her there was nothing we could do. At the time, I believed this was likely a malignant tumor of the bone. Over time, I've learned that some of these masses are a benign tumor, called Ameloblastoma, that is very destructive. These occur in the US as well, but are normally caught early, and can be resected completely prior to invading the mandible (jaw bone). Here in Togo with limited dental care, these masses are often not caught until they have invaded the mandible and are quite large. Here are example pictures of two of our patients below.
The first picture, was a young female (Nafi..). We were able to help her this past year by resecting the mass because it hadn't yet crossed over the midline. The second picture shows one of our patients who we were not able to resect, because it had clearly crossed over to the other side. If we do a resection without reconstructing with bone from either the ribs or often the fibula, these patients would have a loss of the facial contour and difficulty eating, swallowing, and talking for life. It's referred to as a "Gump" deformity, and it can be pretty severe. I originally learned about the treatment of these tumors in 2018 from a surgeon named Dr. Peterson. He is an ENT that has worked at multiple missions hospitals. He has since gone back and done training, so that he can do free flap reconstruction with Fibula from the leg. It requires doing a microvascular anastomoses (connection) of a vessel from the leg to a vessel in the neck. He is currently working at a missions hospital in Kenya called Kijabe hospital.
Nafi recently came back to see me again in clinic, and we realized the tumor had come back. Unfortunately, it was more advanced than we realized initially, and has returned now crossing the midline. We reached out to Dr. Petterson and he has agreed to care for her there in Kijabe. However, there are many logistics to be worked out, like getting her a passport, plane ticket to Kenya and then transport to the missions station. She also doesn't speak English or even a lot of French, which will make things a bit challenging. Our family was already scheduled to attend a conference for the PAACS residents in February of this year, and the conference center is less than an hour from the missions hospital. We are hoping to take Nafi with us when we go.
Nafi is 24 years old and has a young child who is 2. When I told her we couldn't resect the recurrence here at our hospital, as you can probably imagine, she was heartbroken. However, she was overjoyed when we told her of this opportunity in Kenya. If you would be interested in giving to help with the expenses it will take for Nafi to get to Kenya and back, as well as some of her surgical expenses, Click the blue
giving link here if you would like to give and help make this possible. We are excited to see what God is going to do through all of this. We are also hopeful that this might be an opportunity for others, like the second young man pictured above, to receive the same needed surgery that is not available anywhere in this area.
Prayer Requests
Our Family: Please pray for our families physical health as we have been battling multiple illnesses these past few months, maybe like some of you stateside. Also pray for stamina for us, as these next few months will bring a multitude of challenges and changes.
Our Team: Please pray also for our team, which has also experience many changes like a new team leader. Pray also for us to grow in unity with the addition of several new teammates. Within our surgical team we have some African surgeons trained by PAACS at other sites who are considering joining us in the work here. Please pray for them as they are processing where God would have them serve.
Surgery: Please pray for our PAACS surgery program that starts in a few weeks. There is still a lot of prep and details to be worked out. We pray that God would be at work and glorified in this training program. Please also pray with us for Nafi, that her surgery would be possible and successful. Also pray for her to to see and understand the love of Christ.
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