October 2024 News

Often times, the days and months here seem to go by quite quickly.  This has been true for us the past few months.  The Lord continues to open doors for us to enter into the lives of people from many different backgrounds, cultures, and languages through their diverse medical needs.  Each of us has a story, that God is writing.  It really is a privilege to be trusted to walk with patients through some of the difficult times in their lives/stories and to be a part of how God is working in their lives.  It's also amazing to see healing through compassionate medical care, that allows them to change the focus of their life from these huge medical needs that have consumed significant amounts of time, money and worry.  Some of these needs we can treat, but others require a higher level of care not available at the Hospital of Hope or at other hospitals here in Togo.  However through relationships with other medical missionaries whose missions hospitals have greater resources, we have been able to get the medical care needed outside of Togo.  This is the case for the first two stories, we would like to share with you.

We mentioned a young female, Afi, in our last post who would be going to Kenya for resection of a large mandible tumor and facial reconstruction.  Her procedure was more complicated than Nafi, so she required a bit more time in Kenya than expected.  It's never a sure thing that a surgery will be successful, especially when there is a free flap which is dependent on blood supply coming from a small blood vessel that was sewn together.  We are very thankful for the ability to partner with the team at Kijabe Hospital to be able to help our patients access this level of care.  Afi had been looking for medical care for almost 10 years in multiple countries.  While walking with her through this surgery over the past 4 months, Natasha and I and other colleagues have had great opportunities to help her in various ways and share Biblical truths.  She stayed here in Mango for an additional 2 1/2 months due to an infection, and during that time she attended a Bible study with Natasha and some other women in our home and heard truth on many ocassions.  She returned home just a few weeks ago with a wonderful cosmetic result and a new lease on life.  She now has the opportunity to move beyond this health problem that had been the focus of much of her life and energy over the past several years.  Please pray with us for her as she is at a major crossroads.  She has already been able to be share with various friends and family about the great physical change that she has undergone, which is immediately visible upon seeing her, and we pray for her heart as well. Please pray with us for the head knowledge of salvation through Jesus alone to become heart knowledge. 

 

We also ask for your prayers for a young boy named Abou. He recently made the trip to Kenya with one of our teammates to receive further care for a severe esophageal burn caused from drinking lye a strong base.  Since his esophagus is completely closed, he has been receiving food through a g-tube for the past year.  At the same time, some of his saliva has been going into his lungs causing recurrent pnemonia.  When he arrived in Kenya after the flight, his saturations were dangerously low due to pneumonia.  They are hoping to perform his surgery in the next few weeks at Bethany children's hospital which is located next to Kijabe Hospital.  Please be praying with us for Abou, Katelyn, and the team at Bethany children's.  Pray for wisdom as the team there as they decide the best timing for operation, as well as, for the many details for this surgery which is quite complicated.

Our PAACS program has been growing.  We selected our next 2 residents to start in January of 2025.  This years class includes our first Togolese doctor.  We are excited to have Josue join our program a bit early, October 1, to start making the difficult transition from French to English.  Our PAACS residents are required to do their testing in English, and this can be a problem for some of our residents coming from Francophone countries.  This extra 3 months allows him to start now with that transition.  Unfortunately, since our least letter one of our residents was also released for academic reasons.  

In September, we were able to gather all of the residents and many of our faculty from both PAACS Togo hospitals in Kara for a spiritual retreat.  We are thankful for the support and encouragement by PAACS to take this time together to study Gods word and worship together.  We started with Revelations 21:1-8 to think about a future with God with no more tears, no more death, mourning, nor pain.  The medical work here can be quite heavy at times as we see the severe suffering in our patients and friends.  As surgeons, we often struggle with tough questions on what is best in our context, or what can and cannot be done.  It's helpful for us today, to remember that this suffering and pain is not forever.  We seek to treat and care for our patients to the best of our ability with compassionate care that models what Christ demonstrated, hoping one day they may dwell together with God as mentioned in verse 3.

One example of the physical suffering was a family from about 1 hour away who came with severe malnutrition and 2 young brothers of 7 and 8 with several holes in their intestine from typhoid.  We were able to operate safely, and they both survived despite arriving at our hospital severely ill.  Just as they were being discharged, a 3rd brother was brought to us with a less severe perforation containing only 1 hole.  His name was Andrew, and he went on to tell us about his 2 sisters were also sick and were still at home in the village.  One of our chaplains was able to join us for an impromptu visit to this village.  The two sisters were indeed sick with fevers and abdominal pain from typhoid and returned with us to the hospital.  The oldest brother introduced us to his father, and his uncle- the chief of the village.  They were from an animistic background, though there was a small church in their village with a population of about 500 people.  They allowed us to present the gospel there with the village and thanked us profusely for the care and support we had given to this family.   The two boys are now nearly ready to have their intestines reconnected in the coming month. We have already had opportunities to rejoice in their improvement, but please pray for this family as they are still dealing with the many effects of severe illness. 

Also, since our last news letter, we have been able to start treating Choriocarcinoma, a fast growing cancer that usually begins in the uterus, here at our hospital. We've had three patients with this diagnosis since June, and the upside is that this is one of the few types of cancer, that if caught early and treated, has a favorable outcome. These women have been coming in daily for weeks at a time to receive treatment and have frequent followup appointment giving us many opportunities to encourage and share Biblical truths with them. All three have just finished treatment and will be monitored closely over the next year before being declared cancer free. Please pray that the truth of the gospel will penetrate their hearts, and that the love, care, and encouragement that they've received over that last few months will be a reminder of the God who loves them and knows them intimately. 

Prayer Requests:

Our Family: Elliahna, our oldest child, is currently working through college applications.  As parents, this is certainly a big milestone.  Please pray for her and us as we work though this together and prepare for what the future holds.

Our Team: Our team will have a lot of changes coming up to begin in the summer of 2025.  Please pray for those who will be here serving during that time. We are as ALWAYS in need of more workers for the ministry here.  Please pray Mathew 9:37-38.  Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.  

Our PAACS team: Our PAACS residency is growing.  We are thankful for the 2 new residents who were selected by our PAACS faculty and staff this past August.  Please pray for Josue Drafor, our first Togolese trainee, who started at HBB October 1.  Please pray for Franck, from Cameroon, who is working on the details to arrive here in Togo at the end of December.  

  

June 2024 Nattier News

Since our last post, we have once again returned to Togo.  We actually arrived back in Mango in early March.  

Our time stateside went very quickly, but it was encouraging in many ways.  We enjoyed the chance to connect with some churches, families and friends, though we missed seeing many others.  It was also very productive for our children with Andrew getting his drivers license and Elliahna visiting several colleges and taking both the SAT and ACT.  We are thankful for the growth we see in all of our children, but it's also hard to come to grips with the fact that we have an 18 and 16 year old now!  Josiah our 3 year old definitely keeps us on our toes, but even he hit the landmark of being out of diapers and is now riding a 'big boy' bike! They are all growing and changing so quickly.

Our return here to Mango in March coincided with the hot season, a big change from early spring in the US. It was a bit of a challenging time to return.  We are thankful for the grace of God that sustains us despite circumstances and challenges whatever they may be.  It has been good to be back with our team here and to see how God has been at work in our absence.  Our colleagues, the Muepeps and Fergusons, who we have mentioned previously, were thriving in ministry. This was a big encouragement.  It was great to meet Arung, one of our two newest residents, and to see growth in Yannick.  Please continue to pray for all 4 of our current residents.  As they grow and are competent to do more, it allows us time to focus on a variety of other tasks.  We are starting to get a glimpse of a future when we have a full complement of residents including those in their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th years of training.  Each year they gain more experience and competence and along with that comes more responsibility.  We also had a chance to host 2 senior residents (4th and 5th year) from another PAACS program in Egypt.  They were leaders and a big help, despite the fact that they were not used to some of the pathology and types of problems seen in subsaharan Africa.  This gave us yet another glimpse of the benefits we see now of investing in training and discipleship.  We also are excited for the impact they can have wherever the Lord leads them to serve in the future.  Their impact on the continent in the sense of meeting spiritual and physical needs of the people could be great.  We truly appreciate your prayers for our residents, our faculty and the entire PAACS family spread across Africa.

Here in Mango we have the joy of sharing life along with friends from a variety of backgrounds.  Daoud has been working with us as a nurse since 2018.  We were able to participate in his wedding to Yasmine back in 2021.  It was fun to be able to rejoice with them as they welcomed their first child, Ryan, this past month. 

Since being back, we have gone through some major changes with our friends who have worked in our home alongside us these past 7 years. Change is never easy, but in this case, we can see God's hand at work and are excited to see one of our friends realize a long term desire of opening her own bakery. Odile began working with our family when we first arrived in Mango in 2017. She has become a special part of our family and over the years has grown greatly in her culinary skills. This year she was able to start a new work of opening and running her own bakery in town. Her baked items are delicious and word is quickly spreading throughout town that there is a place where burgers, fries, shawarmas, and other treats can be ordered. We missing seeing her in our home each week but are delighted to see her finally putting her cooking and entrepreneurial skills to work in new and exciting ways. 

Natasha has enjoyed jumping back into Bible study with three of her local friends and one of the other surgical faculty wives. Recently, we have been studying stories of the miraculous works of Jesus and some of the well known parables. It's wonderful to see their hunger for the Word and to discuss how it is just as pertinent to our lives today as it was to the original audience. Please pray for this group of women- that the seeds of truth that are being sown would fall on good soil, that they would not only hear the words of truth, but truly understand, and that their lives will bear fruit. I, Natasha, have also been very blessed by this study. Studying the Bible in our context and culture (one that is much closer to what it would have been like in Biblical times) has made the Bible come to life in new and different ways.

In April, we had an opportunity to go to Greece for a medical conference and for a time of rest (and cooler temperatures) for our family. The conference was held on the island of Kos (the birthplace of Hippocrates).  It was put on by the Christian Medical and Dental Association and allowed us to learn and grow in our medical knowledge as the field of medicine is ever evolving.  We've already been able to put some of what we've learned into practice in our context.  One piece of information was actually used to help save the life of a surgical patient shortly after our return.  We are grateful for the organization of CMDE who not only values providing a well rounded medical conference for global health care workers but who also values providing spiritual care and encouragement. While at the conference, we were able to reconnect with friends and fellow co-laborers from our days in language school and hear about what God is doing in other parts of the world. After the conference, our family was able to enjoy some R&R by exploring some of the beauty of a few greek islands. The Bible came to life a bit more for our kids as we explored the ancient city of Corinth and some historical sites in Athens to include Areopagus Hill (Mars Hill). 

       

Some of you may remember the patient with a facial mass named Nafi that traveled with us to Kenya in 2023 for a surgical procedure.  There is another young woman whose face has been destroyed by a similar but larger non malignant mass.  We have once again worked with the team at Kijabe hospital in Kenya, and Natasha will be traveling with her in July for the operation.  The cost of her surgery and travel will likely be around $5000.  If you would be interested in helping financially with her care, you can give from the following link.  https://give.abwe.org/projects/togo-north-benevolence-surgical-care-beyond-mango

Prayer Requests:

Our Family: Praise for the Lord's continued work in our lives despite some challenges including the clutch going out on our van and a broken washing machine.  We continue to thank the Lord for the privilege of serving here in northern Togo.  Please pray for Natasha who will travel around July 21st to help get the patient to Kenya.  Please pray for the rest of us staying in Togo as well while mom is away.

Our Team: Our team had vision meetings shortly after our return to the field in March.  Please continue to pray for the unity of our northern Togo team.  We are blessed with teammates from a variety of backgrounds and giftings.  While this is a blessing, it can also be challenging when working so closely together.  Please pray as we continue to unpack the ways that God is working and ways to better minister together in a place with many stresses and challenges.  

Our PAACS Team: Our PAACS faculty comprised of the hospital here, HOH, and the southern Togo hospital, HBB, will be conducting interviews together for 2 more residents who would start in January of 2025.  This year we are interviewing 8 candidates from 4 different countries.  We spend a lot of time with these young doctors, and this can be a challenging decision with interviews over zoom in a limited amount time.  Please pray for wisdom to select the right candidates to invest in for the next 5 years. 

January 2024 Nattier News

     Happy 2024 to all of you! As we face a New Year, we are ever aware of our incredible team of supporters who continue to encourage us and enable us to do the work God has called us to do. Generally, our new year's post involves looking back at the high points of life and ministry for the past year.  We are excited to share those but also don't want to hide the fact that we have most definitely faced difficulties and challenges as well. We greatly appreciate your on going prayers in thanking the Lord with us for what He has done and will continue to do. While the challenges have sometimes felt overwhelming, we try not to dwell there too much.  That's honestly how we have learned to do life.  Celebrate the wins, and not dwell too much on the challenges or failures.  At times these challenges or difficulties aren't so easy to look past or move on from.  This phenomena of only showing the positive has been accentuated with social media, in that mostly the good things or best photos are portrayed leaving a skewed version of our own or others lives.  Honestly it's made the publication of this news letter more challenging than in the past, because we want to be real.  2023 had some high points, but it also brought with it difficult things as well.  Unfortunately, we can't share many of these in this format due to the sensitive nature- how it relates to colleagues, security risks, governments and systems, and the privacy of our patients and local friends.  What God has been teaching us from these challenges and difficulties is how to lament.  This year, the Psalms have been especially helpful, but in a different way from in the past.  We've been noticing how many times David was looking at the difficulty of life and his circumstances and crying out to God.  Let's just say, we don't have it all figured out yet.  However, we are learning from these feelings and circumstances, and have found a few helpful resources such as a book named Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament by Mark Vroegop and Liturgies and Laments for the Sojourner by Alicia Boyce, Heather Falls and Tamika Rybinski. We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you face to face to share our life and ministry in more detail.    

    For those of you who we have not yet had a chance to chat or cross paths with, we returned to the USA the end of October.  We have enjoyed the opportunity to rest and spend the holidays with family.  Our last Thanksgiving with the Nattier side of the family was in 2015 due to Josiah's birth in 2020 which had us in the hospital over the holiday.  We have also enjoyed some cooler weather and celebrating Christmas with Natasha's family. 

   

    We are thankful for two new families that joined us in Togo this year, the Fergusons and Mupepes. They have been a great encouragement to us and helped make our break possible.  Despite the challenges, we have certainly seen God continuing to provide for us and the ministry in Togo in many ways.

    This past year, God has given us multiple opportunities to have meaningful and encouraging conversations with some of our Togolese friends. As we share Biblical stories and and converse about who Christ is and what He has done for us, we rejoice in new understanding and evidence that God actively at work in the hearts of those we've come to know and love and also in our hearts as well. 

    We praise God for opportunities to pour into several children that are near and dear to our family. Elliahna has been involved in a Bible study for young girls in our community and also had the blessing of tutoring a local friend in science and in math. It has been sweet watching their friendship grow and seeing how God is very much using our children in ministry as well. We also rejoice in the fruit we have seen as Gospel truths take hold in a child who is often in our home and playing with our children. 

     Also for those who have been following Nafi's story, please continue to pray for her and her family.  She is doing well physically.  Her healing and outcome are remarkable.  We also continue to pray for spiritual healing.  In addition, life and travel has become more difficult for her and others from her town due to increased terrorist activity.  Please pray for the country of Burkina Faso and the citizens who are suffering due to the continued instability.  Thank you to those of you who helped make her trip to Kenya possible.  In addition, we have two more patients with similar problems who need the same intervention.  One of them is young man from our city, Mango.  The other is young female who has a much more extreme tumor and is from Togo but a bit to our south.  We hope to have more information on potential feasibility and timing for surgery after our returning in March.   

    Since stateside, we have been able to connect with a local church here in Greenville, named Fellowship Greenville.  We have been attending here when we are in Greenville since 2020.  The past two months we were able to meet more of their staff and share in several ways what God is doing in Togo.  We are grateful for the increasing opportunities this has given us to connect and have community even in our short stents here in South Carolina and we are excited for this new partnership.

    This month we will be heading north on a whirlwind trip to visit several churches and friends in OH, IN and IL.  Here are some upcoming dates in case you are in one of these areas, we would love to connect.

January 21-23 - UBC Beavercreek

January 24th Englewood Grace

January 28th AM - Nine Mile, PM Salem Baptist  

    When we return to SC, Natasha and I are going to get away for a break and to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary.  Then we head back to Togo the beginning of March.

Back in Togo the team welcomed our next two residents.  We are excited to meet them in person on our return.  This year our teams selected another resident from Cameroon, Arung.

We selected our first female resident from Rawanda, named Patiente.  

Please be praying for each of them as well as Sweni and Yannick for continued growth in surgical knowledge and in the Lord.  In addition, our PAACS program has now expanded to two sites.  Our sister hospital in southern Togo started with two residents on January 1st.  The two sites will give our residents a chance to learn from a greater number of faculty and varying hospital experiences.  Our two hospitals are under the same mission and in the same country but have a lot of differences in our types of pathology, people groups, and patient backgrounds partly due to geographic and cultural differences.   Please also be praying for our sister hospital HBB as they are undergoing a lot of changes this next year.   

Prayer Requests:

Our Family: Please pray for our remaining time stateside and good opportunities to share all that God is doing in Togo.  Also pray for the time to be restful and refreshing as we are away from some of the stresses that go along with life and ministry there.  Also pray for our return in March, especially for wisdom as we reengage in ministry.  Each time we return is a reset of rhythms and ministry.  We pray that God would show us how, where, and with whom to invest our time.  We never know how much time we have left to serve there, and we seek to use the time and talents wisely.     

Our Team: Please pray for continued water shortages.  This affects all of our expat and national team members, as it makes life and work more challenging.  Please pray for fruit and harvest in the ministry.  We see that God is at work, but there are impediments to our friends to follow Jesus.

Our PAACS Team: With the expansion of PAACS to HBB, our surgical departments at the two hospitals in Togo will be working even more closely.  There is a significant physical separation between our two sites, but we pray that this collaboration will be successful in spite of these and other challenges.  Please pray for the surgical faculty and residents at both sites.  Training, both medical and spiritual, takes work and intentionality.  We pray that these efforts would be profitable for our faculty and residents and that God would be at work and ultimately glorified through this work and in our lives.