February 2007 Greetings from Liberia to fellow members of Zion! Thank you for supporting my mission at Phebe Hospital - I will try to write a little something every month and let you know what I am doing and how the work is going. As you may know, Liberia was involved in a civil war for 14 years. The hostilities only ended in 2004 and recovery has begun but much of the infrastructure was destroyed by the rebels and most of the people are suffering from some degree of post traumatic stress after seeing friends and family hurt or killed. The country has had no electricity since 1990 except for that provided by generators and the roads are in terrible shape. 85% of the people are unemployed and 80% live below the poverty line. Phebe Hospital was badly damaged by the rebels and staff members were killed, but rebuilding and rehabilitation are coming along as quickly as possible. Phebe Hospital is located in Bong Province, about 100 miles to the northeast of the capital, Monrovia, which is on the Atlantic Ocean. I am working as the hospital administrator - not a job I have specific training for, but since I am a registered nurse as well as an ordained pastor, I have some idea of how a hospital works and I am learning more about that every day. So far, my job has been a series of problems to be solved - a broken X-ray machine, a patient bus damaged in an accident, a serious shortage of gloves, a broken generator (all the hospital's electricity is supplied by generators), and an inability to communicate easily with the rest of the world are just a few of the problems so far. I have a nice house to live in with a guest room that gets frequent use and a screened porch which is a cooler place to be when the electricity is off. The hospital housing only has electricity during the nighttime hours so while it is light, there is no power for fans. The weather is hot and humid tropical rain forest weather - right now it is winter here and it cools off at night enough that a blanket feels good and the cold bucket shower in the morning does not! I have a house keeper named Steven who cooks and cleans up and make wonderful bread. He is getting used to my vegetarian ways - the Liberians refer to foods with no meat in them as being "empty!" I also have to have a guard outside my house who patrols during the nighttime hours. I suspect he is really there to make sure the rain forest does not overgrow the house while I sleep! I attend and occasionally preach at St. Luke's Lutheran church. The services are usually 2 - 2 ½ hours long with lots of singing. And when Liberians sing, they dance as well so it is very moving. Many of the congregation have to walk an hour to get to church, so a good long service is the least they can expect! And often, the Sunday worship service is the high point of the week, so the longer the better. I am getting used to the longer service myself but I suspect I am still a "one hour Lutheran" at heart. I have made some friends here. I have the clergy and evangelists come to my house for lunch every week. I also have some friends from nearby Cuttington College and we get together for a meal and good conversation at least once evening a week. I can't get regular mail, but if you have any questions about me or my ministry, ask my cyber-secretary - A.K.A. my sister Jan Brown - to pass them along via email. Thanks for sponsoring me. It means a lot to have the support of the church where, as a two year old, I first entered the pulpit to stand behind my father. God bless you, Rev. John Lunn March 2007 Greetings from Liberia to my fellow members of Zion! It's been a busy and rather stressful month at Phebe Hospital. We finally got the generator fixed by the third mechanic we tried. That problem was replaced by the challenge of no running water. We needed a new pump for our well and have had to depend on the UN to send tankers of water. We have a pump now but it can't fill the underground storage tank as quickly as the second pump can fill the water tower.  There is an engineering crew coming in March and we'll ask them to bring a new submersible pump with them.  It can be installed in the second access to the well and serve as a back-up.  After 14 years of war, there are many things that must be returned to "normal," things like consistent running water and electricity - things we take for granted in the US. Most of the staff don't have electricity or running water at home unless they live on the hospital campus.  In the hospital, it makes life and work much easier.  There's usually enough water in Liberia - you just have to haul it and that's what affects the quantity. The nearest well may be dry in the dry season but if you walk far enough you can find water. On the positive side, we now have a satellite Internet connection for the hospital which means we can access a vast amount of medical information and the staff can use the Internet as well. And our bus was finally repaired - we just need to repaint the name as it says "Pheb" on one side and "pital" on the other!  We also got a grant for an oxygen generator from the ELCA.  That means that we can produce and fill our own oxygen tanks, avoiding the cost and transportation to and from Monrovia. We had a very scary episode the other day. Three young men had been hired to clean out the diesel fuel tank - a very large above ground storage tank. They were supposed to start early morning but didn't begin until late morning. The heat of the day made the fumes inside the tank worse and they were overcome and unable to get out so a rescue operation had to be put together quickly. A team of men from the hospital had to climb up on the tank and snare their feet with ropes and poles and haul them out feet first. They were taken by ambulance to our ER and given oxygen and fluids and decontaminated. I was able to use the Internet to check the proper treatment and possible after effects of this ordeal. Fortunately, they are fine - headaches and skin irritation but no long term problems.  We honored the "rescue team" in church this past Sunday. We are coming to the end of the dry season which is hotter than the rainy season which will be coming soon and be in full force in April and May. The good thing is it's not as hot as it was in India!  But the African sun is hot! A couple of "small, small" personal things (one of my favorite Liberian phrases). I thought I might need a root canal and realized I would have to fly to Ghana to get dental care. I had some "just in case" antibiotics from Dr. Doty in Milaca and they seemed to do the trick And I learned that instead of saying I only eat "empty" foods (with no meat), I can say my taboo is eating anything with a mother! Taboo is a common and understandable term here. I'm not sure how I will explain that I do eat eggs! Please continue to pray that God uses me to help my brothers and sisters in Liberia to discover the Hope that is already here and to strive for a loving, caring, and sharing life. God bless you.  Rev. John S. Lunn April 2007  Greetings from Phebe Hospital to my friends at Zion! Zion - that Sunday you missed church due to snow, I was sweating thru the liturgy at St. Luke's! That was the day we had the service of thanksgiving for the lives of the young men and their rescuers I told you about last month. I left after 2 hours and 45 minutes - the worship service wasn't over and the women had a program planned for after that! I usually make several trip to Monrovia every month to get necessary provisions, meet with the Bishop or other officials, get repairs done, pick up the payroll,  pick up arriving volunteers at the airport, and have some good Indian food as well! Usually someone wants to catch a ride with me - so far no goats or sheep, but I did help transport one chicken to Totota. The ELCA has given Phebe money for an oxygen generator so that we can produce oxygen from regular air rather than buy tanks of oxygen. Getting it here will be a challenge! The Bangladeshi hospital offered us three liters of anesthetic that is coming close to the expiration date. After checking with an anesthesiologist who said it was still good, we gratefully accepted it. The hospital board met and it was my job to put together the Annual Report and print it up for the big annual meeting of the hospital board. I was able to rescue a laser printer that was to be disposed of to do that job. We call it  " Big Beige" to go with "Big Blue," the ancient truck we use to haul the big stuff. We have been trying to get the X-ray machine working again and although the technicians in India sent a manual, the diagrams didn't match the innards of our machine. The diagram showed 3 wires and we had 6!  Thanks to our better Internet connection, I was able to take a photo of our wires and email it to India and let the techs solve that problem. Now if there is power enough and we can get the drain in the darkroom working, we could take X-rays! This is how so many of the problems in Liberia go - for every solution, it seems another problem appears! Early March was an extremely hot time here but after the middle of the month the rains began and it the rain usually cools things down a bit. We had a big thunderstorm that blew down a lot of branches and got my bedroom pretty wet before I also got pretty wet trying to close the window. As the dry season comes to an end, the bugs come out after a good rain. My truck was covered with some sort of bee one night and termites the next. A few termites got into the house but luckily I am not made of wood! We had three engineers here for awhile looking at ways to make things work better for little or (better yet) no money! And we have another visiting surgeon from Sweden with us - Dr. Gunnar. Phebe Hospital has four doctors - two senior and two juniors. We have an average of 125 inpatients and see about 100 in the outpatient department. The big generator continues to be problematic. It uses a gallon of oil a day and the smaller generator is not happy carrying the heavy load. 24 hour running water is still a problem. A very serious leak developed at the bottom of the water tower connection. If that goes, we will have no water at all. One of the visiting engineers came up with a solution but I couldn't get the necessary part here so had to order it online and have it shipped from the US. I hope it gets here in time! Our container from Global Health Ministries arrived - as you can see in the photos of the shipment being unloaded, there were many boxes packed by Kids Against Hunger. I know people from Zion have worked on this project and altho we probably didn't get the ones you put together, whoever did will be just as grateful as we are! Please keep me and Phebe Hospital and all of Liberia in your prayers. We need your prayers as much as we need your financial support.   Rev John Lunn May 2007 Easter season greetings from Phebe Hospital in Liberia! Mango (known here as plum) season has begun in Liberia and they are incredible! And a flower looking like an Easter Lily have been blooming! They are beautiful and so on time. It makes my life in Liberia a little brighter and sweeter! The other day, I went into the "Executive Washroom," and noticed something moving in the toilet bowl. At first I thought that it was a large lizard - that has happened a couple of times. But no, it was a rat! A live rat! I came into the office and asked, "Whose job is it to get a rat out of the toilet bowl?" The response was, "Oh that's housekeeping. This has happened before." There are plenty of rats around – I think that we probably need more cats. Liberia hosts lots of bugs as well - I've gotten some bug bites, probably stealth mosquitoes, and they itch like crazy for days! I tried everything, but nothing helps much. My sister asked me about birds - there don't seem to be any colorful ones - just something one of the visiting engineers named the "Curly Bird." It makes a noise similar to that of Curly of the Three Stooges. The other night, I got a call from the eye doctor at Curran - a Lutheran hospital about 60 miles from Phebe. They were sending a young man to Phebe. He had fallen on a tree stump and it penetrated from under his armpit to the back of his neck. They cut the branch off and sent him. I thought if he survived the 2 + hour journey on that bumpy road - he'd have a chance.  Well he did. I called Gunnar (the Swedish surgeon), and the doctor on call and then went to get Gunnar and took him to Phebe. We arrived just a few minutes after the patient. To make a long story short - they did a "Stickectomy" and packed the opening with gauze. It was a good sized stick - maybe 4 - 5" in diameter - but it didn't seem to puncture the lung or any major vessel. The boy did well overnight and Gunnar did more surgery the next day. Palm Sunday, I was invited to Bethany Church, a preaching point for St. Luke's Parish in Suakoko. They were celebrating their 20th anniversary, so there was a lot of things that happened before I arrived at 11 am, including a procession through Suakoko. They insisted that I put a 20th anniversary t-shirt over my clergy shirt. It was too small, made of polyester (so too hot also) and had a tight collar. I was not very comfortable, so I took it off before preaching. The service started at 11 am and I don't think I got into the pulpit until almost 1 p.m. My sermon was short and the translation shorter. My theme was that God's strength is made complete in weakness. I talked about Holy Week and its events as being "human weakness." And see what God did with all that. I suggested that the weakness Liberia is feeling as they come out of the war, is a strength as it forces us to be open to God's strength. It also helps me in priority setting. We had another adventure about 40 minutes from Phebe on our way back from Monrovia. It had been raining very hard for most of the journey, it had slowed to a drizzle. Suddenly a huge pig/hog appeared in the middle of the road. There was no way to avoid hitting it and still stay on the road. The driver swerved and hit the brakes, we went into a skid and slammed into an embankment where two young men were standing. We spun around and hit the embankment in reverse, then finally stopped. The first thing I saw were two young men hanging against the embankment, unhurt. I knew that I was OK, the driver was fine as were the passengers. The pig was long gone, but a crowd appeared out of the bush in a heartbeat. The front end of the truck was smashed badly, the rear end not so bad. After our driver left to walk towards town and a cell signal, one of the first vehicles to stop was a UN vehicle. I got them to take the passengers to Phebe and I stayed to talk with all the people who stopped to help. Some were there to gawk at the white guy standing next to the smashed vehicle in the ditch - but most were genuinely concerned about our well-being. The driver came back with another of our drivers, his son and the son's taxi. I've had a lot of calls inquiring about my safety, even the Minister of Health called to check on me. How nice. I really am fine. I presided at a wedding the day before Easter, and Liberian weddings (I can generalize now having attended two) are real celebrations and edge on chaotic! The groom used his phone during the wedding to take a photo of the bride! Cameras and videos abound. The women wear something around their waist (almost like an apron) called a lapa cloth – the aisle is draped with lapas for the entrance of the bride. On Easter, I wore my new and first Liberian clergy shirt. It looked great and was pretty well received. It is mostly orange and has tie-dye material too. The service was 3 1/2 hours long! And very little of that was my sermon. I read the Isaiah passage (65:17-25), but read it for Liberia. It talked about forgetting the past, children not dying in infancy, adults living beyond 100 - this promise in a country with the 4th highest infant mortality worldwide and a life expectancy of under 50 years. The service also included baptism for about 50 and confirmation for about 30. I helped with the Baptisms and literally baptized more people yesterday than so far in my ministry! 17 years worth in one day. I had the youngest, who was maybe 1 or 1 ½, and the oldest, who was just called an "old lady" who had never been baptized. Most were between the ages of 7 and 20. One young woman asked me to use "more water" - I guess that I was being too conservative! Gunnar (the Swedish surgeon) gave me some money before he went back to Sweden and I used some of it for one of his surgical patients. A boy fell from a tree and had some major abdominal bleeding. Gunnar did a spleenectomy and the boy did well and was ready to go home. Victor (the Chaplain) came to me with the financial concerns of the father, who is an Evangelist in one of the small Lutheran churches nearby; the bill was $7,000 Liberian (about $120 US). He had only $1,200 LD and $10 US. After speaking with Victor, we decided that $100 from Gunnar would settle the bill. Nice gift from him! Some days are filled with difficult, seemingly unsolvable problems. Some days are touched by joy. Please pray for more joy for the Liberian people as they live through difficult times. Thank you for your support of my ministry and for your prayers for me. Rev. John Lunn June 2007 Greetings from Phebe Hospital in Liberia! I've had some bad news and some good news! The bad news? The X-Ray machine is still not operational.  Would you believe that it needs A/C?   The oxygen generator is sitting in a warehouse in Minneapolis waiting to be shipped in June - that has taken so long.  I got a vehicle that I really like and runs well, but is often commandeered for trips to Monrovia since it is one of the few that are road worthy enough and available for the trip. The list goes on.  It can be discouraging, at times it seems that things just don't come together.  When I didn't get my new drivers permit, I was told that if "an officer embarrasses me" I could have him call the Inspector!  (And I was given the Inspector's number!) The good news? I had a call from my boss at the ELCA Global Missions and she told me that we were approved for funding for the three projects that I wrote proposals for! We can relax on the costs of fixing the 200KVA generator, chill a bit on getting an A/C for the OR, and we can make much needed repairs to our water system! The pump at the well broke the end of April and they couldn't get the two pieces to fit together, but after I laid my "healing hands" on it, it went together perfectly.  By that time it was too late to work at the site - so we were without running water again for a couple of days. It takes about 3 hours to fill the underground tank, which holds something like 15,000 gallons.  From there it goes to the water tower, and once that starts filling, there is water again.  I miss running water! The Bangladeshi Engineers came by with what they need in materials to repair our roads.  Less than 3 miles of road - materials alone are going to be about $10,000.  They are requesting 2,500 bags of cement and 300 gallons of diesel fuel!   There is no way we could afford to hire this to be done - so we don't have a choice but to pay for the materials.  The rainy season has started - so the work won't be easy.  The rain comes at night - it starts around 10 or 11 p.m. and it rains like crazy for 30 - 60 minutes.  If it stays like that, the days are open for some wet work, as the potholes in the roads are small lakes - without the fish. We had a huge storm the other night and the absolute loudest thunder bolt I've ever heard!  I'm just glad that I knew that it was thunder and that it hit before I went to sleep. Wow! Two of my friends from Cuttington University had to go back to the USA-  health problems that couldn't be handled here. Tom was the first ex-pat that I met in Liberia - at the LCL guesthouse.  We were even on the same plane coming here.  But I am making new friends. One fellow shops in local markets, makes peanut soup and mango shortcake, and takes a Kpelle class where Kpelle is the native language of all his classmates! When we visited a church, he was big hit with his digital camera and battery operated printer to make instant photos. I got an unexpected email from the Mercy Ship wondering if we needed some consumables and items as they are in port and moving into a new and better ship.  I wrote back and wrote big - did they have a portable x-ray machine?  Dialysis machine, etc.?  They also have OR tables and some other nifty sounding equipment.  I asked if I could come and look.  They said yes. The ship is amazing - a full floating hospital and housing for staff.  They seemed to have everything.  Another hospital also came to "shop" but I did get first dibs on a 12 lead EKG machine that interprets, and we got a very nice cabinet.  I may have gotten an x-ray machine for our sister hospital – Curran. I am a sort of unofficial "bed and breakfast" for visitors to Phebe Hospital. Besides the volunteers passing through, I have also hosted the Bishop and his wife and some friends of Liberia's President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf - a doctor and his wife who is a nurse, from Alaska. May 20th was the first anniversary of the death of my mother, Ione Lunn.  I remember Mom with a mixture of sadness that she is gone and gratitude that she is experiencing a new life, in a renewed body with her mind renewed again.  She was a wonderful woman - I am so grateful to God that she was our Mom.  There couldn't have been a better one! Please continue to pray for me. With your prayers and support, the help of God, the love of Christ, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we will keep on trying to do what needs to be done. July 2007 Greetings to my friends and sponsors!     Whatever problems arise, it is in worship that I see hope for Liberia.  People are transformed in worship - they believe, for a little while, that things can be better. Worship is a very lively, inspiring and long experience - like 3 1/2 hours.  The Liberians don't seem to need anything to drink - water or anything - but I sweat and I drink!     We're still having water problems. Someone cut and stole the wire that brings power to the pump switch.  They cut live wires - 220 volts - for the copper wire which they can sell. They left the wires above  - they are 480 volts! The replacement wire was costly which explains why it was stolen. And it happened again the next night. It isn't just on our compound either - some UN personnel have had the same experience.  People are desperate.     A Phebe colleague's 24 year old daughter recently lost most of her eyesight very suddenly, and so we took her to the Mercy ship docked in Monrovia. Many of the tests that would pinpoint the diagnosis are not available in Liberia or on the ship, but it's likely she has MS. I emailed a doctor from Children's Surgery International and asked for his help in getting her a consultation with a neurologist, and he agreed to do that plus try to get a US pharmaceutical company to donate the drugs that are currently being used!  One of the doctors from Children's Surgery International arranged for us to get 13 two-way radios plus backup batteries for free!     I make trips to Monrovia often to go to meetings and to get supplies, and one of the best things about the trip is stopping for roasted corn on the way. Sometimes the corn tastes like field corn, but sometimes it tastes like good old Minnesota sweet corn. A taste of home. Something else from home - my brother-in-law gave us an huge air conditioner for the operating room! And he got us a good deal on the transformers we'll need to run it. It saved the hospital thousands of dollars and I am very grateful. Everything was shipped the first weekend in June by Global Health Ministries.     I really enjoy my weekly lunches with the evangelists and deacons. And they enjoy it as well. Many Liberians only eat once a day so a good free meal is a treat. I also enjoy sharing meals and conversation with my friends from Cuttington College. They are now very used to making "empty" dishes for my vegetarian tastes.     I had a lot of work to do before I could leave for Kenya June 9th. My Liberian counterpart (Saykor) and I will be in Nairobi until July 27th taking classes on hospital administration. It's good to have a change of scenery, but it's a little difficult taking care of business in Liberia via email! I am lucky to have a reasonably good Internet connection in Nairobi - I don't know what I would do without that! I have a room and bath to myself but morning baths are a little chilly as  it's winter here in Kenya which means 50s at night and low 70s in the daytime. I'm wearing my jacket all the time. Nairobi is a fairly modern city - electricity and all - but there is a lot of street crime. I have my "big city glasses" on - I acquired them in New York when I lived there!     I am enjoying the classes and I've met a lot of interesting, wonderful people from all over Africa. And I get to preach at chapel which makes me happy. And I am going to see a dentist here too. I had planned to visit Ethiopia when classes were over, but I have been asked to visit some missionaries in Tanzania and so will do that instead and return to Phebe on August 11th. It will be good to spend some time with other missionaries - one has been there 20 years and one has a palliative care program which is my special area of expertise and interest.     Thank you for your support - and thank you even more for your prayers. August 2007 Greetings from Nairobi! At the end of the week, I will have been in Nairobi, Kenya for 7 weeks taking a course for hospital administrators. It's been a change from being at Phebe and involved in day to day problems, but there have still been problems I have had to deal with via email - like packing and receiving of containers, and trying to make sure that we get the x-ray machine promised by the Mercy Ship for our sister hospital, Curran. Mostly, I have been able to concentrate on learning all I can about the job I already have. Nairobi is the capitol of Kenya and the largest city with a population of more than three million people. You can get around the city on public busses or private vans called matatus, but they are not really built for big guys like me, so I preferred a taxi if I needed to go any distance. We did some sight seeing and some regular shopping - some prices are better than in Monrovia, but the books I hoped to buy are very expensive - and have also checked out the crafts market. I bought some beautiful stoles and a batik of the crucifixion. Most of the classes have been interesting and we have covered a lot of ground in these seven weeks - everything from HIV/AIDS management and treatment to public relations to medical record keeping to quality management to proposal writing, and a lot more in between! What I have learned will help me do my job at Phebe. We have taken a couple of field trips to nearby hospitals, one of which was run by a Catholic Sister in our class. We went to Sister Clara's Nazareth Hospital just outside Nairobi in a rural area of tea and coffee plantations and farms where flowers are grown for export. The hospital is 220 beds with a staff of 300 and their services include home care, an HIV/AIDS program, and a school where they will begin training nurses - 30 to be admitted the first year. Like every Catholic hospital I have ever visited, it is clean! Many of the nuns there are from India so we had great food and I felt like I was back in India for awhile. The other hospital we visited was in Kijabe - "place of the wind" - which was about an hour's drive over some good and some horrible roads. We drove along a rift and then halfway down into a valley where the Masai graze their animals.  This is also a 220 bed hospital with 30 doctors - only 5 less than the entire country of Liberia - and they have an amazing dental clinic.   20 of the doctors there are American missionaries! Early in the morning, I have been joining the Catholic Sisters here for morning prayers and mass. They welcome my participation in prayers as well as Communion. One of the prayers we prayed together was very meaningful to me. It said, "Let there be no limit to our faith, our hope, and our endurance."  I shared a couple of movies on DVD with the Sisters - Sister Act and The Sound of Music. Guess which one they liked better! Regional food is not very vegetarian friendly but the dishes I did have were quite tasty. There is an Ethiopian restaurant in Nairobi that is very good and several places where I have had very good pizza which is what I seem to crave! We also went to a restaurant on the Karen Blixen Estate - she wrote "Out of Africa" under the pen name Isak Dinesen and Meryl Streep played her in the movie. It's winter here - 50 at night which doesn't sound that cold except there is no heating. And it's around 70 during the day which seems chilly after the heat of Liberia. I got a nasty cold and didn't have any of my favorite remedies with me. There is a very good powered remedy that one of the Sisters in India used to make for me - I wish I had brought some with me. We had a series of smaller earthquakes here a couple of weeks ago - apparently not unusual for this part of East Africa. I have been through earthquakes in Hawaii and Japan before - even in New York City - but a more disturbing shock was hearing that the funding recommended for Phebe Hospital by President Johnson-Sirleaf, the Cabinet, and the Budget Bureau may be cut in half by the Liberian Legislature. This would be a disaster for Phebe, but fortunately, the President and other officials seem ready to champion Phebe's needs. Please keep me and the people of Africa in your prayers. Your support - both monetary and spiritual - means so much to me. September 2007 Greetings from your "powerless" missionary in Liberia! As I write this, it has been six days with no power in my house. I guess that's one way to insure that I spend more time in the office at the hospital where we do have electricity. It's a generator problem again and while they try to fix and patch, I have been working on replacing this generator with one that will actually generate something other than trouble!  We have some of the money, but need a bit more so we can do this right. When I wrote to you last month, I was almost at the end of my classes in Nairobi, Kenya. From there I took a seven hour bus trip to Arusha, Tanzania where I stayed at a hotel run by a technical school. There's a restaurant as well, and the students practice on the guests while learning hotel and restaurant management. Everything was a little slow and deliberate but very nice. I was able to visit Selian Lutheran Hospital just outside Arusha and I met with the palliative care (hospice) team. They cover almost 2000 patients with a team of three nurses, two social workers, two chaplains, a physician's assistant, and 200+ volunteers. I was happy to be able to go on a few home visits with the team members - I miss that kind of patient contact which I had in India. The next day my hosts, Sally and Tom, took me to see a new hospital which is being built to cater to wealthier patients and help pay for services provided by mission hospitals and local clinics. Sally and Tom were kind enough to drive me back to Kenya to my hotel in Mombasa for my week of "on the beach" vacation. On the way we drove through a small game park where I saw animals I did not recognize as well as a herd of elephants which included a baby! My hotel was nice, but there were a few problems - first no hot water and then after someone came to fix that problem, the door was left open. When I called the desk to report this security lapse, the phone didn't work! I spent some time walking on the beach - a nice walk at low tide when there is nicely packed sand to walk on. One day there were three camels on the beach! I was sick part of the time I was there, but otherwise I enjoyed the vacation time. My friends from Cuttington University met me at the airport in Monrovia when I returned and it was good to see them again. The worship service the next day was 2 hours long and I felt very much welcomed back. Before and during the service, a container from the States was finally unpacked and I had a lovely surprise - two 12-packs of Tab and a note saying "Happy Birthday!" Just a few days later, my friends from Cuttington all left. One or two may be back but nothing is sure. Last month I mentioned that the legislature was about to drastically cut Phebe's funding - some good news on that front. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf made a radio broadcast the other day saying she'd instructed the government to do everything to help Phebe. Another blessing coming our way as well - Medicins du Monde is funding a Nurse Midwife program at Phebe including rehabilitating a dormitory for the students. And I am hoping to find a way to invite Roman Catholic Sisters to live and work at Phebe as I think their presence would change the institution for the better. Please keep this in your prayers! There isn't much to do when I come home from the office (late!) to a power-free house. I can listen to NPR and BBC radio by candle light, but that's about it. I'm getting a little tired of eating "current-free" foods - there's not much you can do to a peanut butter sandwich to make it new and exciting. I hope by the time you read this, we will have the generator back online! Please continue to remember me and the people of Liberia in your prayers. You are the generators of that kind of power and I really can't manage without that! Rev. John Lunn October 2007 Greetings from Phebe Hospital to my sponsoring churches! Good news - it was a struggle, but the generator finally got fixed and so I am no longer "powerless" in that way! We have ordered new generators from the US - from Minnesota - in the November container shipment from the Pennsylvania Upper Susquehanna Synod. Until then, we hope and pray that we can keep at least two of the troubled three running. I had hoped to have the oxygen generator up and running so we'd be able to produce oxygen for our patients, but with the generator problems, that was delayed. Eventually! I've been scrounging in the unused OR - storage for broken and unused equipment - and found a number of things I have been able to get into working order. My Dad would be proud!  Looking for help from a "real" biomed technician – there aren't any in Liberia. More good news - a vehicle for my use finally arrived and got out of port and on the road! It's a Landcruiser and will help me to be mobile. Well, as mobile as the potholes allow, that is. The problem seems to be that pothole patching is frequently done with available dirt and then they become mud-holes when it rains! Last month I asked you to pray about the possibility of having an order of Roman Catholic nuns come to Phebe, and so far your prayers are being answered with one Yes after another. The Bishop in Gbarnga, their health coordinator, and an Irish priest/missionary were all excited about the idea and even have a congregation from India who will be visiting in November and are interested in a rural setting in Africa. We have that waiting for them! The Irish priest has been in Liberia since 1983 when he came to relieve someone for three months! I guess the Spirit hasn't determined which three months! Key people seem positive, so keep those prayers coming. Sisters could bring a great deal with their Spirit driven loving care to Phebe, along with the sense of order and efficiency that Sisters bring along with them. We had a visit from the Environmental Protection Agency and they are going to help us get our walk-in refrigerator working again and help us with a refrigerator for the morgue. That would be a relief! They may be able to help out with installing the A/C in the operating rooms. We'll see. I've been a "guest house" - as usual. The newest guest is a new missionary named Ron who serves in the nearby town of Totota at a teaching facility for lay deacons and evangelists for the Lutheran Church in Liberia. His wife and family remain in the US, so weekend time at Phebe is good for him and he can email. Other guests include Edna, the nurse from Curran Hospital in Zorzor who is an excellent guest who buys groceries and cooks them and cleans up after herself! I also hosted two anesthesiologists from the Mercy Ship who came to do some teaching and help out with out equipment. I have packets of Indian food that can be cooked in a pot of boiling water, add some rice from my rice cooker and create meals that have been very popular with my guests. September 23rd was the 13th anniversary of a tragedy at Phebe. That day, the rebels overran the hospital and killed staff and patients. It was a bloodbath – some patients were killed in their beds. We had a memorial service along with Sunday worship. A lot of terrible things have happened in Phebe's past, but many good things can happen in Phebe's future with the help of God's people around the world and with the power of your prayers. Keep them coming - and mention Phebe and me by name!  November News - 2007 Greetings from Phebe Hospital to all my sponsoring churches! It seems that many of my letters begin with news about our electricity or lack of it, and this will be no exception! We are still limping along. We got a couple of small generators from the United Nations that will help with the smaller load-times, but the struggle continues with our bigger generators. Our goal right now is just trying to keep some power going until we get the new generators installed in early February. That seems far off! I finally got the oxygen generator "running" with a patch here, a new part there and always a prayer. Still, it is not producing usable oxygen. I have to rely on help from a tech on the phone (with a four hour time difference) and you can imagine how frustrating that can be with call delays and calls not returned. We finally got our new bus and before I even had a chance to ride on it, it was rear ended! No one was hurt, thank God, but the bus was badly damaged and repairs will likely take a long time. Our latest doctor to arrive from Sweden is an OB/GYN specialist. Phebe Hospital has about 1200-1400 deliveries a year - about 1/3 are Caesarian sections. In Liberia, about 70-80% of babies are born at home with the help of minimally trained traditional mid-wives. Liberia has the 4th highest infant mortality rate in the world with almost 150 babies dying for every 1000 born. Sweden has the second best rating with less than 3 infant deaths in 1000 births, so Liberia has been a bit of a shock for her. The last Sunday that I preached at St; Luke's, the crowd was small at first because it was raining and Liberians don't go out if it's raining. (People here will stay out in the rain, but not walk out into the rain.) I told a story about a fellow writing a love letter. He wrote about climbing the highest mountain for a mere sight of her face, crossing the hot and dry dessert for the hear sound of her voice, traveling across the wide ocean just to feel the touch of her hand on his face. He ends the letter with, "See you on Wednesday, unless it rains!" The rain has made some of the roads almost impassable. I went north to Zorzor to do a workshop for the staff at Curran Hospital (the other Lutheran hospital in Liberia) on planning and budgeting and the road had ruts that were 5-8 feet deep and as wide as a truck! We made the 75 miles there in 3 hours and 15 minutes. The trip home was slower. We never got stuck in one of the cavernous ruts but we did get stuck behind vehicles that were badly mired. I barely made it back to Phebe in time for my web camera appearance! Global Health Ministries sent a web cam so that I could give a greeting at their annual meeting. Phebe's former Medical Director and Liberia's current Minister of Health, Dr. Gwenigale was the keynote speaker and I was the "after dinner mint." Next month I am taking a trip to India to be part of the 5th Anniversary celebration for the Palliative Care Unit I helped start at Christian Medical Center, Vellore. It will be great to see old friends and see how the program has grown since I left. And it will be relaxing to be away from having daily concerns about power and water. Those problems will go on and our need for your support and your prayers will go on as well, so please remember me and Phebe Hospital and Liberia and Africa in your prayers. We need the power of your prayers as much as we need the power from the generators!    December 2007 As I write this, I am in Vellore, India where I spent four years helping to establish a hospice care unit - or palliative care as it is called in India. They are celebrating the 5th Anniversary of Christian Medical Center's Palliative Car Unit and I wanted to come and be part of it. I was happy to have the chance to go back and spend a couple of weeks with friends and co-workers there and have a bit of a vacation. The Hospital's Palliative Care Unit is functioning very well, and the inpatient unit CMC built with the Sneha Deepham Retreat Center (a Catholic organization) is taking care of patients in its ground floor wards and the second floor is the palliative care study center with rooms for medical people from all over India who come to learn more about palliative care. One of the rooms even has a plaque on the door identifying it as the "Lunn Room" and I stayed there my first night back in India. I am also enjoying my favorite Indian foods and once again being a part of the healing and anointing service which I started while I was at CMC.. Before I left for India, I was again the host for lots of visitors to Phebe. My boss from Chicago and her West African-based counterpart came for a visit and we had technicians from the Mercy Ship who came to see if they could help me fix some of Phebe's equipment. They appreciated the break from living "at sea" and I was grateful for their willingness to help even though some of the equipment was beyond even their skills. They took the oxygen generator back to the ship with them so they could take more time with it and also be able to call the company techs. The Mercy Ship people are so eager and willing to help. One of the Biomed Techs wanted to give me some chocolate chips but there weren't any on the ship so she gave me a cookie mix! It was very sweet - literally! While I was in Monrovia I got some bright and colorful Liberian cloth to bring to India for gifts - the guys can have lungi made from it and the women can have shalwa chemises made. My suitcases were stuffed as usual and the trip from Monrovia to Chennai was a long one, but it is good to be back in India - my second home. But soon it will be time to go back to Phebe and get back to the hard work of making this hospital a blessing to patients and staff as well. Please keep me in your prayers as well as the people of Phebe and Liberia. And add the good people who do palliative care at CMC and at Sneha Deepham and all the other palliative care and hospice care units around the world to your prayers. They do important work and your prayers will make it easier.

January News 2008 This Christmas, I found great solace in the fact that Jesus was born in a stable.  Life in Liberia is like that lonely stable in Bethlehem.  And I know that it is to places like Liberia that God has chosen to send the Messiah.  I see evidence of that - especially in Sunday morning worship.  It is alive with dance, song, drum and celebration of life.  Much of the rest of the week, people are dealing with the results of 14 years of civil war on life, health, family and property. My trip to India was wonderful and over too soon. Now I am back at work at Phebe and dealing with the generator problem again. Both generators that supply half day power to the staff housing have given up the ghost and the rental generator which we hoped would fill in has been drafted to power the hospital because that generator went out as well! I try to remember that there was no power in that stable long ago, but it does make life difficult as you know if your power has ever been out for any length of time. We will be getting new generators but not until February and that's a long time to try to limp along with iffy power. Especially when the hospital is affected. We have a visiting radiologist coming soon and the X-ray machine is still not installed. I gave the doctor the option of coming another time but she was willing to come and see if she could help. It has been a struggle but I hope that struggle is almost over. The Vice President of Liberia came to speak at the commencement ceremony for the Nursing School. The ceremony went on for over three hours! The VP stayed in Gbarnga which was good as I doubt he carries around his own generator. I had a good Christmas - despite having to make the dinner with no working refrigerator and two borrowed gas burners. (My stove developed a flame out the back - not too safe.)  I made a nice pasta sauce and friends helped make the fruit salad, brought bread, pumpkin pie, and Christmas cookies. It was a good time. Christmas afternoon we went to a service that was mostly in Kpelle but the lessons and sermon were in English - I don't think anyone had a Kpelle Bible with them. Now I am off to Monrovia - a container has arrived and I need to be there for the unloading. It's dry here now, so the pot holes aren't muddy anymore - just dusty. Please continue to keep me in your prayers and please pray for the people of Liberia as they recover and struggle to move forward. And remember (as I try to remember) that Christ will find a home in our Bethlehem stables.  Let's make room.  I thank God for you! February 2008 I spent New Year's with friends in Zorzor, home of our sister hospital in Liberia - Curran Lutheran Hospital. I preached at the Watchnight service on New Year's Eve and the time I spent there was very relaxing - in contrast with the trip there. The road is better now than it was during the rainy season, but there are some "ruts" that in the western USA would have names that ended in Canyon! Check here for a photo of one of the "ruts" in the road! We are having the usual generator problems - if one is running, the other breaks down. Naturally power for the hospital is the priority, so those of us in the compound have been powerless a lot. We have two new generators in a contain that arrived in port in Monrovia, but it is taking a lot of time and paperwork and many trips to Monrovia to get the generators to Phebe. So far? They are still in Monrovia. (update) We really needed power at the hospital so that we could use the skills of the surgical mission team that came to Phebe from Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City! We had a group of 16 - two general surgeons, two OB/GYN doctors, an ophthalmologist/plastic surgeon, an ENT/plastic surgeon, anesthesia personal, and medical students. We put them to work even before they got to the hospital - we came across a vehicle that had gone off the road and the doctors checked out the people in the car, diagnosed one man with a broken bone, and sent him off to JFK Hospital in Monrovia. Welcome to Liberia! We also had a radiologist in the house to help get our X-ray machine set up - at long last - and she also was able to do ultrasound. It was crucial for the team from Mt. Sinai to be able to see inside some of our patients. We do have to shut down a lot of things in the hospital every time we use the X-ray machine as it needs a lot of power. Most of the people on this team had been on missions before and were not distressed by loss of power in their dorm, disappearance of running water on occasion, and other occurrences that are normal at Phebe. I did have to chase down some blankets - it's cool at night right now. One power-free evening, they invited me to come to their dorm for dinner and they made spaghetti in charcoal pots and used flashlights to see what they were doing. We also had two visitors one from Global Health Ministries in Minneapolis and the other a doctor who has visited 13 times over the past 25 years.  There were a couple of items the Mt. Sinai team needed for patients and they were able to bring them. Amongst other things, they tackled the job of helping to clear out a warehouse for us.  We also had a visit from personnel from Global Mission and World Hunger during January.  It's a good month to be in Liberia. After the Mt. Sinai team left, we got a team from Minnesota and they are still here. They are doing children's surgery - head and neck, cleft lip and palate. They even know where my hometown of Milaca is, and that is not common knowledge anywhere outside south-central Minnesota! They too are real workers. I took three of the doctors to the leprosy colony to see if there were nay facial surgery that could be done there, but there wasn't. They ended up doing a van-side clinic instead. They had asked me what I'd like them to bring me when they came and I gave them a list of three things to choose from. They brought all three - sun-dried tomatoes, maple syrup, and a yogurt maker!  (They even included 3 - 12 packs of TAB!) I'm beginning preparation for my home leave - July and August of this year.  Yikes!  That is just around the corner.  Please consider inviting me to spend time with you.  Soon, I'll have more details on my exact dates of availability and how the cost-sharing of a wandering missionary are covered.  I look forward to meeting some of you for the first time and others to renew a long-term relationship. The visiting medical teams of people willing to give of their time and talents has been a real blessing this month. The frequent lack of electricity and water has been a definite bane. Your support and prayers have been a big blessing - even better than maple syrup! Keep the prayers coming - for me and for the people of Liberian. Thanks for your support! God bless you,  Rev. John S. Lunn   (2/11 - new generators in place and ready to power Phebe!) March 2008 Greetings from Phebe Hospital in Liberia!    Last time I wrote, I mentioned a medical mission team from Minnesota. Their specialty was head and neck surgery and their skills were tested by the case of the child who was impaled by a stick through his neck - and not a small stick either! He was lucky that Jim, the ENT/plastic surgeon was there - if you can call a kid lucky who has a stick through his neck! They also treated two cousins who had swallowed lye and ended up with severe esophageal burns.    We managed to keep power going to the hospital while we awaited the new generators I wrote about last month, but the houses in the compound - including mine - were without electricity for many weeks. At least most of the time, we had running water. The Minnesotans were very good sports about it and cheerfully went about their work. They were very impressed and moved by Sunday worship and the music and dancing. I continue to find that the highlight and renewal point of my week. I was somewhat amazed to discover that one of the nurses in the group was a graduate of Lutheran Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing - my nursing alma mater!    The generators spent a very long time waiting to get out of the container they were shipped in – it seemed longer than the time that they spent crossing the ocean! It was a case of "if it can go wrong, it will!" It was one problem after another, but finally the two new generators arrived at Phebe on February 6th - see photos -and were installed by Phebe staff and a visiting team of engineers. Power at last! I have learned way too much about generators from the engineers and we are hoping that their suggestions may help prolong the life of these new generators.    I have been back and forth to Monrovia multiple times as usual and now that the dry season is here, there are different challenges on the road. People cut down trees along the road and cut them so they fall across the road. This makes them easier to cut up and haul away, but it does tend to block traffic! We have waited as long as 45 minutes - can you imagine all the horn honking and road rage that would engender in the US?    We had winter here - it lasts just a few weeks but it does get down into the 50s at night and that is a bit chilly without any source of heat or any cozy quilts! We have some quilts, but they got mildewed during the rainy season. The team from Minnesota was not bothered by the cool nights - they just doubled their sheets and wore an extra shirt to bed. It was a nice change from the heat of the day.    Phebe's Nurse Midwife program was formally reopened on February 17th and the ceremony was attended by the French Ambassador, the Minister of Health who used to be the medical director at Phebe, and President Johnson-Sirleaf's sister who used to be on the Phebe board. I wonder if she'd like to be on the board again?    Last week, I had to track down a medication for an employee who had been diagnosed with possible Lassa Fever. The week before I was trying to make sure the IV Fluid Production Project went smoothly.  As you may have noticed, my job as administrator of Phebe Hospital seems to be one of doing whatever needs to be done - from working with the Danes on an agricultural project to finding funding for a water project to hosting mission teams to facilitating generators of all sorts. Each project is important to the hospital and so it is often frustrating when I can't get things done in a timely manner. But delays and difficulties are part of life in Liberia That is why Sunday worship is so important. It is the highlight of the week and the inspiration to go on and tackle another week. I am always pleased to be asked to preach at the church I attend - St. Luke's.  The music is so wonderful and the dancing so moving. It's not the kind of worship service I grew up with, but it is absolutely wonderful and it keeps me on the path the Holy Spirit has chosen for me. Keep me in your prayers and pray for the people of Liberia as they struggle back from the ravages of war. PS - I sent some photos of friends from the Bangladeshi medical team in Liberia. April 2008 Greetings from Phebe Hospital in Liberia! We are approaching the rainy season here and are having some very loud storms in the evenings. If the hours of running water are interrupted, it could be from a lightening strike, a planned shutdown to prevent this sort of problem, or even theft as we have had some copper wire cut and stolen.  A more reliable and less vulnerable system is one thing that I'm working on now.  We hope to chose a contractor by the end of the month.   You may recall I had some dental problems a few months ago.  Well, it happened again and this time I had to have a root canal and the military dentist at the Bangladeshi compound was nice enough to do it for me. If he had not been willing or able, I would have had to fly to Ghana to have the work done. I have now had root canals done in New York, South Carolina, Hawaii, Minnesota, India, and Liberia - sort of a Root Canal World Tour! We are hoping to make dental care available at Phebe Hospital in the future and I have been working with Global Health Ministries to get equipment. There is a dental therapist in Monrovia who is starting a two year program to train roving dental care and she assured me that if we had equipment, "they will come." I hope "they" would include dentists and not just patients!   On one of my trips to Monrovia, I attended services at St. Peter's which is a kind of Lutheran cathedral. We arrived at the beginning of what turned out to be a three hour service in a supposedly air conditioned space. Over the three hours, it got stuffier and hotter - I guess that the A/C units weren't equal to the crowd, it was packed.  It was a mostly choir service which was very nice. The music director missed it - he was stuck with a fat tire. Better a flat tire than a flat choir! (I couldn't resist that!)   Once in awhile I get to be a pastor rather than an administrator. I preach some Sundays and one day during Lent I was called to come and pray with a mother and her 9 year old son who was suffering with a type of lymphoma which - in the best possible world -could have been successfully treated, but Liberia is not that world and the treatment had been interrupted and delayed and now the lymph nodes in his neck were so large that they were making it hard for him to breathe. So I prayed with them.   Over a year ago, my sisters sent me a bread machine as a Christmas gift. The electricity has been too problematic for me to use as it takes about 4 hours. With the new generators working dependably, I got the machine out and made a very nice loaf of bread and decided I would do that regularly. A few days later I loaded up the bread machine again, but I got a late start and then I set if for a delay but forgot to hit the start button! So instead of a nicely baked loaf of bread, I had an overflowing blob of dough. I tried to rescue it but my efforts were useless!   I preached on Easter Sunday - the service lasted 2 hours and 45 minutes and not much of that was my sermon. We had 17 Baptisms and 2 very quick Confirmations and 3 different choirs. The Sunday School children rocked!  My sermon title was "Not a Martyr but a Savior!"   We have a new Post Office in the county seat Gbarnga. There are about 500,00 people in the county and maybe 50,000 in Gbarnga. I went to mail a letter and they were still storing the postal scale in its box. The postal service is just beginning and will take some time to become established, but I was able to mail a letter to a doctor in the UK for about $2 US - better than $60 or more going by DHL!   I don't sew, but I bought a sewing machine and have engaged a man to come and sew for me. He will be able to use the machine to sew for others as well and maybe earn some extra money. I have some projects in mind for him - can't say what they are yet!  In the end, he'll have a sewing machine and I have some nicely stitched items.   I spent some time planning my home assignment when I visit all of you who have been sponsoring my ministry. I will have a busy summer visiting the Upper Susquehanna Synod in Pennsylvania, and churches in New York, Florida, Texas, Hawaii, California, and my home state of Minnesota as well as taking a continuing education class in Chicago. When I come to your church, I will fill you in on what the Holy Spirit has in mind for me next! Please keep the people of Phebe and Liberia .in your prayers and please mention me by name. I need your prayers and support to do what needs to be done. Rev. John Lunn May 2008 Greetings from your missionary at Phebe Hospital in Liberia! The census taker came to my house and conducted a 35 minute interview. I didn't know how to answer the question of what tribe I belonged to. Maybe I ought to have said Aaron - the priestly tribe of Israel? After he left, I remembered doing a genealogy search years ago and tracing my family back to the tribe of Judah. I will have to track down the census taker and amend my form! A psychiatrist from Massachusetts General came to Phebe. He's in Liberia to look into the country's mental health needs, and we talked about the need to train RNs and LPNs in mental health needs and to eventually have a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner program with back-up by psychiatrists and psychologists. We even talked about a radio call-in show where people could learn some basics about mental health. I finally got the three required bids for the water project and have hopes that some progress will be made before I leave for my home assignment. When I got the bids, I had to scan them so they could be emailed. One was 17 pages and one was two pages! Why the difference? Lots of repetition. I had a visit from a Danish engineer who turned out to be a big help on the water project. His parents were missionaries in Liberia and he lived on the Phebe campus so knew it as a 13 year old explorer. He had some good, clear suggestions, especially on the placement of the two new wells that will supply the water. I had a little "water project" of my own - I put some clothes into the washing machine and went off to do some work, When I came back, there was sudsy water all over the floors in the bathroom, kitchen, pantry, and laundry room! A small towel hanging on the laundry sink had fallen in and blocked the drain. Before we could get that flood dried up, it started raining like crazy and my porch got soaked too! One of my links to the rest of the world is gone now - my satellite radio. The satellite is being upgraded and so will be out of commission for a year or so. I miss it.   My backup was my MP3 player on which I could play podcasts of favorites from the Internet, but my MP3 player died! I was able to order one to be hand delivered by a volunteer nurse who was on her way to Liberia. I have a mouse in my house.  I made the mistake of taking a cookie into my bedroom at bedtime and so the mouse followed me. That was his mistake because now I am on the alert! I got new latches for the kitchen cupboard doors - I am hoping he will not know how to operate the new latches and will become frustrated and go home to the swamp! Then, I am sure, another mouse will come up and try his or her luck as there is a never ending supply of mice in the swamp. The solution will be to block all the holes that let them in from the outside. Easier said than done! I spent a weekend at Curran, the other Lutheran hospital, in Zorzor, and on Sunday morning I preached at St. John's. There are no fans in the Altar area where the pastors sit and it was so hot! The text was the post-resurrection walk on the road to Emmaus when  - as in the other times Jesus appeared, no one recognized him just by seeing him. I quoted the passage from 2 Corinthians - "We walk by faith, not by sight." This has certainly been the case for me during my time here in Liberia. It has taken a lot of faith since progress is not easily seen. I know your prayers have bolstered my faith - please keep them coming. Please mention me by name and also pray for the people of Liberia. Thank you. Rev John Lunn June 2008 Greetings to all my supporting congregations! This past month started with an anonymous virus and ended with one that has a familiar name - shingles! The first virus had me under the weather for a few days, and the last, I had diagnosed by two medical people who were over for dinner - a nurse and an OB doctor - and they diagnosed me and made sure I got started on an anti-viral medication right away. The Mercy Ship, which donated the anti-viral medicine to Phebe, was also here to offer a consult from an ophthalmologist on the possible eye involvement. I will need to visit them a few times before I leave for monitoring. One the plus side, it was mango (locally referred to as plum) season in Liberia and that always makes me happy! And we are making progress on the water project. We chose a contractor and are trying to make the necessary arrangements to get the pumps we need shipped over. Nothing is easy here. On the lighter side - a friend interviewed for a management position on the Mercy Ship.  All positions on the ship are volunteer positions. Each volunteer, whether short or long term is responsible for room and board and some other costs. I told him my one concern would be sharing a berth with 5 to 7 other people long term. I jokingly suggested that in the interview he tell them that he had a wife and two kids.  Then he would borrow a wife and two kids for a few weeks to establish the story.  Then he starts making excuses. “I think they’re in the cabin - took a little trip to town - home to visit mother” and so forth.  That way, he’d get his own room. Well, in the interview he told them my suggestion! It was quite an icebreaker and they told him that he’d have his own room and bathroom! My job as hospital administrator doesn’t just require me to wear a lot of hats. It requires me to wear any hat that is lying around with no one else to put it on! I have to make sure everyone who needs Internet access has it, I troubleshoot and fix the computers, I track down parts for whatever machine is not working that day, I try to fix what is broken and not break anything else in the process, I host, I cater, I run errands and pick people up at the airport - generally I just do whatever needs to be done. My background as a nurse helps sometimes and my background as a pastor always helps. Being my father’s son helps me with fixing things - he was the pastor/fixer and I sometimes feel he is cheering me on as I solve a problem or repair something that’s broken. If you thought I would not be mentioning the generator this month, you were wrong! The new big one has problems that required the South Dakota manufacturer to send a technician to Phebe to work on it. Possibly the longest house call they have ever had to make. Our current volunteer doctor is a Dane called Niels. He has been an OB/GYN for more than 40 years, yet Liberia managed to provide new experiences. We had a baby born with a cleft lip and palate and thanks to the Mercy Ship, the baby will be able to have the necessary surgery and the parents will get help learning to feed the baby until that surgery can happen.  In Denmark he would turn the baby over to the Neonatology Specialist. We are working on establishing a dental clinic here at Phebe and I have been looking into getting equipment so that if we get volunteer dentists, they will have something to work with. Global Health Ministries has a Dental Committee and they will be helpful. I will be leaving Liberia soon - the 18th of June. My itinerary takes me to Pennsylvania and on to Chicago, to New York and Florida, home to Minnesota and then to Texas and Hawaii and California  before coming back to Minnesota for my nephew's wedding. After that I will be off to India to begin a new ministry there. I will also be spending a couple of months a year in Liberia, working with Phebe and Curran Hospitals. During these weeks I will be in your churches and I look forward to meeting all of you and telling you more about my work in Liberia. Please remember me in your prayers as I travel - those prayers are what keep me going.                                       Rev. John S. Lunn Greetings from your sponsored missionary who is somewhere in the United States - soon to be at a church near you! July News After spending the first half of June trying - with varying degrees of success - to finish up projects and tie up loose ends - I left Liberia on June 18th and flew from Monrovia to Brussels and then to New York City where I picked up a rental car and drove to Pennsylvania for the Upper Susquehanna Synod Assembly. What was I thinking - driving after such a long flight across the ocean? I don't know, but it went well. I was given time to speak to the Assembly about my work in Liberia and also conducted a workshop. There are a lot of folks in the Upper Susquehanna Synod who have been to Liberia or know a lot about it as they have been a long time sister synod to the Liberian Lutheran Church. After the Assembly, I preached at St. Luke's in Williamsport PA on Sunday morning and then drove back to New York, spent the night a the home of a seminary friend, got my favorite egg and cheese sandwich, and caught a plane for Chicago on Monday. In Chicago, I met with my new boss as well as the man who will be the Regional Representative for Development. He'll be living in Chennai which is not too far from where I will be based in Vellore so we will probably work together a lot. On Wednesday, I began a course that will accredit me to be a "trainer of trainers" in palliative care nursing. This will be part of what I will be doing in India. The first week and a half of July I will be back in New York preaching at supporting churches United Lutheran and Advent Lutheran, and then on to Trinity Lutheran in St. Petersburg, Florida. From there I go to my home church in Milaca Minnesota to preach at Zion Lutheran where I first climbed into the pulpit at age two to stand behind my father. My sister has booked me into Zion's WELCA and Senior Moments gatherings as well, so I will keep busy. After Milaca, it's back to Chicago for several more meetings,  the Summer Missionary Conference and then back to Milaca again for a few days before preaching at Zion Lutheran in Buffalo Lake MN the first Sunday in August. That will be my July. Please continue to keep me in your prayers as I travel from one city to the next, preaching at a different Lutheran church nearly every Sunday. It's a whole different kind of busyness than I have known over the past two years in Liberia, but it does come with electricity and running water 24/7! Amen to that! August, 2008 Greetings to my sponsoring churches! I have been in the US for a month and a half now - long enough to get used to having the lights work any time of day or night and having my computer work whenever I want to use it! I mentioned training to train sessions in Chicago last time - the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium course was good and they have provided me with the materials I'll need to use this course in India. I hope to get some of their instructors to come to India for the initial course presentation. They said they’d be on 24 hour call for Hawaii - guess I need to make India sound more like Hawaii! After the classes in Chicago were over it was back to New York for me and preaching at Mt Vernon Lutheran Church which is on the campus of a Lutheran retirement center. After worship, the WELCA hosted an indoor picnic and I spoke and answered some good questions. The next Sunday I did short presentations at Advent Lutheran and during the week between those Sundays, I got together with old friends from my seminary and working days and visited favorite eating places in New York City. After NYC came St. Petersburg, FL, and lunch with their seniors’ group - Pairs and Spares - preaching on Sunday and a presentation after a community meal. They booked me into a lovely small hotel that was run like a bed and breakfast. It had antique touches and WiFi in the lobby for my computer - a nice mix of old and new. Then it was home to Milaca MN where I stayed at my sister’s house. She really worked me the week I was there! I spoke at Zion’s Senior Moments group, the WELCA meeting, the Thursday evening service and the Sunday morning service. I had to leave to drive to Chicago right after worship - morning meetings to attend. In Chicago I met with my bosses and other people involved and interested in Liberia’s needs as well as India’s. I also had a chance to get together with a couple of old friends in the area. After a couple of days in Chicago it was off to Kenosha, WI, for the Summer Missionary Conference. There were 100+ mission personnel, returning, and new missionaries, and families and local staff staying in the college dorm rooms there. There was a lot of practical information, great discussions, new ideas, good music, and wonderful worship services. I will finish off July with a couple more synod meetings in Wisconsin and Illinois and then a drive back to Milaca for some medical appointments and dental work. August begins with a trip to Buffalo Lake, MN,  to preach the first Sunday. Even though I am “home” now, please continue to keep my name in your prayers. It is a different kind of work here, but I need the strength your prayers bring. May God continue to bless you as he has blessed me.

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