the Guilzon family wants to "shrine mercy on people crying out in the desert"



FEURA BUSH – For the people of the Rukwa Valley in southwestern Tanzania, basic health care is only available one day per month.

Doctors and nurses are flown in from the neighboring city of Mbeye. The flights are scheduled through the end of 2006.

After that, there are no plans for medical assistance in the area, until a New Scotland family arrives in early 2008.

Mark and Jodi Guilzon, of Feura Bush, will build the first medical clinic in the Rukwa Valley, in one of the world’s poorest countries.
"We’re shining mercy on people crying out in the desert," Mr. Guilzon said of the clinic’s name – Mercy Medical.

The Guilzons will sell most of their possessions – and their New Scotland home where they have lived for nearly nine years – and move to Africa. Their four children – Katlynn, Benjamin, Daniel, and Grace – will go with them.

Mr. Guilzon is a physician’s assistant and will be trained in tropical medicine by Dr. Mwaipola, a Tanzanian physician in a neighboring town, who invited Guilzon to the Rukwa Valley. Dr. Mwaipola will be the supervising physician for Mercy Medical.
Mrs. Guilzon said that her role, at least initially, will be "getting a family of six adjusted to a Third World country." She will also home-school her children.
The Delmar Full Gospel Church is sponsoring the Guilzons. Mercy Medical will be funded through support of "people who see the need and want to contribute," Mrs. Guilzon said.

Patients to the clinic will be required to pay a minimal fee, she said, explaining that giving away goods or services for free creates a dependency on Americans. The money will go toward the costs for medications and supplies, she said.

The Guilzons will leave in July of 2007 for the Crossroads Discipleship Training School in Hawaii run by the group, Youth With a Mission. They will be there for six months – studying for four months and traveling for two months.

They will come back to New York to spend some time with family before they fly to Iringa, Tanzania, where the Guilzons will learn to read, write, and speak Swahili.

The family will then move to the remote area known as the Rukwa Valley. The valley is 2,600 feet above sea level, and surrounded by escarpments that rise over 5,000 feet from the valley floor.

The valley has no phones, no electricity, no running water, and travel into and out of the valley is very difficult, Mrs. Guilzon said.

The people there face many diseases common in Third World nations. Malaria, typhoid, cholera, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and HIV are prevalent, she said.
The valley is an area where the options for medical care are visiting a "witch doctor" or walking for days to reach the nearest clinic, Mrs. Guilzon said.
"Witch doctors" believe that it is healthy for the patient to bleed out, she said. "They believe that, when they bleed, the evil spirits are leaving them," she said.

"The need is huge"

The Guilzon family made a month-long trip to Africa in 2005, visiting Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. They visited Mrs. Guilzon’s parents in Uganda, and a family friend in the Rukwa Valley.

While there, Mr. Guilzon met Dr. Mwaipola. Mr. Guilzon returned this past May for two weeks, when he participated with Dr. Mwaipola in a fly-in clinic.

The flight is the equivalent of a six-hour drive, Mr. Guilzon said. The clinic was held all day, with the doctor, the physician’s assistant, and two nurses providing care. They saw about 120 people.
"We had to tell people to go back home until next time," Mr. Guilzon said. "It was heart-wrenching to see the look on people’s faces when we had to turn them away."

They saw people ranging in age from 2 weeks old to 65 years old with ailments like malaria, giardia, dysentery, cholera, and many sexually transmitted diseases, Mr. Guilzon said.
"We did what we could with what we had," he said.
In the Rukwa Valley, "the need is huge," his wife said.

Ted Rabenold – a friend of Mr. Guilzon since college – has been doing missions work with his family in Tanzania for 15 years; the last five have been in the Rukwa Valley.

Mr. Rabenold works with Grace Ministries International, teaching Evangelism, church planning, and community development. When the Guilzons arrive, they will also partner with Grace Ministries International.

Mr. Rabenold built a dirt landing strip to help facilitate travel between the remote valley and the rest of the country, Mrs. Guilzon said.

The Rabenolds have been working to improve agriculture and teach skills such as furniture-making, Mr. Guilzon said.

Mrs. Guilzon’s parents – Paul and Jean McFate – have been doing missionary work in Uganda for 12 years. The McFates help to establish mobile discipleship schools. They work with International Accelerated Missions, headquartered in Berne. They now have over 200 schools in Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, and Sudan.

Mrs. McFate told The Enterprise that she and her husband spend eight months every year in Uganda and then come home for four months, "so we can hug our 15 grandchildren."
Four of her grandchildren will be living a bit closer for those eight months of the year spent in Africa, she said, and she thinks it is "really wonderful."
The children really impressed their grandmother with how well they fit in with the African children, "even though they didn’t speak the language," McFate said.
"They weren’t shy at all," she said.

"You can’t live in fear"

Mrs. Guilzon said that, on the small plane the family took as they left Tanzania, while the noise was too great to talk to one another, her husband received a vision of a medical clinic. Although, the family had not made any decisions about moving there, or building a clinic, Mr. Guilzon drew the floor plan, she said.

The decision was made final, she said, after each of their children, one by one, came to them, saying the family should move there.
"Each child came to us and said that they had either had dreams or been thinking about Africa, and how we should move there," she told The Enterprise.
"We just really knew that God had directed our kids and put the family on the same page," she said.
The children are very excited about Africa, and, though they get sad and cry sometimes, Mrs. Guilzon said, "They’ve never rescinded."
"They’re not naïve to the fact of what they’re walking into," she said.

The Guilzon children were really impressed by the African children.
"They were always happy," Katlynn, who is 12, said. "They could keep a beat better than us," she added.

The Guilzon children were given handcrafted drums as a gift from the local people. As they demonstrated them for The Enterprise, they explained that each one is made from a hollowed tree trunk and covered with animal skin.
"They were very playful even though we couldn’t speak their language," said Daniel, who is 8 years old.
"It was like there was no language barrier at all," Katlynn said.

The children said that they found a boy named Ivan who was about 10 or 11 years old, who translated for them because he spoke English.
"They could at least speak more than two languages," Katlynn said.

Grace is the youngest. She is 7 years old. She said that, in Africa, they don’t have toilets, only holes in the ground.
"It’s going to be hard going to the bathroom," she said.

The children in Africa are very athletic, and many don’t wear shoes, so their feet are tougher than ours, Daniel said.

One thing that the Guilzons will miss, Daniel said, are the roads. They don’t have pavement in the Rukwa Valley, and the roads are pretty bumpy, he said.

The children agreed that they really liked riding on the roof of the four-wheel-drive vehicle they traveled in while in Africa.

The children brought with them a bag of toys, said 10-year-old Benjamin.

While visiting their grandparents in Uganda, the Guilzons brought the toys to a hospital for children.

Mrs. Guilzon said that women who bear a sick child are ostracized. The woman is automatically divorced from her husband, and the child is often killed. Many of these women take their sick children to this hospital, she said.

Many of the children suffered from hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, which would make the child’s head swell, she explained.
"It was freaky," Grace said. "Because what we were seeing was scary."

The Guilzon children all agreed that they were frightened when they saw the condition of the children in the hospital, but were happy to bring them toys.
They also agreed that, while in Africa, they ate a lot and, "The food was good."
Benjamin said that all the houses they visited had soda, bread, chicken, and soup. They handed out soda to foreigners, he said, because "we can’t drink the water."
One of the best things was learning new songs and dances, the children said, demonstrating the "Rachel dance," which they learned in Africa.

The traditional dance came about when a girl named Rachel, who was shy, wouldn’t come out and play with the other children. The dance tries to lure her out, Mrs. Guilzon said.
"It’s going to be a learning curve for me," she said of the adjustments she will have to make to life in the remote area of eastern Africa where the family will live.

The Guilzons will bring with them a solar-powered refrigerator and a wood-burning cook stove, she said.
"Certainly, as a mother, there are things I worry about," Mrs. Guilzon said. The wildlife can be very dangerous, but, she concluded, "You can’t live in fear."

Living a dream

Mrs. McFate told The Enterprise that both her daughter and son-in-law have had a strong desire to do mission work since they were children.

When Mrs. Guilzon was a child, her family lived for four years in a former Catholic convent owned by the church. The pastor did a lot of counseling, and often the family housed some of the people the pastor helped, Mrs. McFate said.
"We had a live-in ministry," she said.

Mrs. McFate cited examples of some of their houseguests – a young woman recovering from bulimia, a group of German exchange students, a girl from Colombia, and an Afghan refugee.
Her daughter would spend time teaching English to the Afghan boy while he was staying with them, Mrs. McFate said. "She would cut pictures out and ask him how to say it in his language," she said. She would then teach him the English word, Mrs. McFate said.

Mr. Guilzon grew up in Westerlo. His parents attended the same church as the McFates, and the families were friends.

Mrs. Guilzon said that she met her husband through the couple’s parents. They have been married for almost 14 years.
The Guilzons are unsure how long they will be in Africa. But, Mrs. Guilzon said, "We do know it is more long-term than short-term."
Their primary focus is to bring medical care to the Rukwa Valley, and to help educate the people there about nutrition and sanitation, she said. "The sky is the limit as far as the possibilities."
Mrs. Guilzon said that the people of the Rukwa Valley have been praying for a medical clinic. "We feel God wants to send us to answer their prayers," she told The Enterprise.

The Tanzanian government has asked for help, Mrs. Guilzon said. Towns donate land in order to get a missionary, she said.

The village of Kiwila has donated land where the Guilzons will build a house. A neighboring village, about 10 miles away, has donated 50 acres for the clinic, she said.

The local people have already hand-dug the foundation for the clinic, she said.

They have also planted a citrus tree farm, and dug a pond with a Tilapia fish nursery.
Most Africans plan for the day, Mrs. Guilzon said. "They are planning, which is really amazing," she said.

Although he doesn’t know where he and his family will be in 10 years, Mr. Guilzon hopes that the Tanzanians of the Rukwa Valley will one day be able to take over Mercy Medical themselves.
"I’m stepping out in obedience to what God is calling me to do," he said.