In a letter to our Dehonian Missionary Family, Sister Ksawera Michalska from Senegal writes about the renovation of the "Our Lady of Hope" clinic, for which we raised funds as part of the Advent "Empty Place at the Table" campaign.
Dear Benefactors,
I would love to inform you that on February 3 the big renovation of our clinic "Our Lady of Hope" finally started, and it happened with full steam. We were really looking forward to this moment, because the appearance of the buildings was quite bad and this must have affected our patients and us. Now our clinic is getting beautiful, and at a rapid pace....
On May 10 we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of our clinic, so this cheers up the staff to do more, and I trust they will make it in time.
During the year, many thousands of patients pass through our clinic. More than 30,000 people a year come in for consultations alone. Unfortunately, there are more and more malnourished children, and more and more with acute malnutrition.... Together, i.e. children with moderate and acute malnutrition, it is as many as several thousand cases a year. We nourish them and bring them out of this condition slowly, teaching the mothers of our young patients first, and so we put our emphasis on the formation of parents. Together with them we cook ordinary and nutritious soups, various "mash" from local vegetables, with flour we make from rice, corn, peanuts, beans and sugar. We spend a lot of money on powdered milk, which we mix with oil and sugar to make this mush, which is very nutritious. We do what we can to help these children, counting very much on God's help, which passes and comes through human hearts.
We also allocate a lot of funds for the treatment of AIDS patients, whom we have been taking care of for 25 years. Everything for them is free, because often these are mothers - widows with several children, who are themselves sick, and among the children, some also contracted the disease during pregnancy....
We also have many patients that we support while they are being treated in the hospital, when our help is not enough. Many are treated for free. There would be many stories here...
So in such a situation it was impossible for us to carry out the much needed renovation by ourselves, and so we sought help.
May our merciful Lord reward you with great generosity for such a tremendously important and necessary help for us, for our patients. God bless you all Dear Benefactors!
With prayer +
sister Ksawera Michalska OSU
Senegal
