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The Great Physician

Medical / Health, Partner, Professional Life, Transformation

2020 has been a very challenging time for the world. All of us have found ourselves in a different situation than we anticipated at the start of the year. Personally, it has brought a sudden halt to my work. Worldwide border restrictions have left me unexpectedly outside of my country of service. But along with the frustration, it has given me a chance to reflect on the past two years since I went overseas to work.

I had been living in an Asian city on a high plateau. After a period of language study, I started work as a doctor in the obstetrics and ultrasound departments of a local hospital. It was a really challenging start but I began to learn that to be accepted in a local context requires patience, humility and a healthy respect for the people and systems that surround you. As my relationships improved, so did the opportunities. Despite my basic language skills, I was invited to begin formal clinical teaching.

God had given me a vision to bring learning opportunities and up-to-date skills to people who lack access to them so that they, in turn, can better serve their own people. It is also my desire that healthcare workers may come to know Jesus, the Great Physician, and serve patients with the compassion that reflects His love for the world. As the initial months passed by, I found myself busy doing all the much-needed “good” things. Most of my days were occupied by acquiring general and medical language, preparing lessons and getting to know my colleagues and the culture of the hospitals. I was also learning about day-to-day clinical work in that context. As time passed by, I found little time to do anything else. While the response to my teaching was good, I had neither the time nor language ability to talk about the deeper issues of faith.

As I got more involved in the day-to-day working environment, a different set of challenges become apparent. Why is a stillborn baby treated with less care than a live birth? Why is life-saving treatment delayed while waiting for the family to make necessary phone calls to find the money to pay for it? Why is terminating a pregnancy the only option offered when certain maternal or fetal risks become known? Why is general decision-making done so differently to what I know as best-practice? Should we not treat a person, dead or alive, with or without money, with dignity? Should we not as healthcare workers give patients balanced advice regarding their choices? The underlying issues behind these questions are complex and I began to see that the foundations have something to do with how we view the value of a person. I believe that each person—each patient—is created in the image of God, valuable and priceless, and this affects how I treat them. But how can I show this to my colleagues?

One day, a lady doctor whom I had been working with asked me if I was someone with faith. I was surprised with this unexpected question as I had not yet had any direct conversations about matters of faith. I asked her the reason for her question. She had noticed an incident where a patient’s decision had upset me. From my reaction, she concluded that I must be someone with faith. We discussed the issues surrounding it, particularly the value of every life. That day I realised that I can begin by helping one person change one aspect of their worldview at a time, even though I’d like to change everything at once! This was exciting. It is possible, with the help of the Great Physician, to point others to Him through our daily choices and conduct.

We need evidence-based medical practices to improve patient outcomes. But just as importantly, we also need to model through our daily work the compassion and love that the Great Physician has for each life. Go, love the world, just as Jesus does.

Hannah is an obstetrician living and working in Asia.
Names have been changed.

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The problem of snakebite

Medical / Health, Creation Care, Professional Life

“Can we find out more about snakes?” That request from our physician consultant started me on an unexpected journey. After extensive research including interviewing over 34,000 people in the community, we now understand much more about human–snake conflict. Most importantly, we have learnt that snakebite requires a wholistic response.

A public health perspective
South Asia has approximately 70,000 snakebite deaths per year; there are approximately 100,000 deaths worldwide. Other impacts of snakebite include disability due to limb damage, social and mental health issues, and crippling economic costs from the loss of healthy income earners. In 2018, the World Health Organisation recognised ‘snakebite envenoming’ as a neglected tropical disease, enabling more funding and planning for prevention and better treatment.

A scientific–medical perspective
We need to understand the chemical actions of venom and the medical symptoms of snakebite. We also need to develop diagnostic tests and antivenom that are safe, effective and affordable.

An environmental perspective
Many people’s first suggestion is to kill snakes. This would lead to more rats, which eat more grain, leaving people without food. Understanding snakes’ place in the environment can help us modify interactions more appropriately. Snakebite is primarily a rural problem. Tropical regions are most impacted, with snakebite cases mainly coinciding with the monsoon season. In our area, bites tend to happen in the cool of the evening; snakes come out to hunt just when people are also more active outdoors. Lighting and torches will help people to see and avoid standing on snakes.

Understanding the geographical distribution of snake species is crucial to providing the relevant antivenom. Environmental management has a place in decreasing the incidence of snakebites. Advisors recommend sleeping with a well-tucked-in mosquito net; properly disposing of waste and securing grain storage to decrease rat and snake populations; and establishing buffer zones between grain crops and housing.

Personally, I have come to appreciate the amazing design of snakes. Their scale patterns are remarkably consistent within a species and some designs and colours are quite eye-catching.

An economic perspective
There is an inverse relationship between a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the incidence of snakebite deaths: lower GDP = more snakebite deaths. Rural areas usually have a weaker political voice and fewer health resources: antivenom is costly to produce and requires well-trained health workers to administer; protective footwear is expensive; ambulance services are deaths of farm animals cost farmers dearly.

A spiritual perspective
In South Asia, 70–90% of snakebite victims first present to a traditional healer. Many would not kill a snake because snakes are worshipped, and many believe a snake will only bite you if the gods allow it. Others believe the snake’s death will cause the snakebite victim to also die. This spiritual perspective has both religious and cultural aspects. Hindus, Buddhists, Animists and Christians all have snake-related beliefs.

The Bible has many literal and analogical references to snakes, and they are not all negative. Most often people think of the Genesis 3 serpent and its connection to Satan in Revelation 12, but we also have the bronze snake of Numbers 21:4–9 which people could look to and be healed. Then, John 3:14–15 says, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him”. These verses, which occur just before John 3:16 in Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus, need further exploration in parts of our world where snakes and snakebites are common and their connection with the spiritual is pervasive.

“Your kingdom come”
Often when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, I get to this and stop: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. What does God’s kingdom look like for human–snake interactions? Snakebite is a huge problem where I can only ever make a small impact. When I look at it from the perspective that God has given me an opportunity to be part of His Kingdom work, then I press on with the task He has given me to do.

Amelia has served in South Asia for more than 15 years, as a nurse, PhD student, and in building local
research capacity.

Name has been changed.

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The gift of a voice

Medical / Health, Partner, Professional Life, Transformation

Speech therapy is largely unheard of in Cambodia. Currently there are no speech therapists in the country who were trained at a Cambodian university. For the last 18 months, I have worked as Program Manager in a locally-run organisation working to grow speech therapy in Cambodia. We have a vision for a Cambodian university-qualified speech therapy profession that is able to provide high quality, culturally-relevant services to the estimated 600,000 Cambodians with communication or swallowing difficulties.

Establishing a new profession is a pretty daunting task! Curriculum writing, development strategy, clinical research and advocacy work all require connections and expertise beyond our little team of seven Cambodian staff and three foreign therapists. For a university course to be relevant to this context we need to document research and experience of using speech therapy strategies here. The purpose of this is to evaluate what approaches to speech therapy work in Cambodian culture and in the Khmer language, rather than simply transplanting models of practice from Western countries.

Cambodia has a long history of foreign therapists working in isolation for a few months or years, each investing in their small area but with little connection to government systems and no overall coordination. One of the first tasks for our organisation was to partner with others to establish the Cambodian Speech Therapy Network, with an aim to share resources and learning, and to be an orientation point for future speech therapists coming into the country.

Another early task was to establish a speech therapy clinic as a social enterprise. Two years in, our private clinic is booked out and needs more staff than we can find. This clinic brings opportunities to document therapy in Cambodia. Furthermore, also critical to ongoing success, the clinic helps to raise awareness and builds advocacy platforms with influential Cambodians whose families have benefited from therapy.

Currently, many children with disabilities are not in school even though by law and by government policy children with special needs are allowed to attend. Last year we designed and implemented a pilot project to coach rural primary and preschool teachers in their inclusion of children with communication difficulties within government schools. Beginning with disability-accessible schools from the government’s special education department, our staff worked to train the teachers in skills and knowledge that assists them in using teaching methods that helps all children learn. Presenting our results to the government was a tangible example of how speech therapy could help Cambodians. We ended the year with a formal partnership agreement with the Ministry of Education and had some very pleasing discussions with the University of Health Sciences as they plan a bachelor course in speech therapy to start in 2020.

Building on our national staff’s connections in the national disability and health sector, I’ve been able to bring my experience from 12 years of living and working in Cambodian poor communities along with my grassroots involvement in community-based disability rehabilitation work and establishment of community preschools and homework clubs. As a cross-cultural worker with longer-term experience, I’ve helped our local and foreign team members to understand each other better. In addition to my professional expertise in speech therapy, I’ve also drawn on Interserve’s values of partnership, servant leadership and valuing local expertise as together we grow our organisational culture and strategy.

While it’s not part of the employment criteria, it has been a surprise and encouragement to see how many staff members in the speech therapy project share the Christian faith. For the Christians within our staff it’s been easy to see God’s hand guiding our planning and his provision of resources and partnerships. It is such a joy to together celebrate God’s blessing, lament the injustice we encounter and advocate for systems that allow access to services for the poorest and most marginalised.

Ruth lives with her family in Cambodia. She works with a local NGO working to grow a Cambodian speech therapy profession.

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QA with a Doctor

Medical / Health, Other, Partner, Professional Life

Celeste is a doctor living and working in Asia.

What led you to pursue a profession in medicine?
I never had a ‘noble’ intention to do medicine. I did well at school, and it was a practical profession. I always wanted to serve people and medicine provides that. A lot of people might have thought about saving the world, but for me, it was just a good profession and I had the ability to get there.

How did you sense God calling you into cross-cultural mission?
I struggled with this. Did I really hear God asking me to mission? Some people have dreams. But I think God also works through how your brain works. So for me it was open opportunities. Having everything line up: time, ability to go, the desire to go. I find that if I respond to one thing, God will lead me to the next thing. You don’t suddenly arrive there. You just need to have the willingness first to see mission as a possibility.

You have a heart for your patients, but also for your professional colleagues.
We can serve our patients well if our hearts and our brains and our values are all connected. There is only so much that we can do for one patient, but if we can have an influence on the healthcare provider, how much more we can serve the patients over and above what we can do by ourselves.

If we hold the value of being God’s created ones, then it is reflected in how we treat patients. To be able to look after your colleagues – it changes how they see themselves and the value a patient has in their eyes.

How can you share Jesus’ love when there are professional boundaries to what you can say?
I don’t think that is any different whether you are in my country or in Australia. It is more a change in your thinking – to be Christ-like in the workplace. People read you and watch you. The dignity and kindness that you give to a person speaks volumes. As much as we have to open our mouths, the Holy Spirit is working in their hearts. I am seeing that more and more.

People will ask “Why are you so different to the other doctors?” As we grow in faith, something has to change about us. There is a time and place for you to speak and a time and place when you show Christ through what you do. He will be the one who provides an opportunity to talk about it.

Names have been changed.

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A different way of doing medicine

Medical / Health, Other, Life Lessons, Partner, Professional Life, Transformation

I was only fourteen when I decided I was going to become a medical missionary. I assumed I would be going to Africa – back then I thought all missionaries went to Africa.

But I was surprised to learn that female medical personnel were most needed in Muslim countries, where women must see a female professional and sometimes died when there were no women doctors to attend them.

So I ended up doing a medical student placement in South Asia. It was in a compound with high fences and armed guards. Women were not allowed outside the compound alone, and we had to cover every part of our body including our head. I remember old rusty beds, surgical gloves hanging out to dry after use, hot sweet tea and lots of kids with thin mums.

I started to think about wholistic health and doing medicine in a different way after I witnessed a nurse stomping a baby’s bottle under her foot. Her strange action made sense after I learned that bottle-feeding contributed to the illness of babies there. Big multinational companies sold their milk formulas cheaply and promoted bottlefeeding as the way of the West. However, many poor village women watered down the formula to make it last longer, depriving their babies of the nutrition necessary for growth. The lack of clean water and difficulty to sterilise bottles frequently led to infection and diarrhoea, then dehydration and death.

My brief time there taught me so much. I learnt the importance of preventative and community medicine. I learnt that even though curative hospital care was exhilarating and necessary, for me prevention is better than cure. I began to understand that people’s health is more than physical, and that it is bound to their poverty, education level, status, economic means, gender and religious beliefs. In short, I had begun to understand about wholism.

Another turning point in my Christian journey came when I had the opportunity to go on an evangelistic ward round. The hospital evangelist shared the gospel with patients’ relatives, who stayed to care for the patient. I thought it was great that the gospel was shared, but I was uncomfortable with the division for me: because of time constraints doctors mostly dealt with the physical and evangelists dealt with the spiritual. I didn’t want to restrict myself to being a doctor; I wanted to be a doctor sharing Christ and to teach from the Word of God. This was a good fit for the way God made me.

So I began full-time theological study while working part-time as a GP and completing my training. I was able to reflect on the interaction of the physical, emotional and spiritual. We are complex beings and being healthy is a complicated business.

When I applied to join Interserve, I was willing to go where I was most needed. That turned out to be Central Asia, where the church had grown exponentially since the fall of the Soviet Union, but leaders were young in years and young in faith. I quickly caught the vision of impacting communities in a wholistic and grassroots way, where they could be empowered to recognise and solve their problems with local resources. Our community development lessons covered many topics, such as physical health, income generation, agriculture, emotional issues and moral values like honesty and forgiveness.

Most of the communities we worked with knew we were followers of Jesus, and in time, through interaction, they developed a more positive understanding of Christianity. We did this work not as a means to evangelise or plant churches, but because it is good in itself and demonstrates the love of Jesus. In many places around the world, however, the natural consequence of such wholistic community development is that, over time, new communities of faith begin.

These early lessons have shaped my work as an Interserve Partner for the last 22 years. When there is harmony between people and God (the spiritual dimension), among people (the social dimension), within the person (the emotional dimension) and between people and their environment (the physical dimension), we have wholistic health. As Christians we work to show that Jesus is Lord of all and has reconciled all things in heaven and earth to Himself (Colossians 1:15-20). That’s wholism.

Lyn is Interserve’s Regional Director for East Asia and South Pacific. She lives in Australia with her family.

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Listening with respect

Medical / Health, Partner, Relationships, Transformation, Women

I see myself more as a Jack-of-all-trades than a specialist. I spent more of my working life raising children than in my profession of medicine, returning to family practice and then counselling as they grew up.

In my new country, I work in ‘support’. I do not run any projects myself. ‘Support’ for me may mean collating clinical data, making cushions, dolls and straps for disability work, applying for grant funding, updating health training materials, training locals in counselling and offering child development and parenting support. There is no ‘ordinary week’ for me. Some work is fun, some engaging and exciting, some frankly boring but necessary.

There are highs and lows. Here is one low from the start of my work: I was finally going to do something useful and I was excited! After a year of cultural and language learning, I was going to assist a local NGO with health promotion and a women’s shelter. I had carefully prepared my first training presentation and I arrived twenty minutes early, ready to set up and start on time. The room was in use, so I waited. With five minutes to go, I showed my face at the window. When it was time to start, I knocked on the door. A colleague came out. She said that the person before me was still talking. I waited for forty-five minutes. The team then came out and asked me to give my presentation another day, as now they did not have time for my training!

We now live in a relationship-based culture, not a time and task-based culture. I knew ‘flexibility’ was important for living and working here. I just didn’t know how flexible. Your duty is the person in front of you and other commitments go on hold until they leave. I have learned to call the day before I run training, and to schedule sessions at the start of the day so it starts approximately on time. That is, after the mandatory relationship-building cup of tea and chat.

I have continued to work with the same wonderful ladies for the last five years. They sat patiently while I attempted to teach in a new language. It was a relief to all of us when they offered to allow me to train in English, with one of them translating. They always encourage me and tell me how much they value me, which makes it hard to get good feedback for improvement! I think it took three years before my health training took root. I think it also took about that amount of time before they really trusted me.

Here are some of the highs:

I was asked to work as a counsellor in a medical clinic. It is always challenging seeing people in very difficult circumstances when you are unlikely to see them again. What could I really do? I was very humbled when lady after lady shared their experiences of difficulties with husband or children. They entered sad and left smiling. What had I done? There was really no advice I could give them, no change in their circumstances. It was simply important to them that both I and my Christian translator listened and valued them. I encouraged them. So many of these ladies only get abuse and blame. To be listened to with respect and cared for was a new experience for them.

The ladies running the women’s shelter asked for training to help the children who had escaped abusive situations with their mothers. I explained that although the children will probably later need counselling, the first and most important thing is to provide them with a safe and nurturing environment, provide good food and clothing and to cater for their educational needs. I also gave them training on basic child development and parenting skills. They were very grateful and said they found this training helpful even in their own families. They also realised that their work was just as important as what professionals did.

Nothing happens by chance. God uses all our experiences, and I am grateful for everything he is doing through my retirement!

Marian and her husband are doctors, serving long-term in a remote part of Central Asia.

Names have been changed

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Working for childrens health

Medical / Health, Partner, Professional Life, Transformation

The thought of serving our Father by using professional skills came to me early in life. Growing up as a mission kid gave me a perspective of what makes life interesting that was different from that of many of my peers in my passport country.

When I applied for medical school, my main thought was that, as a doctor, I could practise all over the world. I felt that ‘tent making’ was something that suited me and it was what I felt led to do. When I came close to finishing my specialisation as a paediatrician many years later, ‘all over the world’ had narrowed down to South East Asia; it just seemed more efficient to use my skills in an area where I was used to the climate and culture. Then I heard through a friend of a project in a neighbouring country to where I grew up—and I’ve been here ever since.

In short, my part-time job is to participate in a team that works as a mobile clinic to children’s homes. We do health check-ups for each child at the homes we visit: we measure height and weight, check their teeth, give deworming tablets and vitamins, as well as treat whatever conditions that need treatment. We also run courses to train the workers at the children’s homes in basic hygiene, nutrition and healthcare for children. We reach 4500–5000 children each year as we pay yearly visits to about 150 children’s homes, some twice a year.

The reason there are so many children’s homes in this big city is that many children are sent there from more remote areas to get an education. The parents, who are often quite poor, make the hard choice of sending their children far away from their family in the hope that they will have a better future through education. They are mostly from ethnic minorities and do not always have access to schooling. Most of them come to the city at age nine or ten, some are older but some come as young as four years. Around 20% of the children are true orphans. Most of the homes are run by believers who teach the children to follow the advice of our Father’s book. In the few minutes I see each child, I try to give them my full attention and make them understand that they are precious and loved by our Father. Being healthy means they can thrive in so many areas of life.

Having a part-time job means I have a lot of time at home too—time to spend with our son after school and also to be available for neighbours to drop in for a chat. A frequent seasonal activity is to pick guavas from our tree to the delight of some of the children from the local squatter area. By being visible in the neighbourhood, using the local shops, going for walks in the area and supporting the little meeting place for fellow believers, we hope to be light and salt in our area.

My expectation that I would use my professional skills full time to help people in this country has not become a reality yet, but I am using my skills part time and have asked our Father for further guidance. I had been frustrated during this long wait until I learned a lesson for this period of my life: to value ‘being’ instead of only appreciating and emphasising what we are ‘doing’. During this season I have been reminded to rest in Him, be a branch on the vine, and worship Him through all circumstances.

Jasmine has lived and served in South East Asia for 12 years.

Names have been changed.

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Two sons and a girl

Medical / Health

“This lady lived with her husband who was sick, her two sons, a daughter-in-law … and a girl.”

Alarm bells started ringing as I read this sentence in the case study, and I felt my emotions begin to rise. Who was this ‘girl’? Why were the sons and the daughter-in-law described with relational words and the ‘the girl’ simply tacked on the end with only her gender noted? Was she a daughter? Was she a ‘slave’, a bonded house help?

I was checking the English of case studies which the Community Health team were sending to their funders, as I am sometimes asked to do, in order to help improve the staff members’ English. This case study involved microfinance to provide the older lady in the house with an income to prevent the family going into debt. However, in this instance I wasn’t concerned about the lady—I was concerned for ‘the girl’. When I checked out the case study, I found it had first been written in Hindi by one of the Community Health staff and then translated into English by another member of staff who had some English.

This day I wanted to do more than just improve their English; I wanted to point out how this choice of language was signifying the lack of value of a girl. I spoke to the original Hindi writer and, sure enough, the Hindi words had been exactly translated into English. It was so ingrained in culture that neither the author nor the translator of the story had picked up its significance. This really disturbed me because, while the team were trying to improve the situation of one female, they had completely missed the issue of the other.
Then I called for the person who had written the Hindi version, to ascertain who this girl was. She was indeed the daughter of the family. Something almost boiled inside me. Why was the ‘daughter-in-law’ described relationally but the family’s own daughter was simply ‘a girl’.

Language is powerful, and here the use of a small word captures the situation of so many ‘girls’ in rural South Asia. They are not counted as part of the family because, as soon as possible, the family will give her in marriage to another family. In a sense she is a bonded house-help, who will cause her family more debt as they send her to another family.
The lady who had attempted the translation caught my train of thought and we had a very interesting discussion on the value of girls. My prayer is that she will continue to stand up for many more ‘girls’ who need to know they can be daughters of the Great Father and the King of Kings.

Most of us slip into the mould of our own culture so easily. People who come from outside our culture help us recognise things about our culture we haven’t seen before. Paul and Peter both speak about the need to shape our lives by the Kingdom of God (Rom 12: 2–3; 1 Pet 1:13–17). We need to take the principles of God’s Kingdom and hold them up as the measuring stick to the way we currently live.

It may be tempting to think our culture is better than someone else’s but, in the end, all cultures are held accountable to God’s Kingdom principles. When we step outside our comfort zone and interact with another culture, we often have the opportunity to see things in that culture that need to be redeemed. But beware: you may also be challenged to critically examine your own!

Amelia has served in South Asia for more than 15 years. She currently works in building research capacity for a variety of healthcare workers.
Names have been changed.

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Patience and professionalism

Medical / Health

We came to this country later in our careers. Over the last five years our focus has been on childhood disability, and now our clinical work, teaching and research and our learning from these areas help provide input into national health policy.

We’re still asking the same questions we were at the outset. Is our work relevant and appropriate to the people we’re serving? Is it building up the existing local services? How do we judge the outcomes and what work is most effective?

As an indication of the value placed on our work, the government has given us several awards this past year. We are now being invited to assist with training at government hospitals and rehab establishments with the blessing of the health minister and other key paediatric health professionals.

How did we get to this point? By growing relationships, building credibility, being consistent in our work and generous with our time. Part of the journey has been accepting payment, which is culturally important as work that is paid is valued.

Our data collection has found that severe neonatal jaundice has a significant impact. By improving this area alone, a particular type of disability in children could be reduced by as much as a third (more than 500 children each year!). I realised that although local people could have collected this data, they do not yet have the training to interpret it. Wisdom is needed to avoid shaming anyone as we present these findings at national forums and to local health professionals. Instead we highlight ways local professionals can reduce disability and improve longer term outcomes for those with a disability. One leading doctor said I presented difficult information, but in a nice way. Another doctor was shocked to learn this information, but it motivated him and others to work within their systems to bring about change.

I was invited to write national guidelines on disability management for people with this condition. Patience has been important. The passage of the document through all stages to approval took more than a year and involved addressing sensitivities about some local treatments. This process has resulted in deeper understandings of the importance of evidence-based medicine and the guidelines are now a Health Ministry document. The head paediatric neurologist endorses all the work I am willing to do and has asked me to assist in training his junior medical staff.

There have been some key issues in bringing about change that will have long-term impact on this country. Fostering key relationships has been crucial. Linking with existing government agencies and other NGOs has allowed many local professionals and key people to be rewarded for our work with them. Patience and respect has helped them to accept change because we have had to challenge their local thinking on therapies that are not evidence based.

We recently spent two weeks at a camp for children with disabilities. The journey took several stages: first, six hours by road to the capital, then an extended 13–hour trip in a loaded minibus over three mountain passes to our final destination. We did clinical consultations with over 100 children, their families and local medical professionals. I was able to reassure an anxious mother that her son’s condition would not deteriorate. She could give up her vigilance and let the boy be as active as she liked.

Bringing real change to this nation is what our Father is about, and we are part of that process. Matthew 5:48 (NEB) says, “There must be no limit to your goodness as your heavenly Father’s goodness knows no bounds”. Openly sharing faith is banned but bringing goodness is not and many conversations are occurring about who we are and why we are here. We like it: it is challenging but it is good.

Greg and Marian are doctors serving in a remote part of Asia.

Names have been changed.

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Seeing the invisible

Medical / Health

When I first arrived in the city that I live in, one of the things that struck me was that I did not see many women. As I walked along the main road outside my house, I saw children going to school, some of them carrying their own little plastic chairs for school over their heads; I saw men greeting each other with warm handshakes and long embraces; I saw shopkeepers (men) sitting in their shops waiting for customers; I saw bakers (also men) baking bread in ovens that were set in walls—but hardly any women.

In preparing to come to Central Asia, I had read many books about the country and its culture. Again and again, I read that its women were oppressed, victims of domestic violence and systemic abuse. My first impressions of this country seemed to prove these notions right. Women are hidden behind the walls that surround their homes, and when in public many are “invisible” as they are covered by veils their husbands or fathers force them to wear.

Or are they?

First impressions can be deceiving. As I started to get to know the women here, I began to understand that they are only “invisible” if we do not take the time to see them. I have met women who are juggling full-time jobs and raising a family; women who are furthering their education by studying at university after a full day’s work; still others who are working hard at home raising their children, caring for their families, and making life decisions for their family members such as who their sons can or cannot marry. These women are by no means invisible to their families or communities. It was not until I lived life alongside these women that I was able to see them … their hopes, dreams, joys and sorrows.

Interserve’s approach to ministry through wholistic mission resonates strongly with me. As I learn more about wholistic mission, I am beginning to understand that it’s not just about how we can use our professional skills in ministry, but rather how we can use our whole life for ministry. If that’s the case then, as I grapple with what wholistic mission looks like in my life here, I should not just be asking myself how I can use my professional skills for Kingdom work, but also how I can use my roles as wife, mother and woman to connect with other women.

So I do what only a woman can do in this culture. I spend time in the kitchen with friends who want to learn how to bake cakes and share stories as we eat together. I attend women-only parties to celebrate an engagement or a birth and eat, laugh and dance with them. I sit with a lady who has lost her child and cry with her and pray for God’s comfort to be upon her. I listen to a woman whose husband is sick and has lost his job and pray with her as she worries about her family’s future. I sit around with the girls in my neighbour’s house and in my conversation with them I tell them a gospel story.

In short, I share life with the women around me and, as I do, the veil of invisibility quickly falls away as we connect as people. The women of Central Asia are not invisible but, in a gender-segregated society, it takes a woman to truly see them and then to point them to One who sees them fully.

The author is a psychologist serving long-term in Central Asia.

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