A War Zone

What makes missionaries serve in a war zone?

The headline from a local Kashmir newspaper reads: \”2018 deadliest year for Jammu and Kashmir in the decade.  586 people — including 160 civilians — were killed in 2018.\”

John Bishop Memorial Hospital is in the center of southern Kashmir in Anantang, the region\’s second largest city. The first time I visited the hospital, it was like visiting a peaceful oasis in a wasteland of conflict. Outside the walls of the hospital there were paramilitary and police forces with machine gun pill boxes, and armored Jeeps filled with soldiers to protect the city from militants trained in Pakistan in the name of Islam. But inside the peaceful compound, we sat under a large leafy tree drinking tea and talking with Dr. Sarah—the hospital\’s director—and her staff. We learned a little history about the hospital and how it received its name.

In 1888, Mrs. Isabella Bird—the widow of Dr. John Bishop— traveled to Srinagar where she found Dr. Fanny Butler. Dr. Butler one of England’s pioneer women doctors, working among the women of the Kashmir Valley without a hospital as a base. Through Bird’s generosity a small hospital was built in memory of her late husband, even though she called Kashmir the \”smelly hole.\”

Dr. Fanny was an amazing missionary doctor that loved the people of India and children. I was reading through a book about her life and her compassion for the people of Kashmir. As I thought about her and the word “compassion,” I looked up a good definition for it in Baker\’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology. And it was defined as, “That (human) disposition that fuels acts of kindness and mercy. Compassion, a form of love, is aroused within us when we are confronted with those who suffer or are vulnerable.”

I love those words, “aroused within us when we are confronted with those who suffer or are vulnerable.” What do we do when we are confronted with suffering or people who are vulnerable? 100 years ago, the babies had less than a 50% chance to live in Kashmir, but women like Dr. Fanny Butler and Dr. Sarah have shown compassion by loving the vulnerable and the suffering. Each day some 50 babies are born in the hospital and more than 30 nurses are taught to have compassion and deliver and care for babies.

We at SEAPC are partnering with Dr. Sarah, her son, and the staff to expand and provide more learning space for the nursing school at the hospital. This partnership will also maintain the existence of this place of compassion and light to south Kashmir. We are trusting the Lord for $185,000 USD in order to begin construction this year, so that the nursing school can continue to hold classes and the hospital can continue to show love in action and be the hands of Jesus.

Will you take the step of faith with us to see this new construction for an expanded nursing school?