Very early on my mission partner contracted malaria. Years later with overseas mission experience a plenty, malaria was just “one of those things” you were careful to avoid, but dealt with when needed. But the first time…the sage wisdom of experience was not available.

While in mission training, we had a course based on the book “Where there are no doctors” (or so similarly titled). As the book title indicates it was how to deal with all manner of illness and injury in distant and tropical settings. Beyond the binding wounds, bracing broken limbs, and soothing fevered brows, the book when into treatment of parasitic infections, worm invasions, and a whole host of incidents which had the effect of causing one to think twice about mission. But in the here and now, we were in the field far from a hospital, but not too far from a clinic run by Italian religious sisters. It seemed like an oasis in the midst of our worries and concerns.