About fifteen years ago, the Lord moved Pastor Leslie James and his congregation to build a church
among sugar cane fields in a rural area north of Durban and establish the William Carey School of
World Mission to prepare missionaries to serve in their country of origin. The school now trains about
forty missionaries a year. This year the students are from Malawi, Zambia, South Africa, Ethiopia,
Tanzania, Pakistan and Lesotho. They come for one to three years of training depending on their prior
preparation. Members of the Global Mission Centre church and other friends of the school offer the
resources needed to feed, house and care for these missionary scholars. Local pastors, professionals
and missionaries along with occasional US and UK colleagues make up the teaching staff and provide
the course materials. We have trained 45 William Carey students and staff in heart and artery disease
prevention and risk factor screening.
In Africa, obesity, strokes, heart disease, diabetes and kidney disease are becoming more and more
common. Church members equipped with simple and relatively inexpensive medical instruments and
basic practical skills can detect early disease and promote lifestyle change. God offers opportunities to
share the Gospel in word and deed in the setting of the loving and caring relationships that are
established through this type of health ministry
We have had a moving response from our students, some of whom have been very involved with
HIV/AIDS work back home in their home countries. Some had never seen a blood pressure cuff before.
They now have practical skills in assessing for heart and artery disease risk factors. One of our students
in the class is Pastor Akafekwa from Zambia. He described two miraculous healings a few years ago of
paralysis from strokes that his doctors told him were related to his untreated high blood pressure. He
committed his life to Christ after the healings but never took his blood pressure medicine. During our
course, he learned that his blood pressure was high. He was started on blood pressure medication and
as a result his pressure is now normal.
We have been invited to work with local doctors and nurses in these countries to set up similar training
through the local churches. Our goal is to develop training materials and methods so that medical
missionaries as well as local doctors and nurses can use our materials to train church members. These
opportunities to teach in a variety of settings allow us to field test our training materials so that they can
be more effective and practical.
I am now teaching the students from William Carey on HIV testing and home based care to persons with
HIV related infection. Some of our students are eager to work with us as we write HIV/AIDS training
materials tailor made for church based ministries. They challenge us to write from a biblically based
perspective, in combination with clinical insight. We are listening carefully to our students as they share
their thoughts and experiences.
In Christ,
Rick Gutierrez
Pastor Akafekwa measures the blood pressure of William Carey staff member Paul M.
