Just Love
Antanimora Clinic, a hub for community health work in southern Madagascar, was renovated with GHM’s help in 2024.
A WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) manual received with joy in rural Nigeria
Martin Luther, in his Preface to The Epistle to the Romans, wrote that good works naturally flow from faith ... faith “cannot but do good unceasingly ... it is impossible to separate works from faith.” So it is with love. Love - Jesus’ kind of love - cannot be separated from justice, where abundant life is possible for all people. Jesus never wavered in the priority he gave to those who were poor, hungry, sick, imprisoned, or a stranger. Throughout his life and still today, he calls us to love neighbors, bring healing into broken contexts, and offer forgiveness and restoration in the face of wrongdoing. Jesus’ love brings a measure of justice into this world that is so deeply scarred by injustice. Just Love.
Together with our partners, Global Health Ministries strives to follow Jesus in expressing Just Love around the globe. In October, 2024, the World Bank estimated that half of all Nigerians - more than 115 million people - were living in poverty. Many, especially in rural areas, have little access to essential services; only 27% of rural Nigerians were estimated to have access to electricity. This is true despite Nigeria’s status as Africa’s largest economy and one of the world’s leading oil producers. In this context GHM partners with the Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria (LCCN) for Just Love.
The anesthesia machine, quickly put to good use in Aira Hospital’s new OR, Ethiopia
In 2024, over 70,000 Nigerians in more than 80 rural villages received community-based health services including health education focused on sanitation (including toilets, handwashing, and access to clean water), maternal/child health, and methods to prevent malaria. A full year of this program was possible for the cost of only $1.25/per person. Thank God for this expression of Just Love.
In Madagascar in 2024, similar community-based care, including access to a Lutheran clinic, was brought to 409,160 people in rural areas across the nation. Just Love, done in Jesus’ name.
Just Love also looks like enhancing healthcare services for mission hospitals and clinics serving the underserved. Aira Hospital in Ethiopia partnered with GHM to purchase an anesthesia machine that allowed them to open an additional operating room in 2024. The impact of that piece of medical equipment is significant. Aira provides primary health services for about 600,000 people but it is also a referral hospital, serving a total population of 1.6 million. Lack of equipment meant the hospital’s surgeons often had to delay surgeries until the OR could be freed up. Empowering an additional OR is helping both the hospital, with the opportunity for increased revenue as they’re able to help more patients, and the patients themselves, with fewer long delays for both planned and emergency surgeries.
GHM scholarship recipient Isaac Canmu at Curran Lutheran Hospital, one of very few trained lab techs in northern Liberia
Enhanced health services in many nations, scholarships to grow the workforce of Christian medical professionals, and a consistent stream of medical supplies shipped from GHM to mission hospitals and clinics around the globe ... these efforts express Just Love because of your support, through financial gifts, prayer, and an astounding number of almost 20,000 hours of volunteer time in 2024!
In a world challenged by inequities, true love - Jesus’ kind of love - is inextricably linked with justice. Thank you for making Just Love possible!
