Dear friends and partners in the Lord’s work at CEH,
As we approach the closing of another calendar year, we are grateful to God for His manifold blessings.
We are thriving with numerous new ministry avenues while maintaining our central mission, vision, and purposes in medicine, surgery, education, and evangelism/discipleship to His glory. This describes the parallel ministries of CEH's Child Evangelism Center, a new soccer field, and growth of Fresh Rosée School. The nursing school is moving forward, Hospice development is happening, medical staff are making improvements, and a potential collaboration with other missions organizations is emerging. We are blessed! Thank you again for your partnership in the Gospel. May we win Guinea for God!
May you and your family enjoy this season of gratefulness, the celebration of Christmas, and
anticipation of what God will guide us into in 2024.
Your brother in Christ,
Dwight E. Slater, MD
Parallel Ministries
The Child Evangelism Center (CEVEEN ) was dedicated in January and now hosts sports, a playground, crafts, and Bible story times for up to 90 children on Saturday mornings and on some afternoons. A young women’s development group meets each Friday afternoon teaching hand crafts, sewing, and personal moral principles from a Biblical perspective under the leadership of Elizabeth S. Our newly improved soccer field is used
by the MIAPE youth groups, hospital workers teams, the local community youths, and is one of the official fields hosting the Mamou city-wide tournament. Our pastor, Moise, oversees this to make it a physically safe and spiritually formative asset.
The Fresh Rosée School (FR) served 430 students last year and again
this fall. The elementary 6th grade graduates (65% passing) and the first class of 10th graders (60% passing) had the highest passage rates onto the next level of any schools in the Mamou region. The national average of students successfully passing these tests in other schools is only about 35%. This motivates parents to send their children to the FR school!
We are constantly seeking to improve facilities, curriculum, and
teachers. We just extended the hospital’s solar electricity and
water systems to the FR JH and CEVEEN and provided new toilets
there. We maintain two Bible classes in each of the classes
weekly at all levels. 95% of the students are of a Muslim background.
During the summer or winter breaks the FR classrooms
serve as sleeping accommodations (on the floor with mats) for
student youth camps while having access to the classrooms for
meetings, the playgrounds, soccer fields, and hiking in the surrounding
hills which are recreational highlights.
Major projects for 2024
As we come into the new year, we established several priority projects for 2024,
if the Lord allows:
• Internal fencing around the patient care areas of the hospital to exclude animals such
as sheep and cattle which still think that it is their pastureland. Sanitation and more
efficient care for patients will be promoted by this. 600 meters of fencing total cost of
$14,253 or $238/10 meters.
• Completion of the extension of external clinic adding six more consultation rooms
and the lower veranda serving as the passage to the pharmacy and waiting room.
Cost—$65,000.
• Duplex residence to serve longer term missionaries we expect to begin coming in the
next year. Cost—$75,000.
• Ward G for OB Gyn hospitalization (eight beds) with small maternity delivery area.
Cost—$45,000.
• Fixed x-ray table and wall mount for improved x-ray, installed in x-ray department.
Cost—$45,000.
• There are also lower cost special projects for those whom God moves to accomplish
these for His glory. These are listed on the Donation portion of the CEHGuinea.org
website: educational kits for FR students ($25), 10 meter portions of above internal
fencing ($238), gifting to the charity care gift box for the poorest patients (any amount),
School chairs ($9) and tables ($17) for MIAPE Sunday School
or CEVEEN.
On the donation page is a summary of the projects God allowed us to fund
and complete this past year. We invite you to review these and rejoice with
us for all God did. Praise Him!
Nursing School Progress
We received permission from the Ministry of Professional Education to open the nursing school in mid-August. So we had a very short period to recruit and screen potential nursing students since nationally classes at all levels begin in October. The present medical and administrative staff and the U.S. construction team had a prayer walk through the school buildings dedicating it. The school then began classes under the direction of Doris Nuss RN (seconded* from CMA) on November 6, 2023. Six students were selected. Two students
currently working in the CEH pharmacy will take six-month courses to better qualify them as pharmacy technicians. Doris will have the support of seven other medical and pastoral staff to teach and give clinical supervision. PhilAfrican, a Swiss Bible Mission, offered to recruit and second* to us two nurses for nursing education in the coming year. We hope within the year to have internet connectivity through StarLink that would allow some teaching by Zoom as well as medical consult support to our doctors on patient care. These are unprecedented advances in medical education and care for patients in Guinea. Pray for the quality of this education and the ability of these students to learn and practice these skills well with patients. Pray ultimately that this is all to the glory of God.
Medical Services
Dr. Allison T. MD successfully completed French language study. Her addition to the surgical staff increased our capacity for general surgery. Her husband, Daniel T. is completing his French language study and participating with the MIAPE Chapel in many of their discipleship ministries. As first term missionaries they are integrating and contributing in valuable ways!
Dr. Paul is free to concentrate more on orthopedics as the “Sign Nail — Rise up and Walk” program developes. Dr. Paul was invited by Sign Nail to attend and present two case studies at their orthopedic surgical conference in the State of Washington in October. He did very
well and was asked by one attending professor to write a paper for Harvard Medical Journal. Dr. Paul is introducing the Sign Nail procedures to the nation of Guinea which was never seen before. In February 2023, the National TV station filmed a three-minute documentary about these successful orthopedic procedures and broadcast it three times throughout the nation. Dr. Paul did one intensive week of visiting four supporting churches and many individual donors to stimulate them by sharing the CEH ministries and learning the essential part our constituency’s contributions are to the total CEH work!
CEH’s medical director, Dr. Jean Paul is freer to develop our OB Gyn services for which he had six months training at a Mali mission hospital specializing in this care. He also continues his significant general medical consultations.
Dr. David’s emphasis is on general medicine, Pediatrics and HIV treatment program.
Dr. Tenguiano, our youngest Guinean doctor, elected to move on from CEH. We will prayerfully seek other young doctors to train in various areas of medicine and surgery. This was done for about five other doctors in past years who then moved on to other places as they walk and serve with God.
Hospice Care
Hospice care was never formally developed in Africa. So it is a new venture in compassionate care in Christ’s name. Odile, one of our nurses, developed renal cancer two years ago and was operated on for a nephrectomy and cared for with chemotherapy to the limits we could provide. She had a brief referral to the Conakry university hospitals for a second opinion, but they offered her no further care. She is now hospitalized in our Welcome Center for palliative-hospice care so the MIAPE church might better come alongside her and care for her two daughters aged 9 and 12. Her common law husband, family, and her ethnic tribe have abandoned her due to her Christian faith and her illness incapacity. Pray for her faith and comfort during this time before she graduates to heaven. Then also, pray for her daughters!
New Inter-mission Relationships
God is opening an additional door for a new inter-mission relationship with Samaritan’s Purse and World Medical Missions (WMM). WMM places physicians at oversees mission hospitals for short to medium terms of service to serve patients in specialty areas and train national and missionary doctors. Dr. Steve Merry and Dr. Dwight Slater had a significant first meeting with their leadership on October 26. WMM is planning a trip to Guinea in early 2024 to scout CEH as a potential new site. This was part of our dream for many years! Pray that this will come to full fruition again to the glory of God.
Dr. Steve Merry, president of CEH Board, attended the Global Missions Health Conference (GMHC) in Louisville, KY in November representing CEH as well as Christian Academy of African Physicians (CAAP) Family Med residency programs of which he is a co-founder. CEH and GMHC’s shared purpose is to demonstrate our work and efforts toward building strategic alliances. The goal is for greater resources, human and material, and to provide hope for qualitative and quantitative improvements at CEH. Further we want to spread the love of Jesus in Guinea by Word and deed and improve our healing ministry in Guinea. This annual forum provides contacts with individuals and missions that are like minded and opens great opportunities for recruitment and seconding* relationships essential to our ministry development. Dr. Jonathan M. visited the booth where he was recruited to CEH
last year for three months of seconded* service through AIM. Pray with us for the ongoing fruitfulness of these contacts.
Construction Team
Five men (George W., John C., John K., Joe W., and Dan K.) formed a construction team from HPBC, MI that came alongside the national construction staff to complete many electrical and plumbing projects at CEH. Almost all their objectives were accomplished. The most important was the completion of the new 11 bed Surgical/Orthopedic Ward which brings us to 55 total beds. The Welcome Center has an additional 16 beds (bunks) that can be used as overflow or chronic wound care when needed. The water, septic, and solar electrical infrastructure systems were inspected and improved. This was George’s 14th trip leading many such teams. He shared that it may be his last trip due to advancing age. He did all this work excellently! Pray with us that he can coach others to continue this vital work. Nationals also developed expertise in specialized plumbing and electrical areas of construction. Three of the HPBC team members taught or testified in some of the staff and MIAPE worship services. While accomplishing much on the physical level they influenced the lives of their national colleagues and patients they contacted. They all returned home safely. Thank you all for your prayers and support for them.
*Seconding is a work placement (short or long term) of a missionary from the primary mission which recruits, financially administers support and benefits, and retains supervision authority to serve under or with another mission (like CEH) to serve God at the second mission’s location.