David Leung

A quarter of a century ago, MSI’s founders established this organisation with the hope and vision that the Lord would do a new thing – serving the people of China with a new way of relating to the government and a new way of engaging Christian professionals from around the world. That vision has amazingly been realised! We have seen thousands of people deeply impacted through MSI’s holistic service. We’ve related to local officials at all levels of the government, working to be effective and relevant within China’s systems and structures.

 

We’ve witnessed scores of long-term workers and thousands of short-term volunteers respond to the invitation to “come in the spirit of Christ.” They express His love in ways that people can see, hear, and touch. Over the past decade, we have also seen a growing number of these volunteers coming from within China. The Lord was clearly bringing about a new breakthrough.

 

As I reflect on this breakthrough, I’m reminded of the “nameless disciples” in Antioch (Acts 11:19-26) who were willing to break with tradition and push on to create a new normal. That new generation integrated what they had learned from their ethnic backgrounds, faith upbringing, and marketplace experiences to explore new ways of impacting their communities.

 

Those who started MSI were from this kind of generation! We are grateful for the deep commitment of all who have faithfully journeyed with, prayed for, and supported MSI over the past twenty-five years. The Lord has done many amazing things.

 

Just as those unnamed disciples in Acts explored new opportunities in the face of a challenging context, we also labour to understand and enter into effective service in today’s changing China context. We sense that the Lord is bringing things together for a new breakthrough. Are you willing to be part of this new breakthrough? As we press on, we trust that He will continue to do an amazing work through this community that we call MSI.

Matthew Koh

I count more than 25 colleagues who have continued to serve with MSI for more than a decade. There are also countless short-term members—and more than two handfuls who have been married through relationships that blossomed while on MSI trips! Most significant is to see how God has transformed the lives of many colleagues, local partners and ministry peoples over the years. MSI is indeed privileged to be part of China’s story in this period of amazing transformation.

 

MSI is also witnessing transition to fourth generation leadership. God’s grace has allowed us to see some of our children’s generation serving in ministry. The children of those we have shared our lives with, over the 25 years in China, have grown and matured in service and local leadership. Despite humble, persevering service on the ground, on-going presence in China is not guaranteed; and even with resources – whether professional, technical or financial – it has become increasingly challenging. It truly tests the faith of the few to witness in the most trying of times that, indeed, “love never fails.”

Reginald Tsang

Heaven’s Will
In thousands of years of Chinese civilisation, leaders have sought Heaven’s will to serve the people. The genesis of MSI from the confluence of three quite different perspectives, might, provocatively, be termed Heaven’s will: from the medical perspective, born from three generations of Christian medical involvement; from the historic theological perspective of six generations serving in China; from the practical service perspective of decades of deep cultural understanding.

Three perspectives just wonderfully coalesced, without previous specific plan, across oceans, around a central focus to serve faithfully in China’s interior: a consequence of a wonderfully reassuring phrase, “His ways are higher than ours.” I naively thought I “just signed up” for taking lots of medical teams into China, but things immediately snowballed, just like something “from above.”

 

Heaven’s Mandate
Four thousand years ago an amazing mandate was given to “bless the nations,” which soon formalised as “love God and others,” and 2,000 years ago, declared as the “great commission for all nations,” a mandate, for millions who know this, to bless the rest. A Heaven’s mandate that anyone reading this should take to heart.

MSI took this to heart, resulting in thousands of responders giving time, effort, and finances to serve in the hills and valleys of Southwest China to bless its people. What a wonderful opportunity to mobilise God’s kingdom to serve and love others! Just in the first 10 years, we witnessed 5,000 visits of diverse professions and talents from different countries, practically unimaginable, following the mandate from Heaven.

 

Heaven’s Blessings
A quarter century is a timely mark to remind ourselves that, as we bring heaven’s blessings to others, blessings also come to inspire us and others to serve better, even to start other similar efforts to spread more blessings. “Provoke one another to good works, by our good works” sounds quaint, but actually is role modelling, which surpasses all lectures.

In this journey, fantastic verses, memorised for generations, all come together vividly: “Love never ceases; they will know us by our love; be salt and light everywhere; heal the broken-hearted, bind up their wounds; heal the blind; go through villages and towns; care for sheep without shepherds; teach what I have told you; go to the ends of the earth.” Search these phrases, discover again their profound implications!

But, in truly meaningful ways, these are basic MSI ethos from the very beginning, privileging us to see the authentic impact on others and ourselves: Heaven’s will, mandate, and blessings, for generations to come.

Eugene & Anita Choi

Awake, north wind, and come, south wind! Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread everywhere. (Song of Songs 4:16)

 

Riding a late night bus on Yunnan mountain roads some 16 years ago, I admired not only the full moon all the way back to the hospital, but much more, the hospitality of the villagers (our patients) we visited. Today in China, many MSI colleagues, with one mind and one spirit, share in living and serving the people we love.

 

It was one day in the fall of 1993, when the late Dr. JH Taylor III visited and urged us to consider joining the first China medical volunteer team the next year. Our love to serve China has grown since then, and some four years later, my wife and I took early retirement to volunteer full time with MSI.

 

During our time of service we have seen change after change. Up in Zhaojue mountain town, a primitive reception centre with dried leaves for a mattress has now been replaced by modern hotels; long winding roads through dusty marble excavation sites of Yunnan mountain are being replaced by short highways through tunnels; poor English levels in the schools contrast greatly with fluently bilingual young professionals today. The MSI service styles have also changed: Sunshine farm has replaced the sheep programme, and HIV & TB prevention, health education & holistic care, with rehabilitation programmes, now supersedes the previous medical exchanges.

 

Amidst all the bittersweet changes, the love of our colleagues has remained the same. Their life in China is The Message! Awake north wind! Come south wind! Blow into the garden of our hearts and of the people we serve. Let the fragrance of love spread in China!

 

In our theme song “True Love” (Love is patient… and Love never ceases), “patience” is stressed twice among the 15 facets of true love. May we persevere patiently to spread the fragrance of love through Truth and Joy for many more decades!

1. MENTAL REHABILITATION REIGNITES PATIENTS’ HOPE TO INTEGRATE BACK INTO SOCIETY

2. FROM HIV PREVENTION AND HOSPITAL WORKS IN ZHAOJUE TO PAEDIATRIC CLINIC IN MEIGU

3. REFLECTING ON TEN YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA’S MEDICAL SYSTEM

4. BLOSSOM AND BEAR FRUIT – Students of Zhaojue Girls’ Class in 2001 Became Today’s Village Teachers

5. HE IS ABLE – The Story of a Long-term Short-termer: Involvement in Yunnan Medical Projects

6. ALWAYS SHINING – The Development of Volunteerism

7. FARMING AS MISSION – Sheep Project

8. FARMING AS MISSION – Meigu County Cooperatives Training Programme

9. A SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAMME

Eva Yau

A young mental health patient shared, ‘I was just at home all day with nothing to do before I came to the rehabilitation centre. I used to spend six to ten hours a day in internet gaming and was unwilling to do housework. I had no friends and didn’t want to get out at all.’

 

According to a family member, “When our son Ah Lin was ill, it was a particularly painful period during which we felt hopeless and helpless. We suffered from all kinds of emotions on our journey to seek medical help, so I felt both excited and ecstatic after entering the rehabilitation centre, as I saw hope there—lifesaving hope!

 

These experiences shared by a recovered member and his mother are not uncommon at all, as China is severely lacking in community mental rehabilitation services. Patients usually stay home after being discharged from the hospital, feeling that there is nowhere to go in life. This can easily lead to relapse of their mental health condition and hospital re-admission – which develops into a downward cycle with no apparent exit.

 

In recognition of this desperate need in the community, MSI worked with the local hospital to establish a community mental rehabilitation centre in 2012 (the year I joined MSI) to provide services including daytime rehabilitation and courses such as self-management and family mental health. The centre helped to pave work opportunities for recovered members to re-join their community. A lot of recovered members were very proud as they got their first ever job, and many opportunities were available for members to continue their education. Some members even studied up to the graduate degree level and then secured employment. Something else to be even more thankful for is that the mental rehabilitation centre gained international recognition for its services and has growing support. The rehabilitation centre model was successfully promoted to other cities to help more patients and their families.

 

Through rehabilitation and training, Ah Lin was able to develop his computing and interpersonal skills, which re-kindled his self-confidence in looking for work in his hometown. His future dreams were the same as other young people of his age: acquiring a job, getting married, and starting a family. Thankfully his dream became a reality two years later!

 

Our vision for mental rehabilitation service is that by grace, we can see people with mental illness and their family members live out fulfilling and hopeful lives that contribute to society.

Becky Lim and Wendy Cheung

“Compassion is not sloppy sentimentalism, nor does it compromise the truth. Biblical compassion, combining heartfelt emotion with active relief for the suffering…enter into the very heart and mystery of God.” (Brennan Manning)

 

When I first came to Zhaojue in 1997, an elderly Asian couple – a public health physician & nurse – were there to start a community health programme. Dr. George Chew saw the need for a TB programme in 2000. Sure enough, we saw 30 patients daily, reaching almost 2000 patients in a year.

 

In the course of our TB project, we found two obstacles to successful treatment. First, the patients failed to return to continue receiving their drugs due to lack of information in their Nosu Yi language. Second, some of those treated did not respond and a few died. Most of those who did not respond to the TB treatment were ill with another disease – HIV/AIDS.

 

In 2001, Dr. Joseph Chang and his wife joined the team to continue the TB project. He asked three local Nosu Yi young medical volunteers to do patient education about TB and to emphasise the need to take the TB drugs for at least 6 months.

 

At that time, I remembered that Doctors without Borders under the Public Health Bureau came and started to target the high-risk group for HIV/AIDS. However, after a few years, the organisation left Zhaojue. In August 2012, the Red Ribbon AIDS China Care built and inaugurated a new HIV Centre inside the Zhaojue County Hospital. There, they diagnose, treat and manage all the HIV/AIDS patients in outpatient and inpatient settings.

 

A Chinese American HIV specialist, Dr. Cheung and his paediatrician wife, spearheaded the MSI HIV/AIDS programme, in cooperation with the Zhaojue HIV Centre. MSI subsidised the hiring of three local nurses who managed the overwhelming number of outpatients. They were empowered and enabled to educate patients on HIV, its transmission, need for drug compliance, and their side effects. Peer counselling was the most cost-effective method for achieving drug compliance. This year, we almost achieved 75% drug compliance, up from 50%, by daily outpatient and weekly inpatient training.

 

This HIV work has now also moved to Meigu where a new project working with HIV children has started.

 

The paediatric HIV clinic is a weekly clinic-serving children under 14 years of age infected with HIV. The clinic is staffed by a paediatrician, a pharmacist and a nurse. Whenever appropriate, we invite our short-term teams to participate. What we do in the clinic is quite basic: making sure that these children are taking their medications, checking that the dosage is correct, tracking their growth, and addressing side effects and other health concerns.

 

A hundred children have been seen thus far. Alarmingly, but not surprisingly, 56% of the children are stunted in their growth, indicating chronic malnutrition. Sadly, and again not surprisingly, 45% of them have lost one or both of their parents. Looking into their eyes and catching a glimpse of their sadness, our hearts cannot help but ache for them.

 

What we do in the clinic may be basic, and what we can offer may be limited, but we try to do it in a compassionate way, modelling after the Compassionate One. I am thankful for this opportunity to learn and practice compassion, even as I experience His compassion every day.

Eckehard Scharfschwerdt

“Where are you going?” I asked a nurse in the county hospital where I worked.
“我们要下乡. We will go to the village.”

 

In 2014 the hospital dispatched its staff to survey the entire county, house by house. The goal was to learn about the community’s financial situation and reasons for poverty. President Xi Jinping had pledged to eliminate poverty by 2020, an initiative later followed by the Healthy China 2030 strategy. The hospital director summarised, “Families became impoverished mostly due to catastrophic healthcare expenditure.”

 

In 2009, China launched a major health-care reform programme to provide all citizens with equal access to basic health care. Funding for health care has since quadrupled. Following the worldwide economic crisis of 2008, China invested heavily in health care infrastructure. We saw new hospitals mushrooming at all levels from village clinics to city hospitals. In 2013, social health insurance coverage reached over 95%. In Yunnan, the heavily subsidised farmer’s health insurance cooperative had started in 2006 by sending all government employees down to the villages and only allowing them to return after 90% of the farmers had signed up. Within a year, the number of inpatients had tripled. We have seen further progress made towards improved access and financial risk protection, especially for the lower socio-economic quartile.

 

In spite of these improvements, hardships remain. If you’re on WeChat, you are familiar with desperate crowd funding initiatives of families whose loved one suffers from cancer. Even though the ceiling for reimbursement has increased substantially, major surgeries or chemotherapy quickly deplete all family resources.

 

Since 2012 the government has focused on transforming resources into effective services, which is much more challenging. Although a zero-mark up policy for drugs was implemented in 2013, incomes of hospital directors and physicians are still tied to hospital profits, which hinders a shift from hospital-based curative care to preventive primary health care. Years of profit-seeking behaviour has eroded medical ethics. While several of my young friends went through GP training, it will take a couple of decades to overcome the lack of quality at lower levels, which keeps pushing ever more demanding patients to overuse costly tertiary hospitals.

 

Where does MSI fit in? China still welcomes professional expertise from abroad. Helping to raise quality of care and preventive measures at the PHC level will decrease the burden of non-communicable diseases while China’s population keeps aging – even beyond the country’s 70th anniversary.

Lori Chang

Lori initiated the first classes for girls in Zhaojue in 2001. Prior to that, only boys were going to school in that remote county.

 

In the summer of 2016, our car stopped at the school entrance. My heart was overwhelmed with joy. One of the female teachers ran to greet me, and I happily returned her big hug. We walked hand in hand, passing by the classrooms. The teachers could not stop recalling the time when they did not have much self-confidence and acted shy because they were not fluent in Putonghua. Passing by the student dormitory, I praised the students’ effort in keeping their rooms clean and tidy. We moved forward and finally arrived at the playground. While the junior students enjoyed their free time, the teacher and I reminisced about the graduation ceremony in 2006. In those years, we all had to work hard and fight for every opportunity to study. We were confronted with many struggles and difficulties. Upon the completion of the primary courses, we were all moved to tears. A total of 41 girls wore the traditional Yi costume, performing the Dati dance with tear-filled eyes. I will never forget that touching scene.

 

God’s miraculous work was beyond our expectation. With the continued support of MSI’s teachers and the joint effort of officials and their countrymen, two thirds of the girls received subsidies to complete their junior and high school studies. In addition, they were all admitted to tertiary education.

 

Standing at the room entrance, I saw the classroom full of boys and girls. On their lovely faces, I saw the desire for knowledge in their eyes. Children in rural villages generally have equal opportunities for education now. Those standing on the stage were the graduates of the first class of girls. They finished their studies, then came back to their home village and became the teachers for the next generation. We and their former teachers were grateful and felt proud of them.

 

I would like to conclude my sharing with the words of a youth who returned as a teacher: change happens bit by bit, keep waiting and expect the blossom. Let us keep expecting the flower to blossom and bear fruit.