A Partnership in Healing

By Jenifer Jones

 

It’s hot and dusty outside the Methodist Faith Healing Hospital in Ankaase, Ghana. Vendors sit beneath umbrellas, selling food for families to purchase for themselves and their patients. Cars drive past on a tan-orange dirt road. Inside, the wards are clean and smell of Dettol, a disinfectant similar to Lysol. Lab techs help doctors diagnose diseases like malaria and typhoid. In the clean and sterile operating rooms, lives are saved daily. 

For people who need healthcare anywhere near Ankaase, Ghana, the Methodist Faith Healing Hospital is the place to go. Located in a rural farming community, the 112-bed facility has a staff of more than 500 people. It has 15 full-time doctors, including six Ghanian specialists. It serves as a referral hospital for two main districts in the Ashanti region of Ghana and manages eight clinics spread across the region. 

It wasn’t always like this. A project of the Methodist Church Ghana (MCG), the Methodist Faith Healing Hospital Ankaase was dedicated in 1988 and opened as an outpatient department in 1991.   

Growing up together. When Cam Gongwer arrived in 1998 with his wife and nine-month-old daughter, he was the first full-time doctor at the facility. Cam is a former cross-cultural worker (CCW) with TMS Global and is currently a CoServe consultant with the organization. When he began at the hospital, there was a staff of 12.

The hospital and TMS Global have grown up together. Joseph Amankwah is the CEO of the Methodist Faith Healing Hospital Ankaase. “Right from the beginning” he says, “TMS Global has been in collaboration with the Methodist Church Ghana in developing the health ministry in Ghana.” 

The Methodist Faith Healing Hospital is the district hospital in its area. It serves a population of more than 200,000 people.

Care closer to home. Cam says malaria remains the most significant health problem in Ghana, particularly among children. It’s the leading cause of death for children younger than five years old in Ghana. 

“If the hospital didn’t exist,” Cam says, “sick people would have to travel longer distances typically on public transport taking a longer time to reach a comparable functioning hospital.”

Mary Kay Jackson is a former TMS Global CCW, now staff member, who used to serve in Ghana and visited the hospital on several occasions. She says patients come from all walks of life, and all faith backgrounds – Christian, Muslim, and traditional.

“I have seen mothers rejoicing at the birth of their new babies,” she says. “I have seen mothers sitting by the bedside of their children who are ill. I have heard babies and toddlers scream as they get their immunizations. And I have seen mothers wailing as their child dies of dehydration due to malaria or cholera. I have seen nurses bathe the elderly with tenderness and care as they wait for their final homegoing.”

A partnership that endures. Enoch Osafo is the director of health for the Methodist Church Ghana. He says one of the keys to the enduring relationship between TMS Global and the hospital is that the partnership was never with the hospital itself, but rather with the MCG. 

“That always opens the door for any need that requires TMS Global to come in and fulfil their mission through the Methodist Church Ghana’s mission,” Enoch says. “So if there’s a need for a doctor, they come in. Sometimes needs include provision of water; sometimes there’s a need for discussions about how to revitalize the local Church.” 

Because the relationship isn’t just between individuals like Cam or Joseph or Enoch, but rather between TMS Global and the Methodist Church Ghana, the work continues on even as the people involved change.

The Methodist Faith Healing Hospital is fully led and run by the Methodist Church Ghana. 

Enoch says that was the design from the beginning. “We started with two institutions (TMS Global and the MCG) coming together to say that we are both in mission together, rather than TMS Global coming in to say, ‘We want to do the hospital and run the hospital and when we have finished, take your turn and go.’ But it was two institutions coming together saying, ‘We have one mission, and our mission is to serve God’s purpose within the community.’” 

Focused on ministry. Enoch also emphasizes that anyone who comes to work with the facility isn’t there to help with a hospital, but rather to be involved in ministry. “That keeps the mission focus,” Enoch says. The hospital has a reputation for being a place where God is present. 

Cam notes, “I remember once a mother came from very far away with her sick child. She had been to other clinics and providers, but the child did not get better. When asked why she brought her child all the way to Ankaase, she said it was because she had been told that God is there. She believed that her child would become well if seen at Ankaase. Indeed, her child was admitted to hospital, and he responded to treatment. He went home healed and the mother was thankful to God.”

Transformed communities. Cam left Ghana as a full-time doctor in 2012, but he still has a relationship with hospital leadership and the Methodist Church Ghana and returns to visit the hospital. 

“The best part about it,” Cam said says, “is being able to see how God is at work drawing people and calling people into the mission that He has there. The development of the hospital has been rocky at times but with the leadership of Joseph and Enoch I believe God brought the right people in to steer the Church and its mission forward at the hospital.”

Enoch notes that even though the hospital is a health ministry, the focus is still on making disciples. He is currently collaborating with a partner from India to grow in that area. 

Joseph says the hospital has made an impact on its surrounding community. The facility is the largest employer in the area. Many young and skilled health providers and staff and their families have moved to the region. “We are transforming communities.”

Jenifer Jones is a communicator for TMS Global, which launched in 1984 as The Mission Society for United Methodists (and is now interdenominational). In the past 40 years, TMS Global has trained, mobilized, and served hundreds of cross-cultural witnesses who communicate the good news of Jesus in word and deed. TMS Global also comes alongside churches in the US and abroad, providing training and coaching to help them discover and live out their unique missional calling. For more information, visit us at tms-global.org. Photo: TMS Global.