Southern Baptist doctors Judy Williams and Bruce Roach used to have a friendly competition at Jibla Baptist Hospital in Yemen: Who would work the longest “shift” without walking out the front gate?
“I think the longest for me was three months,” said Williams, a surgeon who arrived in the isolated Arab nation in 1999.
“People would bring me food, and we had a commissary on the compound. … I’m a workaholic, and my work was in the operating room. That’s where my friendships with Yemenis were made.”
Williams was one of the last in a long line of Southern Baptist workers who gave their skills, their hearts — and in the case of three missionaries slain on the job — their lives to the hundreds of thousands of Yemenis who came to the hospital.
When Williams and several co-workers walked out the gate of the hospital compound for the last time this spring, their departure marked the end of four decades of full-time Southern Baptist presence at the hospital, which was begun by missionary doctor Jim Young in 1967.
Baptists say goodbye
Official involvement of Yemen Baptist Mission personnel at Jibla Hospital ended May 1. That date actually marked a second ending: The hospital passed from International Mission Board administration into Yemeni hands more than four years ago.
On Dec. 30, 2002, Southern Baptist workers were trying to complete a complicated transfer of the institution to Yemeni control when physician and Alabama-native Martha Myers, hospital administrator Bill Koehn and purchasing manager Kathy Gariety were shot by a Muslim militant who burst into Koehn’s office. Myers died on the spot. Williams and other hospital workers tried to save Koehn and Gariety, but their point-blank gunshot wounds were fatal.
A Southern Baptist pharmacist also was shot and seriously wounded in the attack but later recovered.
Jibla reopened in early 2003 under Yemeni administration. Several Southern Baptist workers, including Williams, continued to serve on the staff, providing critical management and medical support.
Late last year, the eight remaining Baptist workers (seven Southern Baptists and a Mexican Baptist doctor) decided the time had come to end full-time involvement at the hospital.
“We completed what we set out to do,” Williams said of the decision.
Successful transition
“From a medical perspective, the hospital had been transitioned to the Yemeni government and was treating more patients than it ever had — with minimal input from Yemen Baptist Mission personnel.”
Baptist personnel’s presence in Jibla was actually hindering growth, she said. “If we hadn’t completed our work, the rest of the team would still be living on the compound in Jibla, continuing to work in what can be a very difficult and yet rewarding field of service.”
Yemen Baptist Mission workers will continue involvement in several ministries begun at the hospital, including aid to needy widows, orphans and migrant Bedouin camps in the area.
One Baptist physician still works in the hospital’s outpatient clinic twice a month. Workers also hope to continue partnering with the hospital in medical education and life-saving community immunization programs in Yemen’s countryside.
In a letter to veterans and supporters of the hospital, Williams said: “We do not see this as a sign of failure, but rather as a sign of growth. That does not mean it will be easy or without a sense of loss and grieving. I know from previous experiences that this process may actually be easier for those of us physically here than for you from afar.”
Over the past 40 years, they endured extended civil war in Yemen, a disastrous fire, numerous financial crises, ongoing personnel shortages, political pressures, legal battles that threatened to shut down the hospital, kidnappings — and the murder of three of their own. And always they faced the daily challenge of treating — and loving — the endless stream of patients who came to the hospital from all over the impoverished Middle Eastern nation of more than 19 million people.
At its peak, the 77-bed mission hospital employed several hundred workers, treated some 40,000 people a year, performed more than 400 surgeries a month and operated a busy outpatient clinic.
For a time, it offered a weekly chapel that was the only public Christian worship service in the conservative Muslim nation.
Patients included local villagers as well as powerful sheiks and government officials. (BP)
Share with others: