If the Muslim extremist who attacked Jibla Baptist Hospital Dec. 30 was trying to rid Yemen of that country’s most prominent Christian ministry, it may appear at first glance that he succeeded.
Two days after the gunman killed three American mission workers, the 35 year-old hospital was handed over to the Muslim government of Yemen, which now will decide if it will remain open and who will work there. The hospital has been closed since the shooting. Most of the 13 American missions workers and their families have left Jibla, and many won’t return.
Despite appearances, those leading the hospital through its most difficult period say the Christian ministry of the hospital will survive.
“There will still be as much ministry here,” said Al Lindholm, who is overseeing the transfer of the hospital from its founder, the Southern Baptist International Mission Board (IMB), to the Yemeni government.
Southern Baptists established the hospital 35 years ago on land owned by the Yemeni government. IMB workers operated the medical center under a contract with the Ministry of Health that had to be renewed each year.
In the days since the shooting, Lindholm, the IMB’s area business strategy manager, and the five other Baptist workers who remained in Jibla have focused on transferring the 45-bed hospital while reassuring local Yemeni, who have long supported the hospital, that it will indeed reopen. The government has appointed a hospital administrator, is securing funding and is already discussing which staff members to keep — and that could include a few IMB mission doctors, Lindholm said via telephone Jan. 7.
Abdel Karim Hassen was named administrator and Abdel Karim Ali was named nursing director by Yemen’s health minister, Abdel Nasser Munibari, Jan. 2, according to the IMB. Their assignment is to get the hospital up and running until details about the facility’s future can be worked out. The new administrator and nursing director both have more than 20 years experience working with the Jibla hospital.
“These deaths have motivated and energized the people of the community to take responsibility for the hospital,” said Lindholm, a former hospital worker now based in the capital of Sana’a. “Things are moving fairly rapidly between the ministry of planning and the ministry of health. We’ve had a visit from a team beginning the inventory and other steps to begin the turnover. Officially it belongs to the ministry of health as of the first of January.”
The terrorist attack that killed three American missions workers at Jibla and shocked people worldwide was the worst tragedy in the 156-year history of the IMB.
Amplifying the tragedy even more is this irony: The Christian hospital, apparently targeted by the Muslim gunman as an affront to Islam, was to be turned over to the Muslim-led government two days after the attack. In fact, the three Southern Baptist workers killed Dec. 30 — administrator William Koehn, physician Martha Myers and purchaser Kathy Gariety — were meeting to prepare for the transfer.
Lindholm was supposed to be in the meeting too, and likely would have been the killer’s fourth victim if not for a broken-down car. Lindholm was driving from Sana’a for the 8 a.m. meeting, which would have been followed by a 10 a.m. tour of the facility with the Yemeni ministers of planning and health. Lindholm had a minor accident en route and had to return to Sana’a to get another car, making him two hours late.
Also spared was Daniel Cajuiat, an X-ray technician and IMB volunteer, who was confronted by the gunman while standing in a doorway, but the attacker’s semiautomatic rifle ran out of ammunition. Another IMB worker, pharmacist Donald Caswell, was shot twice in the abdomen but is recovering.
Sole medical provider
As the only full-service hospital in the poor area around Jibla, treating 40,000 patients a year, the facility was considered the most prominent Christian ministry in Yemen — and also something of an easy target. “This location is not very defensible,” said Lindholm.
There is no known connection between the shooting and the pending transfer of the hospital. But the transfer had been a source of concern in Jibla and tension between some longtime Jibla mission workers and IMB stateside administrators.
Last July the International Mission Board announced it would no longer operate the facility — the last IMB-run hospital — and would shift the emphasis to mobile clinics, which would provide health screenings, nutrition education and basic medical care to more Yemeni. The shift is part of the IMB’s new global strategy called New Directions, which moves the IMB away from institution-based ministries such as hospitals and schools to focus more heavily on what leaders call “church-starting movements.”
On Dec. 15 many of the hospital’s 180 local employees and other residents, fearful of lost jobs, marched in protest to a local government office.
“Interestingly, our administrator, Bill Koehn, had ‘Baptist’ painted out of the sign at the front of the hospital,” said Australian surgeon Ken Clezy, “and this seems to have at last convinced local people that the Southern Baptists meant business when they said they were getting out.” Koehn, who was scheduled to retire soon, had mixed feelings about the transfer to the Muslim group, Clezy said.
On Dec. 22, the IMB informed the staff that the transfer to the People’s Charitable Society, a Muslim charity with ties to the Yemeni government, was going to take place. A meeting was scheduled with government officials for 10 a.m. Monday, Dec. 30, at the hospital compound.
The meeting, of course, never took place.
In the months before her death, Kathy Gariety, the hospital’s purchasing agent for 10 years, worked behind the scenes to try to keep the facility in the hands of Christians.
In an e-mail interview, she said the IMB’s press releases about the transfer “made it sound like everything is just fine and all the [IMB mission workers] are happy and pleased, when that is just not the case.”
“Somehow, I feel that the everyday SBC contributor needs to know just what is going on and that the way we do missions is changing, and not all of us believe it is for the best,” she wrote. “… I am embarrassed by the IMB, when so many others can see the positive side of keeping the hospital as a Christian beacon.”
Alabama connection
Myers, an Alabama native and member of Dalraida Baptist Church, Montgomery, was also disturbed by the IMB’s decision, according to her family. She was considering resigning from the IMB in order to stay in Yemen and practice medicine.
John Brady, the IMB’s director for North Africa and the Middle East, did not respond to questions about the hospital transfer.
Several days after the shooting Ken Clezy, the Australian surgeon, said he too is doubtful the hospital will survive. “We have lost so many staff because of all the months of uncertainty that there is no way the place can be kept open.”
“My own feeling is that Jibla is finished, but I may be wrong,” said Clezy, who had made plans to leave Yemen before the shooting. “It will certainly take some time to get going again, with the best will from everybody.”
Lindholm is more optimistic. The hospital will open as soon as possible, he said, although no one is sure when. “Pledges have been made at the highest level of the government.” The rapid progress is “exciting,” he added. “We’re already seeing stability return to the staff.”
That could include IMB doctors, he added. “But not many, because some have already taken other assignments. But we will have a few. Certainly volunteers are welcome.”
While the IMB says new medical personnel have not been applying for the Yemen hospital in recent years, Jibla workers report the IMB has discouraged several applicants from taking assignments at the hospital. Likewise, they say, current Jibla workers were encouraged to take other assignments in Yemen or elsewhere in the effort to shift focus away from the hospital.
Before the shooting, seven of the 13 IMB mission workers planned to transfer elsewhere in Yemen or out of the country. Two were returning home. And four wanted to stay at the hospital, but that included Myers and Gariety, who were killed. Only one IMB doctor — surgeon Judy Williams — is available to stay, and no nurses or technicians. Of the four non-IMB doctors, only one is available to stay.
The IMB says they will continue to provide hospital workers, paid and volunteer, if requested by the government. “They can stay as long as they want to stay,” Lindholm added. “They could finish their careers here, as long as it remains viable. But we’re not sure if there will be positions.”
Although the hospital — and the IMB’s role in Yemen — will be forever changed, Lindholm says Christian ministry in Jibla and Yemen will survive.
“The outreach that has occurred to date is still effective. There will still be as much ministry here. We’re changing modes of ministry, but we are not changing the methods.”
(ABP, IMB contributed)
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