Day 7 Central Asia

It’s a brutal place to live, let alone practice medicine. But that hasn’t stopped Doug Page* from being Christ’s hands and feet in a rugged, remote corner of Central Asia. Together with his wife, Alice,* the Southern Baptist doctor is sharing Christ’s love in a place with only a handful of known believers.
Obedience hasn’t come without sacrifice. The Pages live in a mud home with unreliable electricity. Winters are especially harsh, with temperatures dropping to minus 40 — cold enough to coat the walls inside their house with ice. The public hospital where Doug volunteers is dirty and poorly equipped. He regularly treats patients for diseases rarely encountered in the United States, like typhoid fever, tuberculosis and dysentery.
Doug has amputated limbs from landmine victims, removed handfuls of worms from intestinal tracts and helped nurse malnourished children back from the brink of death, all while patiently and persistently seeking God-given opportunities to share his faith. But open cultural and political animosity toward the Gospel also means those who share Jesus Christ do so at great personal risk, including prison, kidnapping, torture — even death.
But the couple’s greatest fear isn’t personal safety. It’s that their time in Central Asia won’t count for something eternal. “We want to be faithful … knowing that we did our best, that we didn’t hold anything back,” Doug says. “Everything is on the table.”  
 
Pray the Lord will work miracles and hearts will soften toward the Gospel.
Pray that the suffering, especially of women and children, will diminish as the people of this land come to know the Savior.
*Names changed.

taken from the imb website

 Mud homes dot the hills of the Central Asian town where Doug and Alice Page (names changed) serve as Jesus’ hands and feet. The absence of green alludes to the harshness of life here. From the air – the only secure means of reaching the area – the town is a pallid oasis, swallowed by a seemingly endless march of dead, sun-burnt mountains.