The Power of Medical Missions

The Routs offer free medical treatment in each of the villages they reach.  This has been a powerful tool for evangelism.  One woman who had accepted Christ as Savior and Lord is married to a man who once was a persecutor of the believers.  He had on a previous occasion beaten a native evangelist and chased him out of the village.  When his wife came to faith in Christ, he began to beat her and their children as well, demanding that they renounce their faith in Christ.  He threatened to kill them if they did not convert back to Hinduism.  Fearing for their lives, the woman and her children locked themselves in a bedroom and prayed for protection, and for the father's salvation.  He came home in a drunken rage, with a machete in his hand, threatening the lives of his family.  He began to pound at the door with the machete, but in his drunken condition he lost his balance and fell on the machete himself.  He lay bleeding and drunk until the next morning when his family came out of the bedroom.  Finding him in this condition, his wife immediately sought out Dr. Rout for medical help.  Dr. Rout and her husband visited the man and counseled him about salvation through Jesus Christ while treating his wounds.  That very hour he repented of his sin, and accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord.

In the villages devastated by the super cyclone of 1999, disease runs rampant.  Tuberculosis, typhoid, malaria, cholera - and others -  fester in the mosquito infested breeding grounds left in the wake of the cyclone.  It has been a constant battle to save lives from these infectious diseases.

The Routs offer free immunization and periodic examinations for children in the villages.  Children and elderly people are the most vulnerable to the diseases which ravage their villages every day.  With poor nutrition, and extremely unhygienic living conditions, they are the most at risk.  

Dr. Rout examining some village children for symptoms of illness or disease.

Dr. Rout and her team now offer medical treatment in each of the 45 villages to which they travel.  They offer hope to the hopeless, light to those who are in darkness, and healing not just of the body but of the heart as well.  The woman pictured below with Brother Rout suffered from severe depression after her husband abandoned her and her children.  She was planning to commit suicide before hearing the Good News of the hope and salvation that is in Jesus Christ.

Brother Rout with a woman who had been suicidal prior to accepting Christ as Savior and Lord.