Dozens of men, women, and children in Nigeria receive life-changing surgeries and hear the Gospel–many for the first time–through a Samaritan's Purse orthopedic surgical team.
Umaru loaded his prized bull up on the bed of a rusted truck and shut the tailgate. He hopped onto the feeble wooden frame surrounding his cargo as the engine sputtered down the road toward a nearby market.
It was a big day for Umaru. Selling his cow would not only help purchase new calves to grow his village’s herd, but also provide food to feed his family as they searched for fresh grazing land in Nigeria’s arid north.
But just minutes into the hopeful journey, a rear tire blew out. The truck lurched violently, and hurled Umaru into the hard-packed ground. His bull followed, crashing down on his legs as the truck screeched to a halt and tipped over.
“It was blurry—everything was spinning; my mind was gone,” Umaru recounted. He awoke sometime later after being knocked unconscious. “All I remember is rain falling on my body and the cow in front of me.”
Umaru left his family and community in Nigeria’s far north when he heard about life-changing surgery made available by a Samaritan’s Purse team of orthopedic surgeons.
With no hospitals in the Nigerian bush, the driver ran off to find another vehicle to carry Umaru to the local healers, who embalmed his legs in a mixture of leaves, spices, and oils. They also fastened sticks from his ankles to his hips and told him to sit there for six months.
“Before, I would run around and find food for myself, or farm at home, but then I wasn’t able to do anything after the accident,” Umaru said. “I can’t run. I can’t jump. I can’t help my family with the cattle.”
It was in this dirty, dark room at the healer’s house that Pastor Babangida, a chaplain at ECWA Hospital in Egbe, Nigeria, found Umaru. He came with good news: Samaritan’s Purse doctors were coming to town to fix broken bones like his in the Name of Jesus, the God who heals and offers eternal salvation to those who trust in Him.
Healing Arrives in Jesus’ Name
For two weeks, a Samaritan’s Purse orthopedic specialty team in Nigeria—comprised of 12 medical professionals, including two orthopedic surgeons and two residents—performed 64 surgeries free of charge for men, women, and children in need across the West African nation. Many patients harbored years-long fractures; some had broken bones for decades.
World Medical Mission, the medical arm of Samaritan’s Purse, organizes several campaigns each year to bring otherwise unavailable surgeries to the corners of the globe in Jesus’ Name. In addition to orthopedics, we send teams focused on urology, fistula, and dentistry.
The World Medical Mission team of surgeons bring healing to some of the darkest places in the world–all in Jesus’ Name.
Umaru’s three fractures from that day—including both femurs and his left tibia—had healed incorrectly which caused him to walk with an awkward, painful limp. His knees bowed and his hips ached from the unnatural gait.
“When I saw him sitting in the dirt, I pitied him,” Pastor Babangida said of the time he found him at the healer’s house. “I wasn’t able to help him there, but I told him to wait for [Samaritan’s Purse].”
While the prolonged delay in proper treatment added to the complexity of his case, the Samaritan’s Purse surgeons were able to help. Dr. Tony de Bari, an orthopedic surgeon from Michigan, led the operation. He performed a procedure to realign each femur and removed embedded bone shards to prevent infection.
“I’m convinced God has given us the ability to be able to do these kinds of complicated cases that most other orthopedic surgeons can’t do,” Dr. de Bari said about Umaru’s surgery.
Pastor Babangida (right) tells Umaru about the good news of Jesus Christ for the first time. Many patients our surgeons operated on came from far, remote areas where the Gospel is not known.
Umaru heard the Gospel of Christ for the first time through Pastor Babangida and the witness of our doctors. While he didn’t receive salvation then, Dr. de Bari’s hope is that he comes to know Christ and tells others about Jesus when he returns to his rural village with healed legs.
“We are here because of Jesus and His love for us, [so], in turn, we love them,” Dr. de Bari said. “[Umaru] will go back home and walk in front of his friends and family, and they’ll say, ‘Who did this to you? Who fixed you? Why are they even here in the country?’ And that’s when he can talk about Jesus to them.”
Just days after the successful operation, Umaru stood from his bed and leaned on a walker to take his first steps. Tracy-Lynn Schuster, a physical therapist with the Samaritan’s Purse team, visited him each morning and evening, finding an ever-growing smile as he began to recover.
Umaru was ecstatic to walk straight again.
“I could see that he was proud of himself; I could see that he started to believe that he could live a real life again and that change—for the better—is coming to his life,” Schuster said.
Umaru was overwhelmed with gratitude: “God bless these doctors!” he exclaimed. “They have shown love to us very well. There is no way to thank [Samaritan’s Purse] enough.”
A Chance at Life Again
Musa arrived to ECWA Hospital on crutches after hearing from a friend about the Samaritan’s Purse doctors. A massive, infected wound—nearly the size of a baseball—engulfed his right ankle.
Two years earlier, he had been shot during a nighttime raid on his village.
“The torch lights woke me up,” Musa recounted. “When I opened the door, the [intruders] shot me twice in the ankle before I could say or do anything.”
Musa lay on his back stunned as these villains pillaged his home and community. Not only did they lose all they owned that night, but his sons have had to care for the family’s herd of cattle and tend to the farm in his stead ever since.
Musa has another chance to provide for his family after the successful surgery.
“When he suffers, my children and I suffer too,” Musa’s wife said. For men in agrarian, rural Nigeria, legs are part of their livelihood—without a healthy body, there are few opportunities to make a living.
With no hospital nearby and not enough money to pay for surgery in the city, Musa also turned to animist healers, who did little to help. The bullets had shattered bone, and infected fragments spread through his leg.
The Samaritan’s Purse team was able to clean the infected tissue and stabilize the tibia bone by removing the scar tissue that had built up over the last two years and by reconnecting the bone to the ankle joint via a rod through the foot.
“Musa had a significant non-union fracture of the distal tibia, or the main lower leg bone, and there was significant displacement of this fragment towards the inside,” Dr. de Bari explained. “It was a really difficult surgery and it took a while, but I’m confident things will heal up nicely.”
Going forward, Musa will never forget how Samaritan’s Purse helped in his time of need. “Anyone I will see I will tell them my story—what happened and how I was healed,” he said.
Dozens more Nigerians-including many children-were given another chance at life through the Samaritan’s Purse team.
More Than Surgery
While men like Umaru and Musa thank the Samaritan’s Purse doctors for their restored mobility, they thank Pastor Babangida as well for venturing deep into the Nigerian bush to find them and tell them of the opportunity to receive surgery.
Babangida is the hospital’s sole Fulfulde-speaking chaplain, tasked with ministering to his own people: the Fulani. As a semi-nomadic Muslim-majority people, the Fulani stay deep in the countryside for the vast grazing land available to their cattle herds. But, because the rare care Samaritan’s Purse provided through the orthopedic campaign, the Fulani are coming to him in Egbe.
Pastor Babangida shares the Gospel with an ethnically Fulani woman, and gifts her with an audio Bible in her heart language, Fulfulde, provided by Samaritan’s Purse.
“My people are dying in darkness,” Babangida said. “My prayer and hope are that all the Fulani people would become Christian—that is my zeal, my hope, and also my work. That is the reason I chose evangelism over everything else. I chose to evangelize to those who don’t know Christ.”
Samaritan’s Purse comes alongside Babangida and the team of seven chaplains at ECWA Hospital by training them through our original curriculum “A Heart of a Chaplain.” We also provide each patient with a Bible in their own native language. For those who can’t read, we give an audio Bible. The Fulani, Babangida said, are hearing the words of Jesus in a language they can understand for the very first time.
The team of chaplains at Egbe serve boldly for the Gospel on the frontlines among the sick in Nigeria. Samaritan’s Purse helps equip and encourage them as they share the Name of Jesus to those who may have never heard it.
“More than making bones straight, we want to make the message of the Gospel clear,” said Madison Strausbaugh, a registered nurse and program manager of the specialty program with World Medical Mission. “It’s the love of Christ that compels us to be here [in Nigeria].”
Please pray for Umaru, Musa, and the dozens of other patients to receive surgery through the Samaritan’s Purse orthopedic campaign. Pray that the Gospel seed in each of their hearts will grow into salvation.
Samaritan’s Purse sends surgical teams to the corners of the globe to bring healing in Jesus’ Name. In addition to the surgeons, the teams consist of biomedical technicians, operating room nurses, physical therapists, and other medical specialties.
