Hospital Changes Lives: Adult Mission Story for September 20, 2025

By Andrew McChesney

Editor’s note: One of this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath projects is to construct a kitchen and laundry for Chitanda Lumamba Adventist Hospital in Chibombo, Zambia. The hospital was donated to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and it opened in the fall of 2023.

Chitanda Lumamba Adventist Hospital is located in a rural Zambian community where people live in thatched houses and use wells and outhouses. Most are seasonal farmers who plant maize in the rainy season — but only enough for personal use. They don’t have much extra income. Alcoholism and teen pregnancy rates are high.

Public transportation consists primarily of small and large trucks that carry passengers in the back. Buses or taxis are a rare sight. Often people simply walk.

Before the Adventist hospital opened, the community only had a small walk-in clinic that offered the bare essentials. In an ideal setting, the clinic would have an ambulance to pick up patients. But in this region, there was only one ambulance that was shared by several small clinics. The ambulance couldn’t be called to anyone’s home. A patient had to find a way to go to the clinic. Then the clinic would call for the ambulance to take the patient to the nearest hospital located 60 miles (90 kilometers) away. But first, the clinic had to call around to find the ambulance. If the ambulance was already booked, the patient had to wait six hours, 12 hours, or even a day to get a ride to the hospital. As a result, some patients walked 60 miles to the hospital.

Before the Adventist hospital opened, the usual scenario was that an expectant mother would arrive at the local clinic and the clinic would call for an ambulance. Then the expectant mother would have to wait many hours or until the next day to be picked up.

Even now that the Adventist hospital is open, patients don’t necessarily arrive in an ambulance. The hospital shares one ambulance with all the district clinics.

Once, a woman was brought on an ox cart to the Adventist hospital. She was in labor and accompanied by a half-dozen family members. In Zambia, patients usually are accompanied to the hospital by a number of relatives.

The expectant mother was glad to find that the Adventist hospital was open and a doctor was available. She wouldn’t have to wait to be sent to the far-off hospital. The Adventist medical team delivered the baby successfully even though the birth required a complicated procedure. Afterward, the new mother was able to return easily to her home nearby.

The new mother and her family were very grateful for the Adventist hospital.

“This saved a lot of time and money,” one family member said. “When you go to the clinic, you have to sit and wait for someone to make a call and for the ambulance to pick you up.”

About 200 babies are born every month in the hospital’s small maternity ward.

On another occasion, a 5-year-old boy was hospitalized with his leg in a cast.

His mother expressed gratitude that her son could stay at the hospital.

“The hospital looks better and offers better services than what we had before,” she said. “Before, we only had a small clinic where we had to wait a long time to be treated. The clinic would have sent us home right away with the leg in a cast. Then we would have had to come back the next day and every day after that for check-ups. But at the hospital, my son could stay for treatment until his leg healed and he could go back home.”

Chitanda Lumamba Adventist Hospital is filling an important need in the community and hopes to do much more. It’s priorities now are a kitchen and a laundry. A proper kitchen is needed to prepare healthy food, not only for patients but also for the relatives who accompany them to the hospital. Laundry currently is done by hand, and the acquisition of washing machines and dryers will improve patient care.

Mwate Mwambazi is a pediatrician and health ministries director for the Northern Zambia Union Conference, where the hospital is located. “Now we are open, but we are in dire need of help,” she said.

Your Thirteenth Sabbath Offering will help Chitanda Lumamba Adventist Hospital open the much-needed kitchen and laundry in Zambia. Thank you for planning a generous offering on September 27.