By Mary Owen
Handing out food to Pakistani flood victims was a far cry from practicing medicine in Oregon, but for Debbie Eisenhut, it was a calling she could not ignore.
“God called me to the mission field when I was in high school,” said Eisenhut, who grew up in Aumsville and graduated from Cascade High School in 1974. “I always knew I was going to be a missionary doctor.”
Eisenhut’s interest in medicine was fueled by an aptitude test she took in her ninth-grade careers class at Cascade. Her interests were doctor, nurse and agriculture. She claimed the first on the list, the first step in her journey to the mission field.
Eisenhut studied at Oregon State University for three years, attended University of Oregon Medical School in Portland for four, and did her surgical residency at Audie Murphy Veteran’s Administration Hospital in San Antonio, Texas for five years before returning to practice at Salem Hospital in general surgery for more than 20 years.
“I also needed to learn more about the Bible and get to know the Lord better,” said Eisenhut, an attendee at Bethel Baptist Church in Aumsville since birth.
She joined Bible Study Fellowship to boost her biblical knowledge while building her finances for work overseas. Then in 2005, she felt called to full-time missions. She applied to and was accepted by two missions groups. She chose WorldVenture, a Christian organization that sends workers into more than 70 countries. She was sent to Pakistan two years later.
“Women and children needed a doctor there,” she said. “We had a busy clinic. Because the flood gave us access to children, I was able to implement and run a unit for malnourished children.”
When she left Pakistan in 2011, the unit served 200 children. Most suffered from parasites, malaria and stomach tuberculosis, which they got from drinking raw buffalo milk.
All were severely malnourished.
“Virtually nothing is done for children,” she said of the government’s lack of treatment for TB. “Only adults are treated for tuberculosis in Pakistan, and only for lung TB.
“I talked to an OxFam worker who told me she had never seen so many malnourished children than in this area of Pakistan,” she added. “Many just die.”
The load at the hospital grew heavier with the aftermath of Pakistan’s flood in 2010, the worst in more than 80 years.
Caused by monsoons, the floods began in July and didn’t end until the following year.
About one-fifth of the land area was underwater, destroying property, livelihood and infrastructure. More than 20 million people were affected.
“Water came out of the rivers and into the countryside, destroying all the rice crops,” Eisenhut said. “People just camped everywhere.”
Relief work started with about 800 villagers camped by the hospital. Eisenhut and her coworkers served two hot meals a day, weaning people off to three-week ration packs after a few weeks.
“As the villages dried out, the people went back to them, but the fields didn’t dry out until January 2011,” she said. “Only then could they plant their wheat crop.”
Eisenhut said the hospital gave the villagers wheat seed to plant and fed them until April of that year when the crop was harvested.
“What began as 800 people became 19 villages and over 5,000 people,” she said. “The hospital fed them for a total of seven months.”
Gifts of wheat seed provided the villagers with a means of paying off debts owed to their landlords for their flooded rice crop.
“This enabled a small step in their road to recovery,” Eisenhut said.
According to Eisenhut, the humanitarian outreach did not go unnoticed.
“A man who had a little shop invited us to tea after a food distribution in the village,” she said. “When the team got there, he closed his shop and led them along a dirt path around the back where a group of about 20 people were waiting. He told us, ‘I have sat here in my shop and have watched you go by in your old hospital van every day for seven months. No one else is doing this. You must love our people so much. Why are you doing this?’ The team was able to share why we were helping.”
Sharing the Christian message goes hand-in-hand with Eisenhut’s medical care.
“I talk and pray with patients,” she said. “People are very interested. They want to talk about these things.”
Eisenhut will next use her medical skills and share her Christian faith at ELWA (Eternal Love Winning Africa) Hospital in Liberia with SIMS (Serving in Mission), an organization that has more than 1,600 missionaries throughout Africa, Asia and South America.
“In Pakistan, I was not able to use my surgical skills,” she said. “I changed agencies, and will now be doing surgery.”
Eisenhut plans to stay in missions “as long as God allows me.”
“If God is calling you, don’t say no,” she advised others contemplating their path.
Eisenhut believes those who answer the call will receive great blessings.
“God is the best employer there is!” she said.
