Kubacki fundraiser generates over $7K

By Eve­lyn Long –

It began as an idea — it became a real­ity and the real­ity resulted in $7100 raised to pur­chase med­ical sup­plies and equip­ment for Dr. Tim­o­thy Kubacki in his med­ical mis­sion­ary work in Angola, Africa.

The inter­view with Dr. Kubacki and his wife, Betsy, pub­lished in the Mor­row County Sen­tinel last Jan­u­ary, ignited the idea of a fund rais­ing event. Linda Ruehrmund invited the doc­tor and his wife to St. John Lutheran Church, Wind­fall, so oth­ers could meet them. From that point, a com­mit­tee was orga­nized and the plan­ning began.

The result was an evening at Car­di­nal Cen­ter, Marengo, on Novem­ber 10, when a silent auc­tion and a catered din­ner were held. The auc­tion, din­ner and dona­tions added up to $7100 to be used exclu­sively for med­ical sup­plies and med­ical equip– ment by the doc­tor in his med­ical work in Angola.

Speaker at the fund rais­ing event was Luke Kubacki, the old­est child of the Kubackis and a stu­dent at Ohio Uni­ver­sity, Athens. His two sis­ters and brother are liv­ing with his par­ents in Angola.

Using slides to enhance his talk, he explained the prim­i­tive con­di­tions under which his father prac­tices med­i­cine. The fam­ily is semi-permanently liv­ing in Lubango, a city of 1.2 mil­lion peo­ple, although no one really knows how many peo­ple actu­ally live there. There have been 30 years of Civil war in Angola, he said.

The fam­ily, though, is stay­ing in a city called Luena, towards the east­ern part of the coun­try where Dr. Kubacki works at a clinic. They will be there until mid-December but will return to their Lubango apart­ment before Christ­mas. They are hop­ing to move to a new city called Chi­ulu to begin work­ing in a small hos­pi­tal there in the next six months. Chi­ulu is in the south west­ern part of the coun­try, south of Lubango.

Luke said the hos­pi­tal his father is work­ing in is well kept but very aged, dif­fer­ent than hos­pi­tals in this coun­try. He also con­ducts a plane min­istry as part of the MAF, Mis­sion­ary Avi­a­tion Fellowship.

Angola’s pop­u­la­tion is more than 20 mil­lion peo­ple, he said. It’s offi­cially a Chris­t­ian nation but in the outer cities there are “local” religions.

Luke also touched on the seven years the fam­ily lived in the Amazon.

Jeff Ruth, WMRN –Mar­ion, emceed the pro­gram. Eliz­a­beth Cor­win, North­mor High School sopho­more, sang a solo and Ruehrmund read a let­ter writ­ten by Dr. Kubacki on Octo­ber 27 in which he spoke of his char­ac­ter and his pro­fes­sion­al­ism and its con­nec­tion with his mis­sion work.

Pat Maxwell thanked all who donated to the silent auc­tion and Joanne Trainer intro­duced the com­mit­tee that orga­nized the fund raiser. Included were Deb Noll, who han­dled pub­lic­ity; Pam Keck­ler, reser­va­tions; Carol Witzel, finance; Pat Maxwell, silent auc­tion and Linda Ruehrmund, chair­man. John Gompf, Cor­ner­stone Café, was thanked for cater­ing the dinner.

A boost to the fund raiser was given with sup­port­ing funds through Care Abounds in Com­mu­nity Projects of the Cen­tral Ohio Four-County Chap­ter of Thrivent Finan­cial for Lutherans.

Noll explained that fund rais­ing for the doctor’s mis­sion will con­tinue with a Bob Evans Fund raiser the week of Feb­ru­ary 14–18, 2013. Bob Evans , Mar­ion, will donate 15% of sales made between 6 am and 10 pm to Dr. Kubacki’s Med­ical Mis­sion when a flyer is pre­sented to the cashier after din­ing. Fly­ers will be dis­trib­uted through­out the com­mu­nity or can be obtained by con­tact­ing any com­mit­tee mem­ber or Ruehrmund at 419–864-7520.

Dr. Kubacki was asso­ci­ated with the Emer­gency Depart­ment of the Mor­row County Hos­pi­tal for 13 years before enter­ing the missionary/medical field with SIM, an inter­na­tional mis­sion orga­ni­za­tion with more than 1,600 active mis­sion­ar­ies serv­ing in more than 50 coun­tries. SIM mem­bers serve God among many diverse peo­ple groups in Africa, Asia and South America.

A recent com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Dr. Kubacki says “We trav­eled to two remote health care works this week­end. Both were for­mer mis­sion sta­tions that were destroyed dur­ing the war. Both had a min­i­mally trained nurse see­ing 30 plus patients a day with lit­tle med­i­cine and no sup­plies. Beau­ti­ful men serv­ing their com­mu­nity pretty self­lessly. One with Cere­bral Palsy who could barely get around. I was emo­tion­ally touched as I watched him strug­gle to move around know­ing that he serves peo­ple tire­lessly in this man­ner. I was also struck by how many for­got­ten peo­ple for more than 2,000 years have lit­er­ally given their lives, in Jesus’ name, to go to the hard places and serve the naked, hun­gry, sick, wounded and dis­placed peo­ple that HE dearly loves. I can’t wait to meet them on day.”

“We have a nurse in our clinic who speaks nine lan­guages flu­ently. Another that speaks eleven. No one here speaks less than three. And we think we’re pretty intel­li­gent in the states and the peo­ple in Africa are “backward.”

“When the peo­ple of this region greet each other, they clap their hands and bow and shake hands and clap some more. It is one of the coolest things I’ve seen.”

Posted by Randa Wagner on Nov 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.