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“There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear.” (1 John
4:18a, HCSB)

Hi, this is Eleanor Witcher of IMB’s prayer office, sharing testimonies of
baptism.

“Have you been baptized?” the Uighur believer of Northwest China asked one
day as they studied together. “No, I have not. When I first came to believe, the
leaders of our group told me to wait. They wanted me to know more before I was
baptized.” This is evidence of the fear that is present where we live. “Baptism
is so public. What if someone sees us?” “If they are really spying on us, we
could get raided and imprisoned,” the believers think.

Early this year, Ethiopian followers in Addis Ababa needed strength to be
baptized in the face of persecution. Now an entire household is now planning to
be baptized. Some mature believers had been out of the country for a few weeks,
and when they returned, their friend had come to them to share the good news.
She told them that while they were away, she had read the Book of Acts--and she
had read it to her family. Seeing people be obedient in baptism is not something
that pleases Satan so details for the baptism will be organized as soon as
possible.

A few members of the team and Fulakunda nationals gathered for
the baptism, praying with the new believer and rejoicing in his obedience. His
wife shared that she wanted to be baptized also but she was scared . . . scared
of the water, scared of the decision that was at hand. When questioned further,
she revealed that she truly did accept, but she just needed more time. For this
people group, once you are baptized, there is no going back, and soon, whether
you tell them or not, everyone in the predominantly Muslim village will hear
that you follow Jesus.

* Please lift up Fulakunda believers (there are many) who are weighing the
cost of making the very public declaration of faith through baptism.

* Pray for this Ethiopian family that their example will lead many others to
be obedient.

* Ask God to reassure the hearts of Uighur believers so that they will learn
to live by truth and not fear.

By Ben Sales · April
22, 2013

TEL AVIV (JTA) -- Minutes after a terrorist attack killed three at the finish
line of the Boston Marathon, doctors and nurses at the city’s hospitals faced a
harrowing scene -- severed limbs, burned bodies, shrapnel buried in
skin.

For Boston doctors, the challenge presented by last week's bombing was
unprecedented -- but they were prepared.

Many of the city's hospitals have doctors with actual battlefield experience.
Others have trauma experience from deployments on humanitarian missions, like
the one that followed the Haitian earthquake, and have learned from
presentations by veterans of other terror attacks like the one at a movie
theater in Colorado.

But they have benefited as well from the expertise developed by Israeli
physicians over decades of treating victims of terrorist attacks -- expertise
that Israel has shared with scores of doctors and hospitals around the world.
Eight years ago, four Israeli doctors and a staff of nurses spent two days at
Massachusetts General Hospital teaching hospital staff the methods pioneered in
Israel.

According to the New Yorker magazine, every Boston patient who reached the
hospital alive has survived.

Alastair Conn, the chief of emergency services at Massachusetts General
Hospital, acknowledged the day of the attack the help provided by Israeli
experts.

“About two years ago in actual fact we asked the Israelis to come across and
they helped us set up our disaster team so that we could respond in this kind of
manner,” Conn told reporters.

Techniques that were routine in Israel by 2005, and helped save lives in
Boston last week, began evolving in the 1990s, when Israel experienced a spate
of bus bombings. Israeli doctors “rewrote the bible of blast trauma,” said Avi
Rivkind, the director of the trauma center at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical
Center, where 60 percent of Israeli victims have been treated.

Much of what Israel has learned about treating attack victims was done on the
fly. In 1996, a 19-year-old soldier arrived at the Hadassah hospital following a
bus bombing with severe injuries to her chest and esophagus. Doctors put chest
drains on her lungs and performed endoscopies twice a day to stop the bleeding.
Both techniques are now regular practices.

“We were sure she was going to die, and she survived,” Rivkind
said.

A riskier move came five years later when Adi Huja arrived at Hadassah with
massive blood loss following an attack in downtown Jerusalem. Rivkind realized
his team wasn't controlling the bleeding, so he directed staff to administer a
shot of NovoSeven -- a staggeringly expensive coagulant typically used for
hemophiliacs that was not approved for a trauma situation. But it worked and
Huja survived.

Rivkind is an internationally recognized expert in terror medicine and widely
considered one of the great brains behind Israeli innovations that have been
adopted around the world.

Trained at Hebrew University, the Hadassah Medical Center and the Institute
for Emergency Medical Services Systems in Baltimore, he has contributed to
several volumes on trauma surgery and post-attack care, and authored a number of
seminal medical studies. Rivkind was the personal physician for the late Israeli
President Ezer Weizman, helped care for Ariel Sharon when the prime minister
fell into a coma following a stroke, and has performed near-miraculous feats,
once reviving a soldier shot in the heart who had been pronounced dead in the
field.

But not everything Rivkind has learned about treating attack victims comes
from a story with a happy ending. In 2002, Shiri Nagari was rushed to Hadassah
after a bus bombing. She appeared to have escaped largely unharmed, but 45
minutes later she was dead. It was, Rivkind later wrote, the first time he ever
cried after losing a patient.

“She seemed fine and talked with us,” he told JTA. “You can be very injured
inside, and outside you look completely pristine.”

Organizing the emergency room, Rivkind said, is as important as treating
patients correctly. During the second intifada, Hadassah developed what he
called the “accordion method,” a method of moving patients through various
stages of assessment with maximal efficiency. The process has become standard in
hospitals across Israel and around the world.

Some of what distinguishes Israeli trauma doctors are qualities that are hard
to teach. Rivkind has said he keeps two beepers and a cell phone on him at all
times, even in bed. Even when calls come in the middle of the night, a small
army of medical professionals can usually be relied on to arrive at their posts
within minutes, sometimes even ahead of the ambulances carrying the
wounded.

“Whenever there was an alarm, we jumped, ran and called our homes, and then
got ready to absorb patients,” said Liora Utitz, the mass-casualty coordinator
at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. “I felt very safe. The volunteerism of
everyone gave me strength.”

Israel continues to export its trauma expertise. Rivkind has taught medicine
in Melbourne, Australia, and Southern California. Delegations of doctors from
New York and Los Angeles have visited him in Jerusalem. This week, he will speak
with Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who is visiting Israel, about strengthening
connections between Hadassah and hospitals in Baltimore.

“We have tens of years of cumulative trauma experience,” he said. “We’ve
learned not to give up.”