Railson & Heidi Gil

Christian missionaries in Pará, northern Brazil.

Railson, native to Pará, is called to developing projects which exemplify the Kingdom in practical ways, specifically through communications development and digital integration (that is, making computer technology available to disadvantaged classes). Heidi is a pediatric nutritionist and English teacher from Oregon, USA. She enjoys putting the Gospel into practice as she counsels nutritionally needy families. Our gifts bring us into contact with people of all levels, which often leads to house visits and impromptu gatherings around the Bible. We love it when God surprises our unsuspecting visitors with the tangible sense of His presence! Here you will find our current and past newsletters as well as photos of our family and region. Have fun exploring our site!

• Community Health–Cooperating with Brazilian socialized health

  Filed under Community, Health
  Oct 25

  Praise God! I am back to working in Clinical nutrition at the local public hospital. Since my permanence was granted in March, I have a little more leverage to begin recognized service, even though my green card hasn’t come yet. So, I took advantage of few strategic relationships I had developed, including with the hospital director and the current nutritionist. While the other nutritionist manages mostly food service and patient diets, I do outpatient consultations. Word has spread throughout the community and demand has grown. I may soon have to add a third day to my work week.

  My work is still volutary, which gives me a certain satisfaction and conveniently keeps me out of the political bureaucracy rampant in Brazil’s socialized health system. For the time being, our sponsor’s donations are enough to subsidize this work.

  Our satisfaction in health care is two-fold. First we are able to aleviate individual’s health issues to some degree, and second it gives us many, many opportunities to share the gospel. Having access to the hospital wards puts me in contact with people at all levels of trauma. Last week I prayed for a child who had to have blood transfusions while recovering from malaria and for a 10-year-old with Reyes Sindrome, a health complication for which our hospital does not offer any specialized treatment. I also get to share Jesus in a relevant way to other hospital staff, and even those in administration at the government level.

  You may note from the photos that the local hospital and heath posts are by no means luxurious. But they do offer basic doctor’s examinations, first aid, and, interestingly enough, nutritional surveillance. The hospital in Monte Dourado is in disrepair, mostly due to corruption. It lacks medications, many surgical items and even food at times, a definite consternation for us nutritionists. Still we are hopeful that with the newly elected government, this situation will improve.

  By way of explanation: You will not see photos of patients or the inside of the hospital very often in our Space. This is because we want to protect the privacy of the patients, and we do not want to unintentionally take on a journalistic image inside the hospital. People may become suspicious of us taking photos if they do not fully understand the philanthropic reasons behind what we do.