While Wendy is off, saving people's eyes and and restoring people's sight, you may ask yourself "what does Eric do all day? Nap in hammocks? Chase away monkeys with his machette to keep them from taking what's left of their food order?" The answer to both of these is no - there are too many bugs to make lying in a hammock all that pleasant, and we have yet to see a monkey, although we did have a few rats in our pantry, which are hopefully now gone. :)So what do I (Eric) do with my time? Well, the largest portion of my time is spent hitting the books. Yes, that does include a little bit of French study (I try to put in about an hour a day, if I'm able). But the larger portion of my time is spent on a different kind of books - the financial books for the hospital and the mission.
What does this entail, you might ask? Well, for the hospital bookkeeping, m
ost of the hard work is done by a gal named Christine. She, along with two other ladies, collect all of the payments from the hospital patients and pay many of the bills. Christine also tallies up everything at the end of the month and enters it into the computer. Where my help comes in is when Christine has questions about how to use the computer or questions about what accounts to put various expenses/credits. I serve as an advisor of sorts. And Christine serves as my French advisor (since all of our work is done in French, and I'm often stumbling through my words, trying to communicate various things.) But she is very gracious and patient.
ost of the hard work is done by a gal named Christine. She, along with two other ladies, collect all of the payments from the hospital patients and pay many of the bills. Christine also tallies up everything at the end of the month and enters it into the computer. Where my help comes in is when Christine has questions about how to use the computer or questions about what accounts to put various expenses/credits. I serve as an advisor of sorts. And Christine serves as my French advisor (since all of our work is done in French, and I'm often stumbling through my words, trying to communicate various things.) But she is very gracious and patient.The other part of my job is to keep track of all of the accounts for the mission. This involves all of the missionaries' support and personal accounts, along with the mission bank account, many ministry accounts, and other various things. So I keep track of any money related to activities of missionaries - both money coming in (such as donations from supporters, grants from the government, and deposits of personal funds), and money going out (such as paying for ministry-related activities, upkeep of cars, and getting money to pay for dinner at the Barack Obama Cafe in town).
So, here's how it works. Let's say someone wants to give money to one of our missionaries. First, the donor sends the money to the Christian & Missionary Alliance (C&MA) headquarters (the C&MA is the orginization that runs the mission), and includes a note, saying which missionary it is for. This money is then deposited into a bank account in the US. (Each month, I receive a statement showing all the donations made for the month.) I then enter the donation into the computer, placing the money into a subaccount with the missionary's name on it. Then we also have a bank accou
nt here in Gabon, since most places here don't take US Dollars - it's Central African Francs. We only keep a portion of the total money in the Gabonese bank, for saftey reasons. Whenever the balance in our account here in Gabon gets too low, we transfer some funds from our US bank account.
nt here in Gabon, since most places here don't take US Dollars - it's Central African Francs. We only keep a portion of the total money in the Gabonese bank, for saftey reasons. Whenever the balance in our account here in Gabon gets too low, we transfer some funds from our US bank account. .
Now, to complicate things a bit, there aren't ATMs for the missionaries to get cash. But the hospital recieves a lot of cash from patients. So, instead of depositing that cash in the hospital bank account (also a Gabonese bank account), the mission usually takes that cash, and then we transfer the money electronically from the mission account to the hospital account. That way, missionaries have access to cash, and the hospital doesn't have to make continuous trips to the bank (the nearest of which is 2.5 hours away) to deposit money.
There's more to tell, but I'm guessing you're probably needing a hammock of your own after reading this, so I will stop. I had expected to manage the mission books just for the first three months, but the person who I was filling in for has been pulled off onto other work, so I will be continuing this work for the forseeable future. In addition, I've also agreed to spend about 1/5 of my time helping out with administrative tasks related to the general surgery residency program here at the hospital. And, eventually I'll also be spending a few hours a week helping to train some of the hospital workers on how to use the computer.
So, there you have it. No hammocks for me. But the mission bookkeeping tends to be pretty solitary work, so I'm always happy when Wendy comes home and I have someone to talk to. And she's happy that she can finally talk to someone in English!!
1 comment:
keep up the great work Eric! It's great to be on the same team with you here in Gabon. Thanks for serving the team with excellence!
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