The Sunday Mail
Desire Ncube
REDEEMED House of God founder Dr Nick Ohizu, in collaboration with US-based Arms of Care, will conduct a free medical outreach programme to celebrate the charismatic pastor’s birthday. The programme will bring together 60 medical practitioners, 13 from the United States, from September 21-23 at the church’s premises in Harare.
The outreach was initially only for widows and orphans but has since been opened up to everyone.
“Because of the kind of network God has given me, linking me with a group of African-American doctors, I have managed to talk to them to support me in this cause.
“It was easy convincing them because all of them are Christians and as I am speaking everything else has been sorted and we are expecting them on Saturday night,” said Dr Ohizu, who hails from Nigeria.
He said dental services, cancer screening, eye testing, HIV counselling and testing among a host of provisions would be catered for under their US$100 000 budget.
“We have budgeted US$100 000 for this event but with the response that we are getting the money might not be enough. Besides there are other expenses that we did not include like feeding the supporting staff as well as their transportation, that automatically means that we will have a blotted budget.” Dr Ohizu said the money did not come from his congregation.
“I am an entrepreneur, I run my own businesses.
‘‘I provided part of the money from my own pocket and the other part was covered by the Americans.
“These doctors have an organisation called Arms of Care and this is the organisation which also contributed towards this event. God has called them to give back to Africa and that is exactly what they are doing. “We have also partnered with the Christian Medical Fellowship of Zimbabwe who have provided us with some more medical doctors, pharmacist and nurses.
“In as much as we offer Christian oriented solutions we believe that some problems need medical treatment. We cannot wait for God while we have the ability to do something that will help ourselves.
“Therefore this event is going to be an annual event and we can even increase the frequency depending with the need,” Dr Ohizu said.
“My experience in the Pentecostal church is that people view us as scavengers, people who always want to take or collect from people but that should not be the case. We have to correct it and what we are planning to do as a church is what God expects from us.”
