Special Memorandum
January 20,1961
Next Thursday, January 26, 1961, at 3:30 pm I will be leaving for a six-week survey trip to Africa -- Pan American Flight #58 from O'Hare Field to London which will be our first stop.  Accompanying me will be Dr. G. A. Hemwall, Physician-Surgeon of Chicago and Dr. C. Everett Koop, Professor of Surgery, University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Valdo Oleari will also be going with us to London where he leaves us and goes directly to Kane, Nigeria, West Africa.
We want to enlist your prayers for all of us. This is the most urgent request. This trip is extremely important for the cause of medical missions and His Kingdom. Please remember each one of us by name before the Throne of Grace in your special prayer groups, Bible classes, Sunday School classes, churches, as well as in your own daily private devotions.
Pray for the blessing of God upon our ministry and in all our contacts, for health, strength, wisdom, and journeying mercies. As you know the doors to the Congo are closed at the present time. Pray for God's perfect will to be done.
The purpose of our trip is three-fold:  1) Get first-hand information of the fields where our CMS members are working -- find out how we can enhance the effectiveness of the CMS ministry on behalf of our CMS missionary members.  2) Explore the possibility of seeing how Christian medical men from the United States and Canada can be used in foreign government medical services and teaching institutions. 3) If the Lord opens the door, find out first-hand how we can further assist in meeting the immediate needs of the Congo.  A copy of our itinerary is enclosed with this memo.
Dr. Oleari, ophthalmologist from Wheaton, will be working for four weeks in the S.I.M. Hospital in Kano, Nigeria -- the only eye hospital in the northern part of Africa. Patients come from a radius of 1,000 miles.  It is a 100-bed hospital and they have between 400-600 out-patients daily.  Dr. Oleari will be operating, caring for hospital patients, seeing out-patients, etc.
Dr. James Petersen, Radiologist from Lexington, Massachusetts, plans to go to Nicaragua for several weeks in the very near future as a Short-Term-Missionary under CMS sponsorship, to meet a real need there. During this year a number of our other CMS doctors will be going out as Short-Term-Missionaries; we will keep you informed as plans are formulated.
"When God's call comes, we must needs go.  In our obedience to it there comes increasing sense of God's Almighty Grace with us all the time. With God's 'GO' behind us we are able to go anywhere -- always with HIM. 'Even so send I you', HE said, and breathed on them the Holy Spirit's quickening breath." -- Oswald Chambers.
J. Raymond Knighton
Executive Director