a place where friends get together
Dee’s spicy pumpkin soup
Dee’s been experimenting in the kitchen and has come up with a really good pumpkin soup recipe…
one that is destined to become a Robbins Family tradition.
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1/4-1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
2 teaspoon curry powder
1 teaspoon allspice (groun
7 cups of cooked pumpkin 
1 1/2 cups of of canned unsweetened coconut milk
If too spicy, add cream to cool it down. Add salt to taste. (Serves 8)
• To make pumpkin puree from your jack-o-lantern: after seeds and stringy stuff are removed, cut in sections and lie face down on a tin-foil lined baking pay. Bake at 350ºF until soft, about 45 min to an hour. Cool. From the hardened skin, scoop out the flesh to use. Freeze whatever you don’t use for future use.
This article is for UofN School Leaders and those who want to help develop health- related missions training within the UofN College of Counseling & Health Care.
Feel free to comment.
Road Map for developing UofN-Health Training Continue reading “ROAD MAP for UofN-Health courses”
WELCOME TO THE ROBBINS’ RENDEZVOUS
Part of what God used to bring Dee and I together was a mutual desire to walk out an integration of the Great Commandment (to love God with all our being and our neighbor as ourself) and the Great Commandment (to disciple nations). This remains the core of our calling as a family.
For the last 23 plus years we have worked to equip skilled servant-leaders in community development and health transformation and to help establish them in some of the most difficult and needy places on earth.
While Allan continues to run courses, seminars and workshops, he now gives oversight to our health training programs around the world as well as often consulting for other mission groups.
We value YOUR friendship and hope our family website can help us keep in touch, as we walk together on this wonderful journey to which the Lord has called us.
Allan & Dee
We believe if God has called us as a family into missions,
then He’s called us as a family into ministry.
Fifteen Years After Autism Panic, a Plague of Measles Erupts
Legions spurned a long-proven vaccine, putting a generation at risk
By JEANNE WHALEN and BETSY MCKAY
PORT TALBOT, Wales—When the telltale rash appeared behind Aleshia Jenkins’s ears, her grandmother knew exactly what caused it: a decision she’d made 15 years earlier.
Ms. Jenkins was an infant in 1998, when this region of southwest Wales was a hotbed of resistance to a vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. Many here refused the vaccine for their children after a British doctor, Andrew Wakefield, suggested it might cause autism and a local newspaper heavily covered the fears. Resistance continued even after the autism link was disproved.
The bill has now come due.
A measles outbreak infected 1,219 people in southwest Wales between November 2012 and early July, compared with 105 cases in all of Wales in 2011.
One of the infected was Ms. Jenkins, whose grandmother, her guardian, hadn’t vaccinated her as a young child. “I was afraid of the autism,” says the grandmother, Margaret Mugford, 63 years old. “It was in all the papers and on TV.”
The outbreak presents a cautionary tale about the limits of disease control. Wales is a modern society with access to modern medical care and scientific thought. Yet legions spurned a long-proven vaccine, putting a generation at risk even after scientists debunked Dr. Wakefield’s autism research.
The outbreak matters to the rest of the world because measles can quickly cross oceans, setting back progress elsewhere in stopping it. By 2000, the U.S. had effectively eliminated new home-grown cases of measles, though small outbreaks persist as travelers bring the virus into the country. New York City health officials this spring traced a Brooklyn outbreak to someone they believe was infected in London.
Measles outbreaks are a “canary in the coal mine,” says James Goodson, the lead measles expert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People who refuse one vaccine may be spurning others, setting communities up for outbreaks of other dangerous diseases that are slower to propagate, he says, such as diphtheria and whooping cough.
“Despite the fact that it’s one of the greatest health measures ever invented by man or woman, there seems to still be a small residue of humanity that objects to the very idea of immunization,” says Dai Lloyd, a doctor in Wales who treated many of the recent measles cases. “If you go around the cemetery you can see the historical evidence of childhood slaughter from pre-immunization days.”
Measles is a respiratory condition causing fever, cough and rash. Most people who catch it recover fully. But measles can lead to deafness and pneumonia, and, in about one in 1,000 cases, death. It is one of the most contagious diseases, spread by coughing and sneezing.
It is also among the most preventable, with an effective inoculation since the 1960s that is now commonly given with mumps and rubella vaccines in a combined “MMR” vaccine. The U.K., as did the U.S., categorized measles as “eliminated” over a decade ago, meaning it was no longer circulating from within its borders.
Child deaths from measles world-wide fell 71% to 158,000 in 2011 from 2000, says the Measles & Rubella Initiative, a partnership of global-health groups.
Most measles occurs in developing countries. But it is resurging in some of the very countries that have led global campaigns against it. France was close to eliminating it in 2007 before an outbreak infected more than 20,000 people between 2008 and 2011. Philosophical opposition to vaccines helped cause the outbreak, says the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
The 117 U.S. cases reported so far this year are up from 54 in all of 2012 and could put the U.S. on track to match the 220 logged in 2011, the highest since 1996. England reported 1,168 cases in 2013 through May, up 64% from the year-earlier period and the highest recorded level since 1994.
“It’s very galling we had measles eliminated and now we’ve got it again” in the U.K., says Paul Cosford, medical director of Public Health England, the government public-health agency.
The autism scare behind the Wales outbreak tracks to the era of Dr. Wakefield, then a researcher at London’s Royal Free Hospital, whose suggestion of a vaccine-autism link began to get press in 1997.
A paper Dr. Wakefield published in 1998 in the Lancet, a medical journal, described 12 “previously normal” children who developed gastrointestinal problems and developmental disorders including autism. His paper concluded that “in most cases, onset of symptoms was after measles, mumps, and rubella immunization. Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to this vaccine.”
Medical experts immediately warned parents that they considered the research incomplete and speculative, and said there was no evidence of a link. Among other studies debunking his research, a 2004 review of epidemiological studies by the U.S. Institute of Medicine found no evidence MMR caused autism.
The Lancet retracted Dr. Wakefield’s paper in 2010 after the U.K.’s General Medical Council concluded that his work was “irresponsible and dishonest.” The council that year stripped him of his medical license, saying in a report that he had engaged in “serious professional misconduct.”
Dr. Wakefield says he questioned MMR’s safety but strongly urged parents to continue with a measles-only vaccine. “MMR doesn’t protect against measles,” he says. “Measles vaccine protects against measles.” He says he stands by his work despite contrary conclusions by other scientists. He didn’t respond to subsequent requests for comment on his license revocation.
His report helped spark backlash against MMR, especially in English-speaking countries, say health officials in the U.S., U.K., Australia and other countries. An estimated 2.1% of U.S. children who received other routine vaccines weren’t immunized with MMR in 2000, up from 0.77% in 1995, according to a 2008 study published in Pediatrics that concluded the change was “associated with” Dr. Wakefield’s study.
Dr. Wakefield says he rejects the idea that his research helped cause measles outbreaks, because he told parents to keep vaccinating with measles-only vaccine.
U.S. critics, including some who questioned vaccines in general, continued to campaign against the vaccine. Among them, former Playboy model and actress Jenny McCarthy, who has been named a co-host of ABC’s “The View,” became a leader of the anti-vaccine movement in the U.S. several years ago when in televised interviews she linked her son’s autism to vaccinations. A publicist for Ms. McCarthy, who wrote the forward to a 2010 book by Dr. Wakefield, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Dr. Wakefield’s work especially reverberated in the U.K. MMR vaccination rates among 2-year-olds in England fell to 80% in the 2004 fiscal year from about 92% in 1997.
But nowhere did the toxic mix of dubious science, sensational headlines and parental fear take a bigger toll than in southwest Wales. As Dr. Wakefield’s concerns gathered steam in Britain’s national media in 1997, a Port Talbot mother, Jackie Eckton, phoned the South Wales Evening Post to ask whether other parents had experienced problems with MMR.
In one 1997 article, Ms. Eckton told the Post the vaccine turned her 3-year-old, Daniel, who had been diagnosed with autism, into a “distant and silent recluse.” She told the paper she wanted to form “some sort of action group so people can help each other fight this thing and what it does.”
The Post instructed parents wanting to join her campaign to phone its news desk.
Within days, parents of 20 other children formed a group led by Ms. Eckton, and demanded Jump to the full WSJ article
Roald Dahl, author of James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda and The BFG, writting about the death of his daughter Olivia, from measles.
Olivia, my eldest daughter, cuaght measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the way to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of colored pip-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ I asked her.
‘I feel all sleepy,’ she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.
On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunized against measles. I was unable to to that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is ask your doctor to administer it.
Many do not accepted that measles can be a dangerous illness. Believe me, it is. In my opinion parents who now refuse to have their children immunized are putting the lives of those children at risk. In America, where measles immunization is compulsory, measles like smallpox, has been virtually wiped out.
Here in Britain, because so many parents refuse, either out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunized, we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year. Out of those, more than 10,000 will suffer side effects of one kind or another. At least 10,000 will develop ear or chest infections. About 20 will die.
LET THAT SINK IN.
Every year around 20 children will die in Britain from measles.
So what about the risks that your children run from being immunized?
The are almost non-existent. Listen to this. In a district of around 300,000 people, there will be only one child every 250 years who will develop serious side effects from measles immunizations! That is about a million to one chance. I should think there would be more chance of your child choking to death on a chocolate bar than of becoming seriously ill from a measles immunization.
So what on earth are you worrying about? It really is almost a crime to allow your child to go unimmunized.
The ideal time to have it done is at 13 months, but it is never too late. All school-children who have not yet had a measles immunization should beg their parents to arrange for them to have one as soon as possible.
Incidentally, I dedicated two of my books to Olivia, the first was James and the Giant Peach. That was when she was still alive. The second was The BFG, dedicated to her memory after she had died from measles. You will se her name at the beginning of each of these books. And I know how happy she would be if only she could know that here death had helped to save a good deal of illness and death among other children.”
Roald Dahl, 1986
Dahl, in his garden writing shed in 1986,
writes about the death of his eldest daughter
Feel free to donate to Roald Dahl’s Marvelous Children’s Charity
Allan teaching in the Introduction to Primary Health Care school in Kona.
This week I taught the in the Introduction to Primary Health Care on Water-related Infectious Diseases (including Malaria and Dengue), worms & other parasites, and on skin diseases. Always fun, as it is very practical. These IPHC students will be starting their 3-month field practicum in 3 weeks in Cambodia.
Allan with the 2010 Kona IPHC students
Coram Deo
to do all things,
to live your life…
before the face of God.
The University of the Nations in Kailua-Kona, Hawai’i was founded in 1978 to train students from all the world to go every nation by serving every sphere of society with the love of God, and providing practical aid to help a hurting world. Continue reading “Youth With A Mission Day proclamation in Hawaii”
Posted on January 14, 2012 by konaallan
“So what do you think we should do about our nationʼs water problems?”
“What does YWAM recommend for the people of my country to obtain clean drinking water?”
Janet Museveni, Uganda’s First Lady
The three of us had been invited to a private meeting at the Ugandan State House, the presidential residence, and the person asking the question was Mrs. Janet Museveni, Ugandaʼs First lady and wife of the President.
In YWAM, we often talk about our goal of discipling nations in every sphere of life, but are we ready to step up to the plate. When leaders of nations ask us for Godly wisdom on their most vexing issues, do we just speak in generalities or are we ready to share specific ways God uses to bring transformation in health, in water, in development?
Do we even really believe God has good intentions for water?… for every sphere of life?
Iʼm reminded of a conversation I had with a missionary I met in a middle-eastern nation some years ago.
“Weʼre restoring water to villages that have not had it since the war,” he said. “Weʼre drilling wells in these communities and installing $10,000 high-tech in-well pumps that weʼre getting donated from the United States and then weʼre sharing with them the Good News of Jesus.”
Wow, I said. Are you able to train any mechanics in the community to keep the pumps running?
No, was the reply. These are too sophisticated a pump to be repaired in this nation.
Well are they just such a robust design that they can last 10 or 20 years without any maintenance?
Well no, again was the reply. They’re really only expected to last about two years, but they are our “foot in the door” as it were to get to share about Jesus and His wonderful plan for our lives.
I had to fight back tears as this man continued on about his group’s efforts to use water as an evangelistic tool, but my thoughts were, “What are these communities going to think about Jesus’ good news in two years when they again have no water? Is the Gospel only Good News about the spiritual part of our lives?
Does God not have good news about water?
Just as the University of the Nations is beginning to evaluate our educational efforts not by what is taught, but by what is caught, so must those working in medical missions and community development focus not on those things we do to and for communities, but on what we help equip them to discover and do themselves, long after we’re gone.
God has no grandchildren, only children. Unless we learn to seek and find His answers for our lives we will always be dependent on others.
“Those working in medical missions and community development must focus not on those things we do to and for communities, but on what we help equip them to discover and do themselves, long after we’re gone.”
Allan Robbins
For 3 months in 2008, a team of 12 from the UofN-Kona Community Health Development school joined long-term YWAM ministries in Uganda in equipping servant-leaders who wanted to see lasting fruit in their nation.
While drought and food shortage had made life especially difficult in Uganda this year, interest wasn’t just in our workshops on water, malnutrition, and infectious diseases, but on expanding discipleship training through the local church to encompass worldview issues which pastors were recognizing as the only hope of sustainable change.
In Uganda, it is not uncommon for many believers to be fatalistic and fearful of spirits that would be angered by change. We worked with Ugandan pastors associations to equip local pastors and YWAM staff to see that the giants in their land can be overcome and to help them decide what their part should be. Much of the enthusiastic feedback we received was that, “You’ve restored our hope that things can change… that God does have good intentions for our families, churches, and communities, and there are practical things WE can do about it!”
Our CHD students helped three communities start meeting to address and resolve their own water problems, we trained a YWAM staff team at their Hopeland base to build inexpensive rain-water catchment tanks to catch and store safe drinking water. We were asked to train two groups of Parish Health Care Workers and got to work with former UofN Health Care graduates now working long-term in the Buvuma Islands of Lake Victoria in helping equip and launch a new network of community-based health educators comprised mostly of pastors and church leaders who live in the islands. Finally, our team helped YWAM-Uganda prepare for their first School of Health Promotion & Development developed specifically to address the needs of sub-saharan Africa, but our goal was not just another school but a whole new school of thought.
At the same time we learned so much from these beautiful Ugandan YWAM staff and local pastors. Their dedication, compassion and personal sacrifice in addressing Uganda’s HIV & AIDS epidemic which has touched every family, creative new community-based savings & loan strategies to address family health issues, high-efficiency, vented, wood-burning clay stoves made freely made from the 12 ft tall termite mounds found everywhere in Uganda and story-telling, one of our students commented, I only wish I could learn to tell such winsome stories in my teaching.
The First Lady looked at me expectantly. I glanced across the table at Jeff, also with Kona’s Water For Life team, and Sam, YWAM’s Foundations in Community Development school leader in Uganda, but they both had their eyes closed in what I hoped was a fervent prayer for my response.
I said, “If it were an easy problem you would have already solved it long ago. It’s not just a problem of contaminated water but the problems where families even have difficulty even gaining access to water.“
It is a problem of technology that needs to be affordable, acceptable and sustainable, but mostly it is a problem of beliefs and behaviors that must change. Yet as you prayed when we opened our meeting today, we KNOW God has answer’s, that He has good intentions for our families and communities.
The First Lady nodded and I continued,
YWAM has worked with water issues for over nearly 50 years all over the world. We keep learning as we see successes and we have several household and community-based approaches to water that we think could be very helpful, but each nation is unique. We would like an opportunity for ongoing work with your office, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Water & Environment in finding the answers we know God has for Uganda.
Uganda’s churches and Pastor’s Associations want to help with this, because at the heart of the water problem, there is a need to renew how we think, to change our behavior.
How would you do this? the First Lady asked.
In other nations, YWAM, and other organizations have begun having amazing results with a Care Group network where a handful of trainers each equip 8 Care Group Leaders who each lead 8 groups over a two week cycle. Each Care Group is made up of 10 Leader Mothers who then go back and each week visit 5-10 of their closest neighbor families sharing the simple messages they learned. When the messages are kept simple but profound, we have been amazed at the lasting behavior change this approach has had in families and suddenly that small group of trainers are impacting 12-20,000 families.
Sam Kiwinacha reminded the First Lady of her visit to the YWAM Hopeland training center for a Global AIDS conference last, and she asked, What kind of training can YWAM offer us in Uganda?
We were ready with an answer: from YWAM-Uganda’s many years of experience with community HIV/AIDS work, children at risk and satellite family support networks, and Integrated Health Projects they could offer 2 day – 2 week seminars and workshops on Water & Sanitation, Village Technology, Health Promotion & Global Health Issues, Food & Income Security, Community Leadership & Capacity Building and Biblical Worldview Training and networking with Pastor’s Associations. YWAM-Uganda also offered 6 month certificate courses in Community Development and Health Promotion & Development.
Nodding and looking thoughtful, the First Lady asked, What could my office do for you?
Glancing at Jeff & Sam, I replied, “You could help promote our training opportunities to a wider audience and include us in future collaborations on water.”
“You could help identify people who would especially benefit from our training seminars…and if possible, you could help fund scholarships for those students.”
“But mostly you could help us have an on-going relationship in working together to make water safe and accessible, and in convincing communities that God has good intentions for them in every area of life.
Smiling broadly, the First Lady said, I can do this. Yes this is something I can do.
We’re still discovering it, but you’re invited to come walk walk with some fellow followers of Jesus, who are convinced that we’ve never lived in such exciting days. It’s not about what we do TO or FOR people. It’s about what’s left behind…trusting friendships, nationals equipped with new skills and new revelation of God’s nature and character – that He has good intentions for all aspects of our lives; and seeing churches with a new passion to fulfill their role of bringing Hope through simple, practical gifts of service.
by Allan Robbins
Allan serves as an Int’l. Assoc. Dean overseeing UofN’s Health Care training. He leads the Community Health Development program and is one of the founding members of YWAM’s Water For Life Institute.
