65-acre Complex in India Brings Hope to Leprosy Sufferers
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You may have heard about leprosy or “Hansen’s Disease” – but do you really understand how to minister to victims of this challenge disease? You can help today!

In 1974 a leper hospital was erected in Chengizkhanpet, South India. The Gladys Schumacher Memorial Leprosy Hospital is located on a 65-acre complex. Three wings serve up to 500 patients. Our goal is a four-wing hospital that can serve 2,000 patients. It will be a “city of hope” with 200 lovely homes for the patients, and will include showers, toilets, and a beautiful chapel with a gifted pastor.

With assistance from the doctors and the nurses, the leper hospital is experiencing success in the ministry of rehabilitation. The patients love to work in the flourishing vegetable gardens, the small crops of rice, the fruit orchards and various other crops.  They also raise water buffalo and goats and learn useful skills, all under the loving guidance of the Jesse Barnabas, the ministry’s director.

There are diseases which are contagious, infectious, epidemic and endemic. There are other diseases which make their home in the human body and often burst out and attack mercilessly. No human disease, in addition to its intrinsic and inherent capacity to cause pain and suffering, also has as many attendant handicaps and associated man-made causes of alienation, ostracism, extreme disproportionate mental suffering and reckless abandon, as does the disease of leprosy.

Leprosy is a malady which is looked upon by most as a curse, as incurable, as loathsome, as ugly, as dreaded, and highly infectious, as a result of some deadly past sin.

The social stigma which is attached to it by the ignorant as well as educated people is still so persistent that even the nearest and dearest of kin are unwilling to entertain their own leprosy patients in their households. A leper is an untouchable, a social outcast in the cruelest sense imaginable.

The disease often brings in its wake ugly deformities, especially in the extremities of the hands, the feet, the nose, and the face. The disease has its long and torturous history. Leprosy, or “Hansen's Disease” need not be a killer—not even a crippler—if it is diagnosed and treated in the early stages.

Little wonder then that leprosy patients often become emotionally unbalanced. For most, the diagnosis means mountains of unsolved problems, mixed with prejudices, false knowledge, fears and insecurity. The patient reacts to this shock violently, whether it is outward or hidden. The depressed patient in most cases has guilt feelings which he or she cannot overcome. The leper is fully aware of the changes that gradually narrow his life. Unhappiness prevails in his life and spreads to his family.

The disease has made him ugly, but we believe that ugly can be beautiful when the right ingredients are combined.  When we show love, patience, kindness, and understanding, we are able to give life meaning. To restore health, dignity and purpose of life is the goal before us. Our noblest actions are undoubtedly those that seek to remove all suffering from human life and point them to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.