Steps Along the Way

A memoir of Dick and Loretta Stoughton's experiences during two different medical missionary times in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe.

This is a memoir of Dick and Loretta Stoughton's experiences of 5 /12 years at two different medical missions in Rhodesia in the 1970's. They arrived with five children, ages 10 months to 10 years, and left with seven. The book describes the frustrations, joy, sadness, and difficulties of life under trying but manageable conditions. After 26 years in a medical practice in Wisconsin, they decided to return to Zimbabwe to continue their missionary life and experiences. They were at a different rural hospital for the next eight years, experiencing the devastation of the AIDS epidemic, poor governance, lack of supplies, and hyper-hyper-inflation. During both times, they quickly learned to love the people they worked with, the hospital and mission staff, and (almost all) the people with whom they came in contact.

Dick is a medical doctor and Loretta is a wife and mother, who after time in the U.S. Navy and Dick's Family Medicine training in Santa Rosa, decided to "do some medical missionary work." Little did they know this decision would lead to Rhodesia in the 1970's for 5 1/2 years, and then after 26 years in a medical clinic in Wisconsin, would return to Zimbabwe for another 8 years. They now live in an "in-law attachment" with their youngest son and his family near Tampa, Florida.