More Than Medicine
More Than Medicine
MTM - Christmas In The Middle East
A concrete-walled hospital, two open wards, and a handful of nurses training students to shoulder the work—our story begins there, in late-1970s Gaza, where medicine, faith, and friendship intersected with daily need. Carlotta shares how a verse in Luke moved her from homebody to journeyman nurse, and how routine dawn rounds gave way to something bigger: home health across packed refugee camps, conversations over wound care, and a classroom that doubled as a laboratory for courage.
We pull back the curtain on a Christmas Eve few imagine. As part of Israel’s lone Christian choir, Carlotta sang carols in Bethlehem at 11:30 pm, under searchlights and the watch of soldiers on rooftops. The square buzzed, the wind cut hard, and yet the message held steady: hope can speak over noise. That season stretched further with a Perry Como recording near Jerusalem’s walls, a surreal bridge between Western audiences and the stone and stories of the Holy Land.
The heartbeat of the episode lands in the quiet weeks that followed: a small Bible study that grew, two Greek Orthodox students discipled deeply, and then a surprise—22 Muslim students professed faith over several months. One young woman described a dream of blood like rain, recognized as Christ’s forgiveness, sealing a change that shaped her life. We reflect on safety, politics, and the complex mix of admiration and suspicion toward America at the time, while holding fast to the ordinary aims we all share: to work, to care for family, to find meaning that lasts.
Our path to long-term overseas service closed with a glaucoma diagnosis at 23, but that detour opened decades of short-term missions, community work, crisis pregnancy centers, and church planting at home. If this story resonates, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review—then tell us which moment stayed with you after the credits rolled.
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More than enough. Where Jesus is more than enough for the hills of the plague of our culture. Hosted by operat physician Dr. Robert Jackson. And his wife Carlotta and daughter Annabella. So listen up because the doctor is Annie.
Speaker 3:Welcome to More Than Mets, and I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson, bringing to you biblical insights and stories from the Country Doctor's Rusty, Dusty Scrapbook. Well, I'm privileged today to have in the studio with me my lovely bride, Miss Carlotta.
Speaker 2:Hello, everyone.
Speaker 3:I'm so glad to have Miss Carlotta with me. So we're going to do something special today. Many of you may have heard previously that Miss Carlotta was a missionary in the Middle East from 1979 to 1981. She actually served in Gaza, which is in the news almost every day for the last couple of years. She actually served at the Gaza Baptist Hospital, El Mastashfeld Matter Madani, Phi Gaza. And so I'm going to ask her to share with us what prompted her to go there. And I'd like to ask us to share with us some of her experiences while she was there. And she was there uh at a very interesting time uh at a at a Christmas season, and since it's Christmas time now, I'm gonna ask her to share with us her experience there at Christmas time in 1979. That's the one you want me to talk about, I think. Okay. All right. So Miss Carlotta, tell us exactly what prompted you to go to the Middle East.
Speaker 2:So I was raised in a pastor's home, and I heard my mom and dad talk about a missionary for many years who preceded my father at one of his churches, and dad talked a lot about foreign missions. He had foreign missionaries speak at his churches, and I grew up hearing about foreign missions.
Speaker 3:He he was a Southern Baptist pastor, right?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:And I knew that I wanted to be a nurse, I always wanted to be a nurse. It just from my youngest days of remembering anything about what my future might look like, and and I did go to nursing school, and even at a Christian camp, I shared that I believed the Lord wanted me to be a farm missionary. So uh you and I had already begun a relationship in 1976, and but we weren't sure where that relationship was going. And so after your father was killed in the airplane crash in 1978, I had started my master's, but after he was killed, I decided to pull out of school. I just wasn't not interested anymore in getting my master's, and I moved from Florence back to my home where my parents lived, and I started where was that in?
Speaker 3:Where's your where did your parents live?
Speaker 2:In Simpsonville, Malden.
Speaker 3:Malden, South Carolina, okay.
Speaker 2:And I decided to apply to the Journalman Program. And so I did and went to some sessions with them, interviews with them, and they accepted me. And in March of 79, they asked me to send them a telegram responding yes or no, whether I would accept their invitation to be a journeyman. Who uses telegrams anymore, right? They ask us to send a telegram. So I had just been reading in my Bible in my quiet time. Didn't search for this book verse, did not look for it, but I just happened to be reading in the book of Luke, and I read this verse right about the time I needed to make my final decision and send them my answer. And God gave me this verse, and he said to them, Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God, who shall not receive many times as much at this time and in the age to come eternal life. I had always been somewhat of a homebody. I loved being home. I came home every weekend from college to be at my parents' home and loved being there. So it was a hard decision for me to think about leaving. But that verse told me that there is a time to do that. And I left my mom and dad's home to be a journeyman, and I left in August of 1979 to go to Gaza. And I left you.
Speaker 3:Sorry. So so now you went to the Baptist Hospital in Gaza. Yes. Tell us a little bit about the hospital. What was it like?
Speaker 2:Well, that was a long time ago. I have seen pictures of it since, and they have certainly modernized some, but it was an old concrete wall type buildings. I there was a nursing school there, and I actually ended up teaching in the nursing school. We had about 30 or 40 patient uh nursing students, most of them men. And then we had the hospital on those grounds. I cannot remember how many beds it was, but it was like one big ward was the women's clinic, and then one big ward was the men's. There were no individual rooms. By the time I left, we had developed some intensive care rooms, maybe one or two, but for the most part, uh every patient was in uh two big rooms, a women's ward and a men's ward.
Speaker 3:And they had they had surgery?
Speaker 2:They did have surgery, yes. A very competent American surgeon was there, and there was an internist and there was an Arab surgeon who also worked there.
Speaker 3:I got you. And then it was one story or two stories? It was two stories. Two stories, okay. And now you also had a a nursing school plus the hospital.
Speaker 2:Yes, there was physical therapy, there was an emergency room, there was a building we called it the big house, that was an administrative building. There was a telephone booth where they used the old plugs.
Speaker 3:Plug in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know what you call that, but they would when someone called, they would plug in the connecting cord, and then you would pick up on your phone. And that was in the 70s, late 70s, early 80s. And in fact, the man who was running the box where the machine was with all the plugs and all the cords, the day that Ronald Reagan was shot in 1980, he ran out of that booth and shouted, President Reagan's been shot, President Reagan's been shot. That was kind of interesting, a little side note there.
Speaker 3:So the hospital had a big wall around it.
Speaker 2:It was it we called it a compound, and yes, there was a protective wall around it with one gate that entered out on one of the main roads of Gaza.
Speaker 3:And how many students were in your nursing school?
Speaker 2:Probably, I think I said about thirty, thirty-five, most of them men.
Speaker 3:Now these were Muslims or Greek Orthodox, am I remembering that right?
Speaker 2:Most of them were Muslims. I had two female Greek Orthodox students. I don't think there were any male Greek Orthodox.
Speaker 3:Okay. Now, what what was your daily routine when you were there?
Speaker 2:It changed over time, but the majority of the time I would get up around 5 or 5 30, have my quiet time, and then I would go to the men's or the uh women's ward, where I would help the surgeon see his patients make his rounds, and I was usually a supervisor of some sort over the other students. It was the students who actually ran the hospital. We really only had a few real nurses, and so the students did most of the care, and we nurses, including the Arab nurses, helped supervise the students, and then we would all run over, except for a few people who nurses who stayed with the patients. We would all run over to the chapel. There was a chapel on the hospital compound, and I would play the piano often for the service there, and then I would go back to the hospital for an hour or two, and then I would go to the nursing school and teach classes. And then I would often go back and work an evening shift in the hospital.
Speaker 3:How about that?
Speaker 2:Or one of the main things that I did after being there a few months, I had been a home health nurse before I left to go to Gaza. So I developed a home health class for my students, and I took my students on home home health visits.
Speaker 3:So it got to where we were on the home health visits.
Speaker 2:Oh, all over the refugee camps of Gaza from one end to the other end.
Speaker 3:So we hear on the news about Romala and Canyunis and all of the refugee camps that are in Gaza. Yes.
Speaker 2:So what probably was in most of all of them, and I would take my students. First of all, we as missionaries, we tried to visit our students in their homes. We tried to visit patients in their homes, but it ended up with me taking my students to actually see patients who had been in the hospital and help them with wound care or check their blood pressure, um, helped with their care in the home. And I would see about four or five patients a day. And that would allow me to have an opening into their homes.
Speaker 3:So we would have a chance to share the gospel.
Speaker 2:Try to share the gospel, that's right.
Speaker 3:So now you went into the homes of the folks who lived in Gaza who were the wealthy Gaza folks?
Speaker 2:There were some wealthy Gaza people, but most of my visits were in the homes of the poorest of the poor.
Speaker 3:Who lived in the refugee camps.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. Yeah, there were one I spent the night in a Bedouin home. It was not a tent. They Bedouins, if you want to explain to people, they were at one time were like migrants. They traveled and lived in tents in the desert. But uh the Bedouins that I knew actually had homes permanent permanent domes. Permanent homes. And so, yes, and some were more modernized than others, and uh and some of them lived like they had lived for hundreds of years.
Speaker 3:Well, that's all very interesting. Now, when you were there, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO headed by Yasser Arafat, was the predominant quote terrorist organization. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:And I have to say I'm pretty ignorant about all that. I really was very ignorant.
Speaker 3:Naive.
Speaker 2:Nai naive, I should say, about politics and about uh the events of the world at that time. And I I personally felt very safe, although on occasion, especially when I was at that Bedouin home where I spent the night, uh, the next day, I mean I was not there by myself. There were two or three other missionaries with me, but the next day we were told not to do that again because it probably was not safe. There were terrorists in the area at the time, and I I was kind of naive. I I really was. Just wanting to serve the Lord and share the gospel and be friends and make friends. So yeah.
Speaker 3:But in every home that that I visited when I was there for three months, every single home in Gaza town had a picture of Yasser Arafat with his red and white checked cafe on his head. Yeah. And and everybody there idolized Yasser Arafat. Now times have changed and the PLO has gone by the wayside and and Hamas is the preeminent.
Speaker 2:There are probably other terrorist organizations as well. And I don't remember the it being called Hamas or PLO. I think there was another name for the terrorist organization that was there when I was there.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And tell what what what were the people like when you were there? What how and what was their attitude towards the Jewish people and what was their attitude towards the American people?
Speaker 2:Well, we didn't talk about the Jews. I didn't talk about Israelis or Jews with the Arab students nor with their families. I just did not talk about it. They loved America. They all wanted to go to America and they all wanted to be our friends, and they w thought that they could use us, some of them, to get to America.
Speaker 3:Right, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They to my mind, I remember at that time that I thought that they ought that they all thought that America was like a big Disney World or something. Just the perfect place to be and to help get them out of their situation and Gaza.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. That was my perspective when I was there. Everybody thought America was a giant Disneyland. Everybody wanted to go to America. But it was interesting that whenever something politically bad happened in America, everybody began to talk about America as if it was the great Satan. And and then as y'all know, everyone knows, when the Twin Towers collapsed, everyone in Gaza as well as everywhere else in the Middle East danced in the streets and shouted death to America.
Speaker 2:Well, none of that happened while I was there, and I I don't remember any event happening that would cause the people to rejoice like that. You and I discussed today that back then most people were probably ignorant of world affairs.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they probably are more educated now because of social media uh media and the internet.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that many years ago, there was not the source of information available to the common person like there is now. And the Arab Muslims that I met, my work was with strictly with Arab Muslims, except for those few Greek Orthodox people. Um they didn't have any animosity towards me at all or any of the other missionaries. They knew that we were there to help them. Now I think probably that has changed greatly, and I do not know of any missionaries that are in Gaza now.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah, my opinion was in my perspective when I was there, and I was only there for th a little over three months, is that the average Arab in Gaza was like the average American. They just wanted to take care of their family. Yeah. They wanted to go to work, they wanted to try to get ahead economically, and they just wanted to to love their family and get along with everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you might want to explain that you were able to come and work at the hospital under that internist for three months as a what they called an extern pro externship program at MUSC, at Medical University of South Carolina.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the far the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board had a program for medical students that allowed them to work in the hospital for three months at a time, which I took advantage of and I really enjoyed working there.
Speaker 2:As part of your medical school?
Speaker 3:As part of my senior year of medical school. Yeah. And uh it was a great experience for me, and I worked under the auspices of an internist missionary. And I learned a lot and I worked with the surgeon too. I operated with him almost every m every day. And it was a delightful experience and enhanced my medical education greatly. And of course I got to see you. I got to see the Middle East. You and I traveled to to you know, Nazareth and Jerusalem and Beersheba and Bethlehem and a lot of places. Which which brings me to to the thing that I really wanted to lead up to is you had an opportunity for a very special Christmas in the Middle East. Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Well, before you we talk about that, we talked about most of my medical work there.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I also had a Bible study that began with just a few students and it grew to 20 and 30 students to where most of them were coming to my Bible study. But probably the most important thing I felt like I did was I identified two the two Greek Orthodox girls pretty quickly who claimed to be believers and had and shared their testimony with me. And I took them aside for those two years and discipled them. I met specifically with them, teaching them how to memorize scripture, how to study scripture, how to talk to other people about their faith, and just help them grow as believers.
Speaker 3:Uh-huh. Now, did you have didn't you tell me that you had one of the girls um become a believer that had a dream or a vision?
Speaker 2:Well, I thought we would talk about that later because that's part of what happened towards the last few months of my time there. And so You know save that. I was gonna save that. That's the best thing of all.
Speaker 3:All right, well, save that. Let's talk about your Christmas Christmas.
Speaker 2:Well, I was part of an Israeli Christian choir, the only Christian choir in Israel. It was called Singers of Praise. I happened to, I did not remember that. I had to look it up. I so I found that information. And we traveled, I think it was to Jerusalem, to a church where we met for that choir, and internationals, um, people living in Israel would come and we would practice, and then we sang, prepared Christmas music, and we sang in the um manger square in Bethlehem Christmas Eve. We they saved us for 11:30 at night. We had to travel the there were several of us from Gaza who traveled to Jerusalem and we got on a bus and then traveled into Bethlehem on the bus. They would only allow buses in. And I happened to read today where what happened that um particular event. It was not really a pleasant event. It was a long day. And before we entered the square, all of us were frisked and searched for weapons. The place was surrounded with tanks and jeeps, and on top of every building were Jewish soldiers, Israeli soldiers. All of the performers were addressed by the mayor of Bethlehem in their modern municipality that they were very proud of at the time. And at about 8:30, the choirs we began to sing. And I stood and looked and I wondered what God must have thought of the young people that were getting drunk.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 2:The soldiers in the square and all the noise in the little town of Bethlehem. And it wasn't exactly the way it was. Although I do imagine that Bethlehem was very busy with the people coming to Bethlehem to be taxed. Uh counted for the census. So it was a very busy time. It was cold and windy whipping across our faces, especially when we started singing at 11:30 or again. And I just remember looking at the crowd and knowing that they needed to hear about the birth of a savior, and I really felt a purpose in our singing that night. And we were able to sing in Jaffa, Nazareth, Petitikfa, and Gaza and Um Haifa. We traveled around. And then it was actually the next year for Christmas that I sang. Pericomo took his uh orchestra and people to Gaza to Jerusalem to record. And we went, I can't remember where we went to record, maybe in Jerusalem in the studio, and then we traveled and stood outside the wall of Jerusalem to sing for them to do the visual recording.
Speaker 3:I gotcha.
Speaker 2:We recorded the audio somewhere else, maybe Nazareth, and then we came back to the wall and stood outside the wall of Jerusalem to record the Pericumus show.
Speaker 3:Uh-huh. How about that? How about that?
Speaker 2:That was a great experience.
Speaker 3:Wow. Well, I wish I'd have known that. I may have watched it on TV here. I had no idea at the time that you were doing that.
Speaker 2:No, you did.
Speaker 3:Did you tell me?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did. I think I did. You've just forgotten. And somebody took a picture of me on TV.
Speaker 3:Oh really?
Speaker 2:Well, how how come I missed that? You've just forgotten.
Speaker 3:Well now, tell me more about your Bible study with these girls.
Speaker 2:Well, I be was like their mom, and it was actually some another f male journeyman helped me, and so the guys came as well to the Bible study. And honestly, I can't remember exactly what we tried to I mean, we took books of the Bible and we'd go through the books of the Bible to I remember doing the book of John. I I also taught the missionary kids Sunday school and I remember doing the book of Luke with them.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:But I honestly don't remember what else I did with them. That's been a long time ago. Yeah. But of course, we just took books and studied them.
Speaker 3:Uh-huh. All right. So tell my listeners what happened towards the end of your stay in Gaza.
Speaker 2:For several months before I left, we had about 22 students come to know the Lord.
Speaker 3:Muslims and Greek Orthodox?
Speaker 2:All Muslims.
Speaker 3:Are you kidding?
Speaker 2:No. That was um just probably the greatest thing that I saw happen. I mean it was, it was the best and the most miraculous thing I saw happen. They had never had that happen in anyone's experience in Gaza. And I remember especially one young lady who we had been really, she had been expressed a lot of interest all along, and she was searching for meaning to life, and God revealed himself to her in a dream. I know that that may sound a little hokey, but there have been many people who've testified to God using dreams in the lives of people in countries like that. And and I cannot deny that that's what happened to her. And she said that there was blood, it was raining blood and covering her, and she recognized it as being the blood of Jesus and washing away her sins. And she a mission another missionary shared the gospel with her one more time, and coming home from a home health visit, she gave her life to Jesus. And she was never the same again. And that really started the beginning of a miraculous time that we experienced to see 22 Muslims come to know the Lord.
Speaker 3:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:I don't know what's happened to them, I'm sorry to say, but I have prayed for them over the year for them over the years, and uh trust that uh God has used them in their circles.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. I have no doubt that God has used many of them in miraculous ways, ways that you and I won't know until we get to heaven.
Speaker 2:No. That's right.
Speaker 3:And I'm just excited to know that it was thrilling to be a part of that. Yeah, just we had a little small part in it, you know. You had a big part because you were there for two years. I was there for three months and just planted a few little seeds. You know. But that's exciting, Carlotta.
Speaker 2:It was an exciting time for all of us. Two years two years the Lord.
Speaker 3:Two years of planting the seeds of the gospel in the heart of Muslim and Greek Orthodox students. That's exciting.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:All right. Well, any last thoughts?
Speaker 2:Well, I wanted to tell the listeners that you and I had believed that God would call us to the foreign mission field. You uh even as a young child believed that. And as I said before, I believed that. And so you and I took the steps to be foreign missionaries, and God closed that door for you and me by a medical diagnosis that you had of glaucoma, and it was a severe glaucoma diagnosis when you were at age 23, and we were not able to serve the Lord in on the foreign field. And I just wanted to explain to people why that long-term dream of ours did not come true come to fruition, but certainly God has used us and he has his reason and he works and wills for his good pleasure in our lives, and we trusted him and we trust him now.
Speaker 3:Amen. We do. But he's allowed us to take a lot of short-term mission trips around the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And he's allowed us to be influent instrumental in starting crisis pregnancy centers here in the States.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And planting churches and a lot of other things that we've been able to do, and we've been excited about that. Yep. All right, you're listening to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson, and my very lovely guest today is my my bride, Miss Carlotta. We'll be back again next week. Until then, we pray that the Lord will bless you real good.
Speaker 1:Goodbye. Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Ministry or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to their Facebook page, Instagram, or webpage at JacksonFamily Ministry.com. Don't forget to check out Dr. Jackson and Bible.
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