Dr Andrew Browning: Episode Description

On this episode of The Inspiration Project, Brendan Corr talks to Dr Andrew Browning, a Doctor who spends the majority of his time in Africa working in remote, harsh and vastly under-resourced regions. They discuss how Dr Browning became a Christian, why Dr Browning wanted to become a Doctor, his early life, why Africa spoke to Dr Browning, some inspiring stories of women whose lives Dr Browning has helped through fistula surgeries, receiving the call of God at the age of six-years-old, what missionary work is really like, why Dr Browning never wrestled with the burden of being a missionary, the story of Tensa, how faith and medical training work together to glorify God and how you can make a difference in someone’s life. Plus so much more!

Episode Summary

• How Dr Browning became a Christian
• Why Dr Browning wanted to become a Doctor
• What it was like growing up in a strict household with a military father
• Why Africa specifically spoke to Dr Browning
• Inspiring stories of women whose lives Dr Browning has changed through fistula surgeries
• Receiving the call of God at the age of six
• What missionary work really looks like
• Why Dr Browning never wrestled with the call of God
• The miraculous story of Tensa
• How faith and medical training work together to glorify God
• How you can make a difference in someone’s life
• A Doctor in Africa

Dr Andrew Browning: Episode Transcript

Sponsor Announcement
This podcast is sponsored by Australian Christian College, a network of schools committed to student well-being, character development, and academic improvement.

Introduction
Welcome to The Inspiration Project where well-known Christians share their stories to inspire young people in their faith and life. Here’s your host, Brendan Corr.

Brendan Corr
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Inspiration Project podcast where we get a chance to explore those who’ve made decisions about the purpose of their life and the expression of their skills in a career that has been rooted and based on the effective expression of their commitment of faith. Today I’m absolutely delighted to have some time to talk with Dr. Andrew Browning. Dr. Browning was born in England, but raised in Bowral, did his schooling in that part of the world. Ended up becoming a doctor, did his undergraduate training at Sydney University, and then postgraduate training through some colleges in Britain, and again locally. Became a qualified obstetrician and gynaecologist and has spent his professional career serving those in need in Africa. And we will be exploring exactly what that service looks like and the place that it has and its importance. Dr. Browning, thank you so much for giving us your time. I know that the time you have in Australia must be very precious, and so we appreciate you giving a little bit of it to us today.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Thank you. No, pleasure’s all mine. Thank you.

Brendan Corr
Tell me about how that works in terms of your career in Africa, your life in Africa, and some roots in Australia?

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah. So we lived in Africa for 17 years. I actually got married in Ethiopia, and we had our children in Ethiopia. Then we moved to Tanzania and we spent seven years there. We moved back to Australia, I think it must be close to eight years ago now. But my life in ministry is still very much back in Africa. So the children have gone to high school here. One of them is in university now. My wife, we all live here in Australia, but I commute back to Africa. So this year, I think I’m going back six or seven times to various countries around Africa for about three weeks each time. And while I’m in Australia, we run our charity to raise money for the hospitals that we build and do the administration part of the work for the training programmes and all sorts of things that we run in Africa.

Brendan Corr
We’ll talk a bit about that and what it meant for you to not… I don’t mean to be disrespectful in saying getting off the tools so much. I’m sure you are still very active.

Dr. Andrew Browning
My trip back was just solid first.

Brendan Corr
The primary provision of care.

Dr. Andrew Browning
And teaching.

Brendan Corr
But what does it mean to supplement that with fundraising and administration and all those sorts of issues? We’ll get to that space. But I wanted you to reflect a little bit about growing up in Bowral, which is a beautiful part of the world. What did it mean for you to grow up in that part of God’s creation and what influence did it have on you?

Dr. Andrew Browning
It was a stunning place to grow up. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, it was still a country town. I don’t think you could call it a country town anymore. Yes, developed compared to what it was. We used to play cricket in the main street of Bowral on the weekends, so you wouldn’t be able to do that now. And there’s the centre of town that was all dirt roads. And so yes, it’s changed a great deal, but it was an idyllic place to have a childhood, going down to the river, swimming before going to school, exploring the mountains and the caves. We’d find the mountains and things like that, and the forests, the cliffs and things on the weekend. It was just a very free outdoor growing up, and I had a great circle of friends. But the most significant part of growing up in Bowral was the fellowship that I had in the church and it was there where I committed my life to Christ as a 14-year-old. And that really was a pivot in my life. I grew up in a Christian household, going to Sunday school and to church every Sunday, which as a young child, I didn’t enjoy, I would rather be off playing with my mates. But I had some very good friends who were joining me in Sunday school, who I’m still very good friends with now, and they’re committed Christians as well. And about the same time we gave our lives to Christ, and again, that was the pivot, the defining moment of my life.

Brendan Corr
So with appropriate respect for your personal relationship with God in that moment, that decision, can you share with us what was going on for you, a young guy, who’s got an idyllic experience of life and a whole potential ahead of you? Obviously, you must’ve been doing well at school to have been thinking about a career in medicine. Were you thinking about a career in medicine at that stage, or was it-

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah, I was. Actually, from the age of six, I had an idea, I got a romantic notion that I’ll be a missionary doctor sitting on the floor of the Sunday school hall in Bowral and listening to a returned missionary speak of her work because our church was supporting all these missionaries around Africa and so forth. And hearing about her work in Africa about lions and tribespeople and spears and bows and arrows. So I thought, “Wow, that’s an exciting life. That’s for me.” So I always thought that I’d be a missionary at some stage, even before I had given my life to Christ.

Brendan Corr
It was Bowral life on steroids. Is that right?

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yes, exactly. It was. It was. I had all these fantasies. But after I committed my life to Christ at the age of 14, I was kind of expected to be a doctor. My father was an obstetrician. He was the gynaecologist in the town and doing well at school. People said, “Oh, are you going to be a doctor?” And I said, “Oh, yeah.” So I was kind of on that trajectory, but after committing my life to 14, then my life shifted to having a career for myself. Then how would I best be able to use the skills that God has given me for His glory and for His kingdom?

Brendan Corr
That’s very young to be wrestling with those perspectives.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah, I guess it was. Yes, absolutely. And mission work as a missionary doctor was at the top. At the forefront, yeah. And that really came to clarity during my medical studies. And actually, going back to my yearbook from medicine, I’ve lost it now, but I remember there was a question in there, “Who was the most likely to end up in developing work at all… 200 doctors going through?” It was me. So it must have been-

Brendan Corr
A known factor.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yes, it was a known factor. And then during my medical studies, I spent a couple of months in a mission hospital in Tanzania. Actually, the same mission hospital that that nurse, who initially inspired me, had been working at, and my father had been supporting her for years. And it actually ended up being the hospital my wife grew up in. She was a missionary kid. So all these connections. And so yeah, that was another defining moment. I said, “Yes, this is a great way to serve God, serve the poor that need help and do it out of the love that Christ has for those people.”

Brendan Corr
How wonderful. If I can take you back again to 14-year-old Andrew Browning, expectations from family, from your school, from your peers, medicine’s going to be your career? Pressure of that expectation? Was there a burden?

Dr. Andrew Browning
There wasn’t a pressure or a burden. It was an unwritten expectation. I just went along with it. But yeah, I thought that would be a good path to follow. So yes, it was a decision ultimately by myself.

Brendan Corr
You weren’t wrestling against it?

Dr. Andrew Browning
No, no.

Brendan Corr
It wasn’t a point of contest for you?

Dr. Andrew Browning
No, I toyed with the idea about other careers and people would’ve been supportive. There was no, “Oh, you must be a doctor.” It was, “Oh, you’re going to be a doctor.”

Brendan Corr
Coming to Christ, realising that you could bring His God-given gifts to you into service, did that change your commitment to those goals?

Dr. Andrew Browning:

It strengthened those commitments really. So God had blessed me with being able to get through school. I put the effort in, but to get the marks to get into Sydney University of Medicine, and just a realisation that God’s blessed me with that and that verse, “Much is given, much be expected” from Matthew always has been in the forefront of my mind. And God’s given me certain abilities, certain talents, and how am I going to use that to serve him? And that seemed to be the obvious fit for me. I enjoy medicine, I enjoy the caring of it, and I enjoy the sharing of God’s love with those people. So it’s been a career of service, but of great joy.

Brendan Corr
You mentioned you had to put the work in and clearly even individuals with capacity, it doesn’t just happen. You have to really apply yourself and be studious and disciplined and diligent. You’re doing that with the attraction of the great outdoors. Where did you learn the sense of self-discipline or the management of self?

Dr. Andrew Browning
I think it’s been inherent. My father’s a very disciplined man, and his father was an extremely disciplined man, British military for a couple of generations. So that eked its way through, perhaps.

Brendan Corr
So by example?

Dr. Andrew Browning
By example. Yeah.

Brendan Corr
By personality? Are you that way yourself?

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yes, competitive and disciplined. So the competitive nature in me drove me. I was top of the year for year seven to 10. Then I went to a Catholic boarding school in Bowral, and I was a day student there, but we had some boarders come from Brunei for year 11 and 12, and they worked so hard and they were brilliant. So they topped all the classes and I thought, “Well, I’ve got to wrestle to get my top position back.” So it was that competitive nature drove me to work incredibly hard for year 11 and 12, and that’s what got me into medicine. If I didn’t have that competition, perhaps I probably wouldn’t have gotten there. So those guys, blessing those people arrived. They were Christians too, actually.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. How interesting.

Dr. Andrew Browning
We prayed together and had a Bible study together at school.

Brendan Corr
So it was the best sort of competition. The friendliest type of competition. That’s so good. So in that you’ve invested all this effort, time, you are pursuing a career that is highly respected, offers the potential for comfort and for prestige in the community of Australia. But there was this existing overarching or undergirding realisation that that was not what you were looking for. You were wanting to change the world.

Dr. Andrew Browning
I wouldn’t say change the world. I went, as a student, to Africa thinking that, “Yeah, I’d like to change the world.” But no, you don’t change the world. Christ changes the world. And you can only do a little bit that God puts in front of you to do. And sometimes that grows and sometimes it stays a little bit, but He’s just asking you to be faithful in service. And so yeah, putting Christ first and as one of my many mottos for life is, “Do it God’s way or don’t do it at all.” And so doing medicine in God’s way is meant… He’s told us to be content with what we have. And God’s never abandoned me, never forsaken me, as it says throughout the Psalms and the Hebrews 13 and so forth. Yeah. And He’s tested true over and over again. God has never abandoned us. There’s times I’ve been in danger, sick and without, materially, of course. We didn’t have an income for 17 years in Africa. So we lived by faith, not knowing where the next rent payment might come from or something, but God always, always provided, sometimes abundantly. And then we were able to bless other people. So yes, I wouldn’t have grown in my faith nearly as much if I just pursued my own comfort.nYeah. But seeing God answer prayer and seeing him being so faithful to his promises, it’s just made me create so much more.

Brendan Corr
I made a bit of a joke that the life in Africa was your Bowral adventure life.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yes. Perhaps it was.

Brendan Corr
Exponential. In some ways, what you’re describing is your career is service exponential. People would see the whole vocation of being a medical doctor as one of service and care, even in the context of our Western society.

Dr. Andrew Browning:

I think most people go into medicine… Well, not most, but a lot of people go into medicine with an altruistic ideal. And unfortunately, it gets tainted along the way of the trappings of high incomes and expectations of-

Brendan Corr
And other people will project onto the purity of people’s intentions and motivations. But in that career of care, you’ve taken it another dimension by choosing to do it in Africa. I heard you unpack in a previous interview a little what sort of work you were doing to support the people of Africa. And recognising the appropriate discretion of details, can you help our listeners understand exactly what are the dramatic needs that your service is answering and correcting in your work in Africa?

Dr. Andrew Browning
It’s probably best done by our story. And it’s my favourite story at the moment. It just shows how great God is really. So a patient of mine that I treated just recently in South Sudan, her name’s Tensa. And she grew up in the northern part of what’s now South Sudan and in quite an arid, dusty area, growing up in a little hut, uneducated, no schools there. And as a teenager, she was sent by her father to be married in a faraway place, a different tribe, a place called the Nuba Mountains. And so she left her five or six other brothers and sisters, her parents, and went to be married into that other tribe and had seven children, starting pregnancies as a teenager. Five of them survived, two of them died. She got pregnant on her eighth delivery, and did what she always did. Because there’s no hospitals there or midwives or doctors, she just looked after herself during the pregnancy and then went to deliver her child on the floor of their little hut in the quite harsh, arid environment of the Nuba Mountains. She was one in 20 women that got into obstructed labour. So I’m an obstetrician. I deal with complications of pregnancy. And the injuries that women get in particular are one, called a fistula, and that’s caused by an obstructed labour. So wherever you are in the world, here in Australia or South Sudan and Ethiopia, Tanzania, one in 20 women, the baby will get stuck. So mother’s pelvis, baby’s head, it’s not fitting. So sometimes the baby’s coming out the wrong way. Here in Australia-

Brendan Corr
As in breach? Is that what you mean?

Dr. Andrew Browning
Sometimes breach, coming upside down, but sometimes the head’s facing the wrong way. So the diameter of the head that’s meant to come through, this part, isn’t coming through. So it’s getting stuck. And so the bigger baby, whatever, she was getting obstructed in this labour. She stayed in labour for two days.

Brendan Corr
A normal labour would be?

Dr. Andrew Browning
18 hours, 12 hours. A long labour would be 18 hours.

Brendan Corr
Here we’re talking for 48 hours.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Talking for 48 hours. So ordinarily, in Australia, if that’s diagnosed, you have an operation straight away, you’re in a hospital and everything’s fine.

Brendan Corr
C-section.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yep, caesarean section. But for Tensa, there was no option for that. So she was in labour for two days. She knew that this was not going properly because she’s had seven babies before. The only option for her was to start walking to the nearest hospital. After two days of labour, she started walking. The walk, when you’re strong, was a full day. So she took her older son with her and started walking, but the long labour started to affect the nerves to her legs as well. And as she was walking, they were getting stronger and weaker. After about four hours of walking, she fell into a ditch and couldn’t get up anymore.

Brendan Corr
So she’s out in the middle of nowhere.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Out on the side of the road in a ditch. A Bajaj, which is a little three-wheeled vehicle, drove past on this rocky road. And the son waved it down and the driver took pity on her and picked her up, put her in the Bajaj, and they started driving to the hospital. Bajaj is pretty unstable on these rocky roads. After an hour or two of driving, it flipped. She was thrown from the Bajaj. The driver was thrown as well and was injured so badly he couldn’t drive the Bajaj any longer. The son ran to get another passerby, and they righted the Bajaj so he could actually drive. So they drove on to the hospital. But by now, she’d been in labour for close to three days, barely conscious, unable to walk. They did a caesarean, but it was too late. The baby had died and she had suffered what’s called a fistula. Because she’d been in labour for so long, three days, the baby’s head’s pressed against the bones of her pelvis. So all the tissue between the bladder and birth canal all had been crushed and died, and all those dead tissues came away. And she was left with a 10-centimetre hole between the bladder and the outside world. So she was leaking urine continually. It’s called a fistula. This is what I treat, what I specialised in treating. She was ashamed, she smelt. Her husband didn’t want her back. The son left to go back with the dad and work on the land there. So she was left alone in that faraway town begging, living on the street. And yeah, she lived like that for 18 months, just giving up hope. There was another missionary close to that hospital from Australia actually, and she found her, and she’s a regular supplier of patients from the Nuba Mountains to us where we built a hospital with a Lutheran church in Juba. And so she took her to her hospital and flew her to Juba. You can imagine the terror in poor Tensa in that she’d been in a Bajaj, this vehicle, once in her life, let alone going in an aeroplane. So she arrived. I was only in Juba for a week. I saw her on the first day of arriving, and we had 44 operations to do in that week. And we scheduled her for the first day but she had malaria. So her fevers were sky-high. She was too sick to be able to operate on. So we treated her quite aggressively, trying to get her better for Friday, the last day of operating before I had to leave. I was leaving to some other country, I can’t remember. But I had to leave. I couldn’t delay because there were another 40 or 50 patients waiting in the next country. Praise God that she was better from her malaria, and we operated on her Friday. And we operate under spinal anaesthetic, which means that they’re awake. Very safe anaesthetic. So they’re numb from the waist down, but they’re awake during the operation. And during the operation, she was just singing softly to herself. It was beautiful. And I was the only person who didn’t speak. I was the only foreigner there in the operating theatre. And the anaesthetist started singing with her in Nuer, her language as well. And my assistant surgeon started singing with her as well. And I said, “Hey, what are you singing?” And they said, “Oh, she’s singing Jesus, There’s No One Like You.” So this poor Tensa, she’d been through so much suffering, 18 months of neglect and isolation, but illiterate, never been to school. And that’s the beauty of the gospel, isn’t it? Jesus and His spirit’s so accessible to anyone anywhere. And it was such a beautiful moment of fellowship. I started singing in English, putting everyone off, but just together, just singing as we were doing that. Quite a difficult operation. We had to reconstruct a whole new birth canal and new urethra and so forth. But she spoke to our chaplain afterwards and said, “Look, my biggest difficulty in life, my biggest sorrow in life I’ve been through, I’ve lost my baby, three babies actually. I’ve lost my family now and I’ve lost my dignity with this fistula, and I’ve been rejected. But my biggest loss in life was that I moved from my family when I was a teenager. That area has been at war. I have no way of contacting them, and I have no idea if they’re alive or dead. I wish I knew.” Anyway, the chaplain took a photo of her and put her on his Facebook page, and said, “Does anyone know this lady?” Anyway, someone from her tribe recognised what tribe it was by her name and the way she looked, took it and put it on a Facebook page from the tribe. And unbeknownst to her or anyone, four of her brothers and sisters had fled that area, and are now living in Juba, not far from the hospital. They saw that overnight. And the next day, all four of them turned up to meet Tensa. For the first time in something like 20 years, she’d met her family again. And she was in tears and laughter. And everyone else on the ward who knew her story was in tears and laughter with her. It was such a beautiful, beautiful moment, that reconciliation with her family as well. So Jesus, there is no one like you.

Brendan Corr
What an incredible story.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah, I’ve met something like 16,000 women with fistula or with stories like that.

Brendan Corr
Dr. Browning, I am struck by… This is a segue into some questions I want to ask you. But I’ve heard you talk just now, the story of Tensa.** **I’ve heard you recount a story about Joy in your book. I’ve heard you talk about Ngolo. I am intrigued by… Not intrigued. I am moved by how personal your encounters with these people are, that you know them so individually and remember them. And I know that it’s not just for marketing.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Well, I don’t remember all 16,000.

Brendan Corr
No. But it’s not just for the sake of, “Let me tell a personal story.” I have a sense that you connect with these people.

Dr. Andrew Browning:

Yeah. And it’s such an honour and such a privilege to be part of these people’s lives just for that brief couple of weeks. Now, I’m living in Australia, I don’t get that connection nearly as much as I did when I lived there. Because when you’re there, you’re at the hospital for the whole journey that these women go through, through their admission and treatment and going home and then follow-up. Now, I’m just at a brief point, I’m in the hospital for a week and then I’ve got to rush to another country, then I’ve got to rush to another country. So it’s not as fulfilling as before. But of course, we’re designed for relationships, we’re designed for care.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. Well, I want to push this with you. So your whole craft is about the biology, the mechanics, the physicality of anatomy and fixing that. But hearing you relate those stories, your healing, or you’re conscious that healing is much more than just the reconstruction of that physical form. Talk to me about what that is like and how your faith speaks into the holistic.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah. So physical suffering is one thing, and spiritual suffering is another thing, and they’re intertwined. And the more and more I grow older and do medicine, the more you can see people feel better just by having a listening ear. And so in Australia, I do medicine and the physical pathology is nothing like the physical pathology we see in Africa, because things are dealt with early, they’re screened properly. But the mental contribution to the physical problems is much more pronounced in Australia. But it’s all part of the thing, isn’t it? If I could just tell another story of a lady, I can’t even remember her name, but she taught me a very valuable lesson early on in my career. And she was from Somalia, and I was then working and living in Ethiopia. She had come for treatment. She had such awful fistula injuries, rejected by everyone in her community, her husband living in isolation, but her injuries were so severe she couldn’t be cured. And so I tried because you always try and try and have hope because sometimes you see a miracle, and we have seen miracles. But poor lady, let’s call her Medina. Medina, is a Muslim name because she was a Muslim lady. And poor Medina, she wasn’t cured. And so I was explaining to her before she was going home, “Look, we’ve tried everything. There’s nothing we can really do. We’ll have to try and help you manage this problem.” And I was almost in tears because as a surgeon, as a doctor, as a person, you want to relieve suffering, but there was nothing that we could do. But Medina just looked at me and she said, “Look, you are not from my people group. You are not from my language, you’re not even from my religion. And everyone from my people group, everyone’s rejected me. But even though you’ve got nothing to do with me, you’ve helped me get off the bed, you put your arm around me to help me to walk, you’ve cared for me, you’ve loved me. And that’s been enough.” And that’s what I found over and over, is that in spite of people’s physical suffering, if they’re loved and cared for, they can cope with that. And that’s what I find deeply disturbing about issues that Australians face today, like euthanasia and so forth. People want to have control of their own death and they don’t want to be a burden on other people. But if you are a burden and people are allowed to love you and care for you, that transforms both of you.

Brendan Corr
Do you think that attitude of take personal agency to not be a burden is affected by a-

Dr. Andrew Browning
Pride.

Brendan Corr
And a perceived sense of lack of willingness from society to carry the burden? That is.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yes. It’s interesting being in Africa because the family connections are so much more profound, loyal perhaps than Australia. So you would never have someone being shovelled off into a retirement village. You’d be having them in the house. They don’t live as long, so they don’t live as long with the difficult conditions that make them so needy of nursing care perhaps. So perhaps they’re a bit easier to care for in the home than round-the-clock nursing that some people need. But yeah, the mzee, that’s what they use in Swahili. I’m thinking Swahili, so I’ve forgotten the word in Amharic. Shumagile. The shumagile in Amharic in Ethiopia will be the patriarch or the matriarch of the family and everyone would be gathered around them caring for them in their household in their village. And yeah, that’s a beautiful thing to see. And yes, our lifestyles in Australia, we can’t afford that because life is so expensive, trying to pay off a mortgage, the two of you have to work, have to put their kids into daycare or whatever. So those family connections that care for the children, care for the elderly are farmed out to institutions rather than being part of the family, which is a very hard thing to come back to. My aunt is married into a tribal group called the Afar in Ethiopia. She’s had a long history of living in the Afar, runs a huge development organisation, over 978 employees. So my cousin grew up in the nomadic area of the Afar desert. She’s now in Australia. And her first introduction to Australia, we went to visit our grandmother. Her grandfather had already died. And she was living alone in Moss Vale. And when it came time to visit and leave, she was hysterical. She said, “This woman, grandma, can’t be there by herself, she has to be with us.” So it’s just that it was such a foreign thing for this child just to see our elderly being left alone and treated like that.

Brendan Corr
Come back to that thought. But if you indulge me a little, I’m still fixed on how your faith broadens your conception of humanity in this space. And I want to ask you a little bit about the stories that I’ve heard you recount. There has been the social distancing, the outcast from the community that that person was part of. And so you’ve talked about how we’re made for connection, but you’ve also described a personal sense of dignity that is not just physical and it’s not just in a relationship. There is a sense of self that is compromised in the patients that you’re trying to serve. That speaks strongly to a unity of our selfhood, isn’t it? The connection between our psychology and our anatomy and our social connections. How does your faith speak into that notion as opposed to your medical training?

Dr. Andrew Browning
Well, the Bible teaches us and says, again, to be holy and in all aspects of our lives. And it’s always talking about the body, the spirit, and the soul, isn’t it? Yeah, be holy in all you do. God transforming our body, spirit, and soul. So you can’t neglect the body, you can’t neglect the spirit and you can’t neglect the soul. It’s all intertwined. And you know yourself, when you’re hungry, your spirit is a bit more downcast and you’re a bit more grumpy.

Brendan Corr
Hangry.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yes, hangry. Or if you’re sick, you’re downcast. And David will speak repeatedly in the Psalms about being downcast in his soul when physically, he’s been threatened by enemies or even later in his life, his son. And God speaks to all of that. We are made in His image. And when I see these patients, you can see something of God’s image in them, of course. Because we’re all made in God’s image and we’ve all got that potential to love and be known by God. And that’s the beauty of what we do too. Because to be known by God and for you to know God doesn’t mean that you have to have a privileged education here in Australia. Like Tensa, an illiterate girl in the village, just with a life of hardship, suffering can be so dignified in her knowledge and her relationship with God despite that physical suffering. And that’s given her great strength. And it also gives me great strength as I go to work, not for material gain, but just for the love of Christ.

Brendan Corr
Amen. And with that truth, it’s not simply a matter of stoic resistance or denial of the material or the physical. There’s that integration of those two elements, multiple elements of who we are.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah. And I’ve found in my life that I haven’t pursued material wealth. It’s come. Not wealth, but what we need has come.

Brendan Corr
Sufficiency.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah. So as I said, one of my mottos in life is, “Do things God’s way or not at all.” And so we’ve lived my faith for 17 years without an income at all and just seeking to serve. And God provided exactly what we needed, sometimes beyond. And even as we build hospitals, we think, “Oh, goodness, how on earth are we going to build a hospital? We need millions of dollars for that.” And God has raised up the right people just at the right time. And then running costs, of course, again, God’s just provided. We’ve put some effort to go out to look for funds, but the funds have just come where I haven’t looked. That’s been God’s provision just to be able to do that. So doing things God’s way and seeking His kingdom first then all those other things are given to you.

Brendan Corr
Yeah, beautiful. Before we hit the record button, we were talking about the contrast of the worlds that you span, straddle, move between and the relative richness in different dimensions of those two worlds that are there. In some of the stories we’ve been unpacking, the richness of relationships and the simplicity of life and loyalty in those developing places is not as evident in our Western highly developed culture. Tell me about the things that are going on in your heart and your mind as you are flipping between.

Dr. Andrew Browning
It’s hard. It’s hard because when you’re there in Africa, when you train as a missionary, they tell you that it takes about eight years. After about eight years, you feel more comfortable in your adopted culture than your own culture. So we spent 10 years in Ethiopia, which was a very different culture than Tanzania. Then we spent seven years in Tanzania. But my wife had grown up in Tanzania. She had 18 years there as a child. So moving back to Australia was challenging because the values, priorities, and the busyness of life, which reflects what your priorities might be, are very different to those in Africa.

Brendan Corr
Do you find yourself resenting the people around you or the demands that are placed upon you?

Dr. Andrew Browning
You see the good and the bad. Yes, Australia’s an extraordinarily comfortable place to live. We talk about a financial crisis and cost of living crisis, but I’ve never seen anyone die of hunger here or walk around the streets naked because they’ve got nowhere to live and no clothes. You see some homeless people, yes, but very few. And there’s great safety nets for those people here in Australia. And I’ve never seen… We have people dying of thirst in the Afar desert at the moment. My aunt who lives there told me just the other day, a lady had to walk X number of kilometres to go to the last remaining well to pick up some putrid water, muddy water to bring back for her three children. During that walk, all three children died of thirst. So I’ve never seen anyone die of thirst in Australia. It takes an adjustment coming back to comfort. And you think nothing would ever worry you in Australia because you’ve just got everything. And then after a couple of weeks being back in Australia, I’ll start to worry again. It took a couple of years to adjust like that when we first moved back after 17 years away. But now I’m going backwards and forwards so often that when I go back to Africa, I actually feel more comfortable and adjust much more quickly. But coming back to Australia, the first week or so, it takes some adjustment thinking, “Oh, people are so busy. What are they complaining about?” But then I started complaining about the same thing, being busy as well.

Brendan Corr
So we’ve been talking about your sense of self and your sense of identity and the inherent values that we hold. What is that doing to your sense of self?

Dr. Andrew Browning
It’s hard because you never belong anywhere. And so that’s been a valuable lesson for my children as well, because they feel like they belong in Africa after having had their formative years there. And they feel a bit disjointed here in Australia, although they’ve settled into Australia now. But they would still say that they want to be back in Tanzania. But for me, you’re never here and you’re never there. And so you’re never really at home anywhere. And it’s a good realisation for all of us that our only real home is in heaven with Christ.

Brendan Corr
Yeah, citizens of heaven.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah, that’s right. So you always feel like you’re not a citizen in this world. And Paul says that. Yes, in his letters. Yeah. So that moving between different cultures, and I’m travelling, I can’t remember, several different countries in Africa now, and each has a different culture. And so you kind of feel at home in those places. You kind of feel at home here, but you’re always a little bit disjointed because you’re never fitting in. And perhaps people here in Australia, when they’re honest with themselves, they feel a little bit not belonging in Australia with their communities. And our only real home is with our Lord in heaven, I think.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. And the family of faith.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah, that’s right. And that’s right, the family of faith. And that’s the beauty of this work too, as I said about Tensa, wherever I go, Sierra Leone, Congo, Somalia, wherever you meet other believers and immediately you’re a brother in Christ. I met a beautiful man from Cameroon recently, an older man, and he’s committed, just loves the Lord. And you have that affinity straight away. No matter what culture you’re from, you’re a brother in Christ.

Brendan Corr
Without disregarding the stark contrast between those two worlds, have you been able to reconcile the world that is problematic, Western society with its competitiveness and its drive and its relative wealth, was required to give you the skills for medical training-

Dr. Andrew Browning
It is.

Brendan Corr
To go back into the poverty of Africa and make a difference?

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah, that’s right. And it’s a privilege in that without the West’s wealth, we couldn’t do this work either because all lands, every hospital we’ve built, every suture I’ve bought has been from money from abroad, America, Switzerland, England, Australia, Holland. Those industrial countries where people do work incredibly hard and have been blessed with wealth, but they’ve been blessed to be able to share it, which we’re very, very grateful for. So I still got their compassion.

Brendan Corr
But even the infrastructure of a medical system and training hospitals and specialists. At least it is for me, an interesting thing to say, for all of the problems and disconnection of Western society, it has produced experts that can go and make a difference.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah, it’s produced enormous, enormous blessings. That’s entirely right.

Brendan Corr
So how do we get it right? Where do we find the balance?

Dr. Andrew Browning
How do we get it right? I think there’s a happy medium because it has to be. And that’s what I’ve learnt about Africa is the priorities of relationship, of family, of connections. I say that, and on the other hand, they don’t know how to deal with the shame of a fistula. So those are people that are rejected. But majority, their inner family connection, some are orphans, they struggle with that and so forth. But those bonds are stronger there. And the joy that they have in life being content, that’s another thing that I’ve learned from Africa is contentment and the joy and being content with what you have. Paul says in one of his letters, “If you’ve got food and clothing, be content with that.” And that’s true. You don’t need much more.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. One of the things that I’ve been reflecting on is we talked about the universality of the love of God and His provision and grace. There’s also the universality of the fallenness of humanity. In the West, it manifests as greed and competition and strife. And in another culture, it might manifest in a different way, but it’s the same faultiness.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yep, same human nature. There was a saying that I learnt in South Sudan actually, “When you’re hungry, you’ll become a thief. And when you’re well-fed, you become an adulterer.” So there’s always-

Brendan Corr
Yeah, that’s the exact principle. Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah, there is some vice in your life or some temptation, isn’t there? No matter what your status in life. And God is the answer to each of those.

Brendan Corr
And only He is the answer.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah. And that’s the more I’ve learnt. So there has to be a compromise with the contentment, but poverty and hardship of life in Africa, but the wealth and the alienation and the individualistic nature of the dislocation of our driven society, there has to be some sort of balance there somewhere.

Brendan Corr
And it is in God. He reconciles the worst of us and the best of us under His new creation. And maybe the eschaton is the only time that we will see the fulfillment. I was wanting to jump in when you were telling me the story of Tensa and the possibility that she may not have recovered from her malaria in time to be operated on and you would leave and she would not be attended to. You must face that reality of, “I have a limited scope to make a limited impact for a limited number of people, and there are dozens, hundreds, thousands, who I just can’t help.” What does that mean for you?

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yeah, that’s difficult, but it spurs you on to train, of course. So when I first started doing fistula surgery in the ’90s, there were about nine fistula surgeons in the world of any sort of competence. Now we’re up to about 400. So there’s a lot more people and all local surgeons from Sierra Leone or Chad or wherever we’ve been training. But still to do the advanced fistula surgery, there’s probably only about maybe 20 people that are doing the advanced because it’s quite a technical surgery. And it’s surgery that you’ll train someone in, but it’s charity. And so just the same problem here in the West. You might be altruistic for a while, but then you’ve got kids that you want to put into a private school or something. So you leave those to pursue a higher income in private practise. So many surgeons we’ve trained are fantastic, and they’ve worked for a number of years, but then they drift into private practise. Same here in Australia. And regardless, we’ve trained a lot more people, a lot more people are doing it, but there’s new grounds as well. So I just started going into a new country for fistula work called Central African Republic, which is a little known country right in the middle of Africa being closed off by 15, 20 years of war. Just starting to be able to go in. I’ll go there, God willing, in a couple of weeks. And I went there for the first time in November, and we made a radio announcement through the Lutheran networks there, the churches. They were patients, we couldn’t treat them all. So I had to promise them to come back. And there’s no other surgeon in CAR at the moment doing fistula surgery. Oh, there’s one guy in the capital, Bangui, who does some basic surgery, but certainly not the more challenging operations. Yeah, it keeps you going forward and working.

Brendan Corr
Well, there’s two questions to follow from that little recount from you, and I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable in this, but it’s quite apparent that you are a very rare expert in the world, that globally you are at the forefront. What does that do to your sense of self to know that I’m one of a dozen people in the world that can do what I can do and make a difference in the way I make a difference?

Dr. Andrew Browning
It’s only by the grace of God, isn’t it? I didn’t earn those abilities to be a good surgeon, but God’s given me those abilities. I didn’t earn them. Hopefully, I’ve been a good steward and I’ve only been a good steward of them because of my faith in Him. And He’s given me those opportunities. And I often say that the credit goes to God because God heals, but doctors get paid for it. That’s the old saying I learnt as a student. And it’s true, over and over again, we just do some basic things, putting tissue together, but it’s God’s miracle of the little cells called fibroblasts and so forth, knitting the wound together.

Brendan Corr
I have not quite thought of it as cellular as that, and the biochemistry of healing is facilitated and made possible by the surgery, but the inherent creativity that God has placed within our spark of life plays a part as well.

Dr. Andrew Browning
The body is a miracle. The more you study the body, the more you are absolutely astounded.

Brendan Corr
Fiercely and wonderfully made.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Oh, absolutely. I heard an illustration the other day. There’s all these microtubules in your cells and there’s these proteins that are delivery systems of molecules. And they’ve got legs, and they walk along these proteins carrying one molecule from one part of the cell to another, and then they go back and pick up something else. In every cell, we’ve got thousands of them. We’ve got billions of these little proteins delivering things. They seem to know what molecule to pick up and where to deliver it to in every single cell. And we’re not controlling that. We had no idea that it was even there until a couple of years ago. And what more is there to discover that just reveals God’s creative genius?

Brendan Corr
It gives you an insight, doesn’t it, to say that it is by the word of His power that everything is sustained.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yes, it’s extraordinary. The more you look into it, the more you’re absolutely blown away. Every cell has little motors in the cell membrane that push things in and out of the cell. And there are little rotary motors that spin around 2,000 times a second. And there’s actually more motors in your little finger, spinning like that, that have ever been created by man. So every car motor, whatever. Ever, is in your little finger. And it’s running so quietly.

Brendan Corr
And reliably.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yes, and reliably.

Brendan Corr
Without maintenance.

Dr. Andrew Browning
We don’t even think about it. And we can cut it and it’ll heal itself. It’s extraordinary. It’s just the wonder of God when you look into creation. There’s that verse in Romans 3, isn’t it? And I’m just going to go blank at the moment, “Creation speaks of God’s goodness.”

Brendan Corr
Amen. Yeah, amen. Well, without wanting to cut off that sense of awe and wonder about the wonders of our anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, the recount you just gave about training and starting hospitals opens up another point of interest for me, is you wanted to be a surgeon, you want to be a doctor and engaged in direct care. Your life has taken you to include that, but also require teaching skills and administrative skills and lobbying skills. And what has that meant for you to add or to need to move into those different areas of activity? Has it been dragging you away from your true love?

Dr. Andrew Browning
Yes, it’s a necessity to be able to facilitate more work. And more women helped and more women reached with the love of God physically with the delivery of their babies. So last year we were very thankful to God that we delivered in our hospitals and networks close to 17,000 women for free. And we’ve been blessed to build two new hospitals now. One’s under construction in Uganda, and one’s due to start construction very soon in Tanzania, which will add another 4,000, 5,000 deliveries a year for free. But all of that takes administration. And I’m not an administrator or a words person, but I am increasingly spending more time with words on paper.

Brendan Corr
With reports and applications and submissions.

Dr. Andrew Browning
All those things. And it’s a funny thing, isn’t it? You just put the right words in the right order and you seem to get what you need. But it doesn’t change what you do. You know what you’re doing. You just have to verbalise it well.

Brendan Corr
Has that been a skill that you’ve had to learn?

Dr. Andrew Browning
Very much so. And it’s not something I’m very good at. I struggle with it. I’d much rather be teaching, operating and caring for the patients. That’s where-

Brendan Corr
So why do you do that?

Dr. Andrew Browning
Out of necessity, really. I’m here now in Australia. We moved back to Australia for all sorts of family reasons. And while I’m in Australia, I couldn’t work as a doctor here, an obstetrician without retraining, and I’m not particularly interested in a career here. So it’s freed up time to be able to do that. So it’s speaking engagements, engaging people to try and see if they will help us. But on the back of that is all the administration, the accountability that needs to be done. So I’ve got a team that’s growing with the Barbara May Foundation, and we’ve been very blessed with some lovely, lovely capable people that are starting to take some of that load off me, which is fabulous. So hopefully, in the future I can do less of that and as the children grow, maybe spend more time in Africa doing the operation. Anyway, that’s in God’s hands. At the moment that’s what I’m doing in my life right now.

Brendan Corr
Still an act of willingness to the bigger, the greater good of the cause. And this is right now what you can do, what is needed. And so here I am. I’ll write the report. Yeah, I’ll do the public address. You mentioned the Barbara May Foundation. As we draw our conversation to a conclusion, can you tell anybody that might be listening how they could find out more, how they might be able to lean in and help if there’s interest?

Dr. Andrew Browning
So the Barbara May Foundation is a charity we started in Australia in 2009 just to fund all this work in Africa. So hundreds of fistula repairs every year, hundreds of midwives trained every year, tens of thousands of women delivered every year, tens of thousands of clinic visits and family planning and all sorts of things. But it all takes funds and that’s provided by the generous public. So if you go to barbaramayfoundation.com, there’s a website with all sorts of information. And we do regular events, speaking engagements. We’ve got one in Orange tomorrow, so it’s a bit late for you to join that one. But there’s speaking engagements. So please come and meet us at those events and we’d love to meet you. And if you want us to speak at a school or something like that, just let us know.

Brendan Corr
And if there’s a young person thinking about a career in medicine, what might you say?

Dr. Andrew Browning
Do it. If I had my time again, I’d do it all again.

Brendan Corr
Fantastic. Dr. Browning, we want to pay tribute to the work that we know you rely on God to enable you to do. But it has been the grace worked in your life through your family, your influence, your experience of Christ Himself. We’ll be praying that He continues to strengthen you and to give you opportunity. Thank you so much for your time.

Dr. Andrew Browning
Thank you.