The nursing school attached to the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital at Atoifi on Malaita in Solomon Islands has closed down for its holidays a week early folliwng the killing of missionary Lance Gersbach.
Mr Gersbach, the acting chief executive at the hospital complex, was beheaded while working on a building site at the hospital last Sunday.
The hospital, which has more than two hundred staff and students, has continued to operate, but decided to close the school early to allow students to receive counselling following the killing.
The head of the Eastern Seventh Day Adventist Mission, Martin Losi, says the hospital has discharged some patients and is not accepting new ones.
But he hopes the it will be back to normal operations when the school resumes after the holiday break.
"we do not know really what will happen..... there is no talk of closing the place... I don't think the church will close it... but this is just a temporary thing to help everybody, you know, because there are no counsellors and stuff like that, you know, out there so they are sending them out just to recoup a bit, yes"
