Hello to our Friends!

We must begin with simply saying wow – where God took us last week was absolutely amazing! The team was blessed with an opportunity to serve and love these people in a way that is difficult to describe in words and we are so thankful and humbled to be here. It has been another incredibly busy week so here is a quick update on what we were up to…

Dr. Erick Bothun, our pediatric ophthalmologist friend from Minnesota, delivered two more lectures before he and his family departed Bulawayo on Tuesday, April 1st. This generated some interest in a possible eye service at a large hospital in Bulawayo which would also provide care for neonatal ICU patients. (this would be great as there is presently none unavailable) It was wonderful working alongside Dr. Bothun and his family!

That same afternoon, we departed with a team of 10, including pastor Chris Nxumalo of the Bulawayo Baptist Church, and drove 4.5 hours south to Madlambudzi. The trek was a familiar one full of rough roads and huge potholes ending with our arrival at the village right around sundown. Pastor Chris Moyo, who had settled to start church work in this village, stated that there are no evangelical churches within a fifty-mile radius of the community. We were invited to be a catalyst for a church plant in the area as Pastor Chris knew that folks would attend a free eye camp, which would then allow the team there to show the Jesus Film and present the gospel throughout the area.

Although we were due at the local school to show the movie, it is culturally accepted to first eat the provided meal that had been wonderfully prepared by the pastor’s wife. Afterwards Steve was fast in putting up our tent inside the village compound as the sun was quickly disappearing – there was no light, no electricity, no running water, and no toilets! We arrived at the school around 8:30pm in the evening and quickly set up the generator. Crowds began to appear out of the darkness to watch the Jesus Film projected outside on the school wall. After some lovely singing from the youth team that had accompanied us, the film began at 9:00pm!

After the it was over around 11:30 pm, Pastor Chris Nxumalo preached for another amazing 30 minutes. Just after midnight, under the most amazing milky way, we witnessed 53 folks giving their hearts to Christ!. Those 53 folks unashamedly walked forward from the darkness into the light and wrote down their names for followup with the pastor. How appropriate that they left the darkness and are now walking in the Light! Needless to say, our hearts were overfilled with joy but our bodies were tired. It was close to 1:00am as we settled into our sleeping bags, listening to the sounds of goat and cow bells throughout the night! We traveled back to the school the next morning, Wednesday, for the eye camp and arrived to over 200 folks waiting to see the “eye doctor.” By the end of the day we managed to see 180 people and distributed about 100 pairs of glasses. The people of this community were living in great poverty, suffering from malnutrition, and had very little eye health care.

After wrapping up the camp we drove back another 4.5 hours to Bulawayo to prepare for surgery on Thursday, April 3. The team performed eight operations at Mater Dei Hospital and Steve is so very thankful for the surgery room staff and their willingness to assist. One of the nurses quoted scripture from the book of James stating “faith without works is dead” and expressed a heart of gratitude for Steve coming and helping her people regain their eyesight. On Friday, we were involved in a health fair for the employees at Mater Dei Hospital. We believe this was the first health fair offered to their employees and we we able to see 30 people with various eye concerns. Steve even had one lady call from the capital of Zimbabwe, Harare. She traveled down on Friday and patiently waited two hours for an eye examination.

Our team had another big week scheduled for these last few days, including another lecture by Steve along with more eye surgeries, but ran into some unexpected challenges which we will share in our next blog! Watch out for another post in the next few days with an update on our last week of the trip. We have begun to wrap up our time here and are already planning our next trip in July. We are so thankful for your prayer support in this ministry! More updates on the way in the next few days!

Blessings to you all!