As our compound fades off in the distance I look at the people with us on the plane. This is SEE Ministries' last trip of this mission and we're on our way back to Uganda. We've been in Africa for a month doing eyeglass clinics. Ian Shelburne and Shawn Tyler are Mbale Mission Team members and our hosts. Shawn and Ian have one more thing to do for us - deliver us to Entebbe Uganda and see to it that we get on that British Airways 767 Saturday morning. Then we'll be on our own and on our way to London England, and a restful night's sleep near Victoria Station.
Josh Shelburne is now finished with his duties in Nimule where he has been overseeing the construction of the clinic. He is heading back to visit family in Muleshoe, Texas and then to register for diesel mechanic school. Pat and Jo Andrews, along with Diana and me, are on the way to our respective homes, Abilene Texas and Clovis New Mexico. The exit surveys that Pat took at the clinics reveal that we put 2500 pairs of glasses on people this year!
In the Beginning...
This is a new blog, and we thought we might give some background for those of you who don't know exactly who we are.
In 1995, Diana became an optician, and then later she became a certified optician(CPOA). By 1996 we were interested in the Lions Club eyeglass program. The Recycling Center is in Midland, Texas, which is about a four hour drive from our house. God had made it clear to us that He was calling us to a new ministry to help people see. We had heard about being called by God to do good things. We always thought that men think of good things to do and then tell God about it, but suddenly it was clear to us that it was God who was thinking of the things that he wanted us to do specifically.
In 1997 George did a survey trip to Malawi, Africa to check on the need for eyeglasses. The result was indisputable - there was a huge need for vision correction! So, the next year, with 4000 pairs of recycled glasses, George and Diana departed for Malawi. The learning curve for doing eyeglasses clinics was in motion. We thank God for giving us the opportunity to help people see again.
But we weren't destined to work in Malawi. That surprised both Diana and me as we'd been going to Malawi since 1987, and we knew many people there. Wondrous things happened to us from the very beginning, before we ever set foot in Malawi with glasses.
One of those wondrous things was that the month before we departed for Malawi with the glasses, we met Ian and Danetta Shelburne, members of the Mbale Uganda Mission Team. After hearing what we were about to embark on, they said it sounded like a great idea and would we consider doing it in Uganda. Unbeknownst to us, the door to Malawi was closed before we ever got there - one of those political turf wars that we wandered into. No matter, we already had an invitation to Uganda! How could anyone fail to see God's hand in that?
An unusual circumstance was that we had never met with anyone on the Mbale Team but Ian and Danetta. Knowing what we know now, that was REALLY unusual! When we landed in Entebbe Uganda in 1999, we met Shawn and Linda Tyler for the first time. Shawn told us later that he wasn't sure about us when he first met us. :-) We were sorta weird.
But our weirdness wasn't important after the first clinic when a modern-day Bartimaeous came blind and walked away seeing everything. After a month of conducting clinics we returned home and six weeks later we were invited back to do it again. It seems that Shawn was thrilled to find that there was not one negative comment about our clinics. We've been invited back every year since. Shawn tells me he has yet to have a negative comment; the question they get all year long is 'when are the eyeglass people coming back?'
The lead picture has a history. It was taken at Namikango Mission in Thondwe, Malawi, when SEE Ministries started. We were staying with Lendal and Peggy Wilks and Jim and Kathy Albright. Our personal camera had been stolen so we borrowed a Russian camera from one of the brothers in Malawi. Either it was a bad camera or it was so good it took pictures of the Holy Spirit visiting our lines! We like to think of it as the latter. ;-)
