Internet

We've been having internet problems for 8 days now and there's no end in sight. I leave Sunday for a 6 day outreach in Free State and then a day in Pretoria for a OneHope celebration. I don't know if I will have internet access then so I may not be able to post much in the next week or so. I leave to come home on Tuesday, June 9 and arrive mid-day June 10.

So don't worry if you don't hear from me!

Animals

I’ve been on quite a few game drives both here on the farm where I’m staying plus on another farm in the area called Entabeni. I didn’t bring a good camera with me so I’m depending on other team members for safari photos which I haven’t received yet. In the meantime, I’m posting some that I’ve taken.

On the last safari, you’ll be glad to know we saw the baby rhino alive and well so the lions we saw on the previous safari stalking the baby were not successful. We saw the baby rhino and his mother up close next to the game drive vehicle. We also saw giraffe, a hippo (although mostly just the top of his head in the water), zebras, wildebeests, lions, warthogs, black-backed jackals and lots of antelope-ish animals (kudu, eland, nyala).

Yesterday on a walk up the mountain, I saw gemsbock (very odd looking animals), warthogs, an albino antelope of some sort and wildebeestes. The previous day on my walk I saw sables and a black impala (normally they’re brown) and lots of monkeys (vervets) plus a lone ostrich.

Going on a game drive

Sables in the back yard

Black-backed jackal tracks

The sables are always watching me

Zebras

Impalas (including the black one)

Wildebeeste

Nyala in the front yard

Eyes

The majority of the work I’ve done here is in relation to the eye clinics. We are just getting ready for another team to come and we’ll spend next week in the province of Free State. Usually we work in the schools but this next outreach, we will be working in the community and not the schools. I’m expecting that we will mostly be seeing adults but we’re not really sure what to expect.

I’ve had the chance to work in all areas of the clinic. I can do registration, counseling and evangelism, AIDS teaching, run the Retinomax, dispense glasses and make custom glasses. All of this will come in handy since the last two days of the outreach, I will be ‘in charge’ (very loosely stated) since all of our experienced people will be disbursing to various parts of the world. A pretty funny twist of events!

Here are more photos of the work we’re doing in the clinics (thanks to Lauren and Kim for some of these photos):

Getting ready for the next outreach. We have to inventory and take hundreds and hundreds of glasses.

Beauty

I’ve had the opportunity to travel to about 30 countries and South Africa is in the top two beautiful places I have been to in the world, ranking right up there with Switzerland. While driving through various parts of the province of Mpumulanga (a province is like our state), we saw orange groves, cornfields, olive trees, soybeans (I think), and lots of other types of produce being grown side by side. Driving through Northwest province, there are fields and fields of sunflowers. Driving through Limpopo province, there are mountains and plains, trees we call the Lion King trees (we don’t know what kind they are but they are very predominant in the Lion King movie-they look like umbrellas), and beautiful sunsets. I’m told the Cape area is really the most beautiful part of South Africa but I won’t be seeing that part since it’s a really long drive from the northern part of the country where I’m staying.

And speaking of beautiful, I cannot even come close to describing the stars at night. I have never, ever seen so many stars…it’s like being at the planetarium. There is no comparison that I’ve ever seen in the U.S. I am in complete awe here of how vast our universe is and how powerful God is to be able to create it.

Here are some photos that don’t come close to capturing the beauty:

Feeding program

On weekends, BMI is involved in a feeding program for children at a local church in the town of Naboom. Children in school receive one meal at school and this feeding program ensures they also get at least one meal on Saturday as well.

We went and hung out with the kids at the church. First, there is a worship service for the children...singing, teachings, even our own Pastor Terry got up to preach. Then there is food.

The food comes from an organization called Kids Against Hunger. This organization packages healthy, balanced meals and ships them all over the world to places where children are starving. If you aren't familiar with this great organization or the huge meal packaging event that went on last September at Wells Fargo Arena in DSM, check out this link for the next big event put on by Meals from the Heartland.

It was so great to actually see the direct result of all the meals packaged by volunteers. These kids loved the rice mixture and the local ladies added additional protein and potatoes to it.

Here are some pics:

In line for food










She loved the food and went back for seconds as did most of the kids! They get as much as they want.











Little boys who loved the camera










Just hanging out with the kids while they ate

Sorry I haven't posted anything lately but I've spent the last week in the middle of nowhere without internet access, literally. We did another outreach in Mpumulanga province and stayed in an old bunkhouse on a farm. We were pretty much in the middle of cornfields - actually the area was very similar to Iowa.

I don't know the exact number but we saw hundreds more kids and gave out as many glasses. We had a team that consisted of a husband and wife from Vancouver, one from New Mexico, one from Florida, 8 South Africans and the three of us from Blessman Ministries. Jennie, from Vancouver, is an optometrist which was really helpful considering some of the diseased eyes we saw. For one little one, she diagnosed cancer of the iris.

Here are some of the woman on the team

Kim
Lauren
Lisa
Jennie
Me
Sebenzile (front)

Some of the men on the team

Elmond

Min

December

Lucky

Kids lining up at one of the schools

New glasses

Tondo (r) talking to a girl about HIV/AIDS

Prescreening the kids. The schools are supposed to prescreen the kids and only send us those with problems seeing but they almost never do this. So before we dilate their eyes, we prescreen them using the Snellen chart. If they pass the prescreen, they get sent back to class since they don't need glasses.

Waiting to see Dr. Jennie

Dr. Jennie with a 12 year old boy with HIV. This is the saddest thing I've seen so far. This little boy looked like the walking dead. He was the size of maybe a 7 year old and he had no affect at all...you couldn't get him to smile, talk, respond in anyway. Both of his parents have died from AIDS.

Me using the Retinomax. I pretty much did this all week except the last day. It's a machine that scans the eyes and gives a preliminary prescription for the glasses. I didn't get to interact much with the kids this week since I was doing this particular job but it was still a great week. As the kids lined up for me to scan their eyes, you could see the fear! I'd spend a minute explaining to them that it's just a light and I wasn't going to touch their eye with it. I said the same thing hundreds of times this week.

Looking cute! I sometimes tried to tell the kids this is what their glasses would look like but they usually didn't believe me.

Jennie doing her thing

The Big Storm and Construction

We had an incredible hailstorm here today and per the locals, this is quite unusual. It's been raining a lot over the last 3 days with thunderstorms but today the hail started. It hailed for maybe 25 minutes. Unfortunately the heavy rain caused flooding at the farm office and in some of the homes of the staff who live on the farm. We spent the afternoon cleaning up the flood waters and then played outside, kids and adults alike, just as if it had been snowing!

Photos at the Blessman house:

Snowball fights

The kids were definitely in on the action

One of the gates to Shikwaru (Shikwaru is the name of the game farm)

New topic: there is some new construction going on here at the farm. Blessman Ministries is building missionary housing to house both short-term and long-term missionaries. Currently BMI has two long-term missionaries working here full-time, Lisa and Terry. The new buildings consist of 3 houses and one community house. They are traditional African-style houses called rondavels.

Here's a picture of the community house with a partial view of two of the other rondavels:

The other building going on is a huge house being built by OneHope, one of the partnering ministries of BMI. This organization is committed to bringing God's Word to every child on the planet (how's that for a goal?:) In 2009, they will distribute 70 million books called Book of Hope to children throughout the world. We get to partner with them during our eye clinic outreaches where we distribute the Book of Hope while ministering to the children.

Here's a photo of the house they are building. It will hold, I think, about 25 - 30 missionaries at a time.

Last update for the day: We've spent this week preparing for another outreach (ok, well mostly Lisa has been preparing for it but I helped with grocery shopping and inventory:) We leave Sunday for another outreach in a province called Free State. We'll be staying at a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere but supposedly we will have internet access. It should be exciting but you may not hear from me next week if we don't really have internet.