Please join us in praying for Karen Bogle, a member of our congregation, as she is going on a short-term mission to Riohacha, Colombia, with Medical Ministries International.
We are thankful that our team is growing again this year. There will be over 40 people traveling from Canada and the United States. We are also excited to have Dr. Sara Grace joining us for the second week. She is a pediatric ophthalmologist with a huge heart and exceptional skill, and she will be caring for all the children with strabismus during that week.
This year our work will be based in Riohacha, at the northern tip of South America on the Caribbean coast. Due to political tensions near the Venezuelan border, it was not feasible to return to the desert region where we have served in the past. We are grateful to be in a new location and even more grateful that our hotel has hot water this time, which is quite unusual (and a luxury!). We will be bussed daily to the clinic and hospital.
The MMI (Medical Ministry International) national team will be connecting us with a local church so that the church receives the credit for the work being done, all in God’s name. We expect to see approximately 500 patients each day, for a total of about 5,000 patients and roughly 350 surgeries. A team of surgeons will remain for a third week to address the very long surgical waitlist. This means hundreds of people will quite literally go from blindness to sight through cataract and pterygium surgeries. Many others will experience restored vision through receiving proper prescription glasses from the collection we bring, yay!!
I will be leading the Visual Acuity department again this year. Our team is the first station patients visit after registration. We assess distance vision with and without glasses, as well as near vision. These evaluations provide the optometrists and ophthalmologists with essential information for their initial diagnoses.
We would deeply appreciate prayer for safe travel, for all medical supplies to arrive without issue, and for the health and safety of the entire team. I am also traveling again with a close friend who is not a Christian and who grew up in a church environment focused heavily on fear. I am praying that she will encounter Jesus’ love and come to know Him personally.
We begin each day with devotions in both English and Spanish, and I would appreciate prayer for wisdom and guidance as I prepare and share mine.