Greetings from Lodja, DRCongo from Timothy, Sharon and Peter. We're not often together these days, so we consider this a special occasion. Peter crossed the continent to spend his summer break here at home and we're glad and blessed to renew our acquaintance with him. We call him at his dorm phone every week or two while he is at school in Kenya, but it's just not the same as incarnation. As the Father knew when He sent His Son...

Not Just Days, Life!

Our days are full and busy, but the Lord keeps us full of His life, as well. Since we last wrote, we have temporarily boarded in one end of our hospital construction site and moved our eye service there. It's a bit rustic and we have to chase termites away each morning which team out at night to devour our rough walls of planks much like Balsa wood; but rent was rising while patient visits have been falling and it just made more sense to keep staff at one site instead of two. Of course we have had to suspend surgical services, since our operating room has not been walled in yet and it is now a hard decision whether to complete the pharmaceutical depot first or to move the o.r. up in priority. Both are needed, but our reduced construction crew of five doesn't seem to have an "expedite" setting. Please stand with us and our board in prayer about these decisions.

Praying for Patients

We didn't miss a day seeing patients and praying for each one. To celebrate our installation in the new building, we bought 500 Gideon French New Testaments in Kinshasa which we are giving to each consulting patient. Though times are hard we have an ever increasing opportunity for ministry in this growing facility. One reason times are hard is that a group of Congolese ophthalmologists has started doing "eye missions" here to Lodja and drawn away most of our cataract cases, many of our outpatient consultations and one of our three eye nurses. Just to keep our hospital staff of two nurses and three non-medical personnel paid I have had to infuse cash, meaning that we have not been able to keep to our principle of auto-financing for some months. We're just using the natural to fertilize the spiritual.

Five Fold Ministry

Another class of 17 students memorized all their passages during the school year 2008-2009 and have been presented the last of the Atetela Bibles. They represent seven different sects, including Catholics, Methodists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Branamists, and Evangelicals of various sorts. Parents and alumni were invited to a big dinner party at the hospital construction site for the Bible presentations. All our Bible studies are there as well since it's the best covered facility around and the church building has no roof. Student discipling continues using as a text my French translation of J. Holbrook's Commands of Christ. We are half way through that series for the first time and I do the translating as we go along. Our ISOM video ministry course is near to graduating another class after five trimesters and a new class is getting started. Dean and Pierre-Albert's Biblical/agricultural Training Center is off and running with their first class of 8 resident families just outside Lodja, at Luwundji. Home groups have been an excellent opportunity for Sharon and I to get out into the community and share our life in the Lord "up close and personal." We rotate through four groups which meet each week. Group leaders have been mostly high school seniors who have just graduated and will be leaving us to go to university elsewhere. Pray for our new young leaders.

Second-Hand Compassion

Sharon is still working overtime daily to create an Access-based database which will simplify the job of tracking and selling meds and supplies in our pharmaceutical depot. We cannot be out there in the village health centers every time a man, woman or child falls sick, but we can help assure that meds are available to every center, enabling the ministry of compassion and shoring up the work of preserving life so that each one might come to know Christ, the source of all life, natural and eternal. She is delighted to have a new 12 V battery which triples the time she can work on the database or ministry translation projects before needing to turn on the Honda generator.

Lord willing, we would like to visit the States during Peter's school break from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day and would like to use that time to re-supply and procure ministry tools like Christian books in French and Atetela for the library. In the past we had hoped to supply a small library to six different remote pastoral "hubs", but lacked the resources. We will do this and all for which the Lord provides. In advance, we thank You Lord and you who stand with us in this ministry, assuring that we have what we need to fulfill this mission of life and light to the Atetela people.

Clinic Rounds

M.O.S. is a 12-year-old Otetela girl who lives 2 km from our clinic with her two parents and six siblings in a mud hut. She was first brought to our eye service when she was 7 years old for "visual problems since birth", her mother stating that M.O.S. had poor fixation since 4 months old and white spots in both eyes since 4 years old. Mom denied any eye trauma for M.O.S. at birth or since and reported that she didn't seem to suffer any pain, but her eyes wouldn't work together.

The doctor being away, the nurse examined her (when she was 7) and found the visual acuity "± satisfactory" oo, meaning she could identify objects at 4-5 meters, but couldn't read any characters on the chart. The eyes were remarkable for "keyhole" pupils and white spots on the eye lenses, OS>OD.

The nurse gave her a Dx of Congenital cataracts in evolution and pupillary congenital deformation. He gave her some Vitamin A and worm pills and asked her to return for a re-check in 3 months (when the Dr would be back) to follow the evolution of the cataracts.

M.O.S. returned in 6 months (age 8), VA was found to be count fingers 4m and 5m; each eye deviated temporally with nystagmus. Her pupils were still keyholes with the bases tilted medially. The lenses were found to be transparent but each one with a bite taken out of the inferior aspect, as seen through the keyhole pupils. Fundal exam was best seen with a strong positive lens (+16) in the ophthalmoscope, implying that she was strongly far sighted. Retinas were widely tainted by pigment deposition and the optic nerve heads appeared malformed and difficult to visualize. With trial lenses of +16 DS she was able to read the second line of the chart at 6/36 (20/100), but she wasn't too impressed with the difference. It did her no good that I was able to give her a more accurate Dx of congenital coloboma (malformation) oo, with high hyperopia. We gave her some more vitamins and worm pills, but asked her to return in 1 month to try some glasses we were expecting from Kinshasa, when her eyes would not be dilated.

M.O.S. came back earlier this year, now 12 y.o., with complaints of fever, joint pains and bad vision since birth. On exam, VA still CF 5m/4m, malformations unchanged, but fundi visible with strong negative lenses (-24) in the o'scope. Dx: Coloboma ć high myopia and malaria. She was given multiple meds for malaria and – 9.00 DS glasses to try. It seems a little late to hope to alleviate her strabismus and nystagmus, but she has worn the glasses faithfully and finished up the school year much better than she started it. Where few people have phone or mail service, much less an address, it's quite a challenge to encourage timely follow-up.
TGH, MD