World Gospel Mission (WGM) has given us so much practical and spiritual encouragement this year. 

After visiting the WGM Tenwek mission hospital in Kenya last May we received tremendous support from them in the field.  Mango Ministries, the Sudan operation of WGM, arranged for two clinical officers to spend one month each in Tonj to cover our medical staff on leave.  It was an absolute answer to prayer as both Hilary and Emily volunteered to spend their free time from Tenwek to come and serve our clinic in Sudan.  We were so blessed to not be short staffed and have to compromise our services and care of patients.

Mango Ministries also arranged for the Simply the Story outreach in May where our pastors learnt how to evangelize using simple bible story methods.  Pastor Emmy from Uganda’s Africa Gospel Church was part of that team and recently returned as a follow-up to the previous training.  Each day he used the simple stories to help the pastors share the gospel with our clinic patients.  In the afternoon we drove him and the pastors to the remote villages outskirting Tonj to announce that Tenwek Eye Clinic was sending surgeons to do cataract surgeries.  This was a wonderful opportunity for our pastors to practise the things they had learned while sharing bible stories about blind people.  They took a sound system and used a microphone to get everyone’s attention, first announcing the cataract clinic and where to register for it (DEED) and then as the crowd gathered around one pastors gave the gospel (TRUTH).  This sums up perfectly the purpose In Deed and Truth Ministries exists today. 

My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue but in deed and in truth. 1 John 3:18

Tenwek Eye clinic arrived on Saturday and we were ready.  Dr’s Tom and Dennis had over 170 patients prescreened and registered for cataract surgery.  The morning the team were arriving we had 173 people show up and it was only the first day!

 The government hospital in Tonj has been repaired since the war but is not operating so we asked to use it for the cataract clinic.  We washed it down and had as much supplies as we could ready on hand.  All our medical team were on stand-by to assist in any way they could. 

As we left the airstrip the team didn’t even go to the compound as they wanted to do 15-20 surgeries the first day.  They checked out the site we had chosen and immediately got to work setting up for surgery.

The first day they performed 10 surgeries after setting up.  Sabets own mother was as one of the candidates.  We announced the cataract clinic through the local Catholic radio station and were getting phone calls from Wau and Kwajok, over 100 miles away thanking us for bring the surgeons and asking if they could send people for surgery!

This has been a very exciting week for us here.  Our clinic staff are split between supporting the Tenwek team and continuing to see patients in our own clinic.  Thank you Jesus for allowing us to be a part of this amazing experience and hosting such an amazing team. 

Please pray!  The team were able to do 42 surgeries on Monday and many again today.  They only have 2 more full days of surgery before leaving on Friday.  Pray we can help as many as possible.