He Has Done Marvelous Things

South Africa Team 1824 Blog #6

10-22-2018

“He has done marvelous things!”

Greetings to all! We’ve had a marvelous day, and I mean that in the purest sense of the word. I marvel at what God can accomplish through willing hands and feet. We saw 147 clients, and dispensed 201 pair of glasses!

After breakfast, Knut was here to pick us up with our luggage-fulla-specs. We brought almost everything needed for a vision/eyeglass clinic except for tables and the like which Muzi and his crew provided.

After getting through the initial confusion and chaos of setting up, our group walked over to the waiting area where about 60 people were waiting to be ushered down to the clinic building - our first clients, one of whom was Pastor Mandla Khumalo, pastor of St. Peter who’s campus the clinic was built on.

In the waiting area, the clients were being educated about different eye troubles, and about what they could expect during their time with us in the clinic. They each paid a small fee of 50 rand, equal to $4.20 American money, and waited very patiently for their turn. Also in the waiting area, they were told about their Savior, in who’s name the clinic was being run - their new “spectacles” would be a gift from God.

They were walked in groups down to the clinic building, where they first visited the Nursing Station. Their eyes were checked for obvious ailments like cataracts, pink eye, styes and pterygium (a white film which grows to cover the eye, caused by dust and the hot African sun).

If the Nursing Station thought the client could be helped by spectacles, they were taken to the Testing Station, where it was determined what prescription they might need, for both distance and reading.

Armed with an approximate prescription, our clients waited for an opening in the Distribution Station. There, the MOST team tried different pairs of spectacles on the client until vision was corrected to the best we could do.

Then, they came to me. I was posted at the Fitting Station, the last frontier before they would leave with their precious new glasses (oops, they’re called spectacles!). It was marvelous. The client would sit, I would introduce myself and try to pronounce their name from the registration sheet. They usually either laughed outright or corrected me. I had them try on their glasses (sometimes two pair, one for distance and another for reading), so I could check the fit, and correct it with hot salt and a pair of needle-nosed pliers.

Trivia question: does anybody know what the piece of the frame on the side that goes from the lenses to behind the ear is called? I didn’t; had to google it. Well it’s the temple. Yup. Who knew?

Anyhow, we heat up table salt in a little crock pot, and stick the temple of the glasses in to warm the plastic/wire frame so it can be bent into a shape that’s comfortable and prevents the glasses from falling off or slipping. That was my job, or part of it. I also bent frames, adjusted nose pads, educated the client as to how to properly wash and care for their spectacles, cleaned the newly fitted specs, and provided them with a hand-sewn eye-glass case.

To prepare for my very first clinic, I decided to test out the bending-the-temple procedure with my very own glasses. I figured it might take a while to get the frame hot enough to bend, so I left it in the hot salt while I chatted with another team member. When I took it out, it was a melted, mangled mess that looked like a dog had been chewing on it. Yikes! So I quickly got the pliers to “bend” it back in place, but it was too hot and slumped again. After a while, when it cooled enough to mold back into some semblance of a temple, I created what is pictured below. I’m so thankful it was MY glasses, and not a client’s new treasure!

An elderly lady came to my station. She had two pair of specs for me to fit. I did the hard ones first, which were her coke-bottle-lens distance glasses. We were sitting by a window, and when I tried them on her, she looked outside for the first time. She was enthralled with what the outside world looked like with her new treasures on her face. When I asked her to take them off so we could fit her reading glasses, she refused. I think she thought I wouldn’t give them back! I don’t speak Zulu, she didn’t have much English, and we were at a bit of a stand-still until Hazel (one of Muzi’s team) translated and let her know she could have them back. Hazel was a godsend, all afternoon pulling my fat out of the fire.

Before the lady with the coke-bottle specs left, she said, translated by Hazel, “I’m going to look at everything all the way home, then I’m reading my bible!” Her face beamed with joy, as mine dampened with tears. I cried a lot today, as God’s marvelous plan for this group of His children in South Africa played out under His loving guidance.

Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous things! Psalm 98:1a

Respectfully Submitted,
Linda Meier
Missionary (!)