Let me be singing when the evening comes

South Africa Team 1824 Blog #8

10-24-2018

“Let me be singing when the evening comes”

A line from the song “Ten Thousand Reasons”

It’s the evening of our third clinic day, and I’m bushed! I would love to be in my bed, but I jot notes all day long about what I can tell our friends and family at home, so I need to blog it!

First, here are some of our beautiful clients from yesterday, each of whom can see better today. The woman on the left is holding some of the hand-made eyeglass cases we give out, and inside are her new spectacles.

These ladies, also from yesterday’s clinic, are mother and daughter. They both have new spectacles; the daughter got two pair - one for distance and one for reading. We can’t bring bifocals, so when someone is both near- and far-sighted, they receive a pair of corrective lenses for each problem. The mother’s name is Leah, age 84. I’m very surprised at the high number of biblical first names we find on the registration sheets, followed by sometimes long and difficult surnames.

Today we travelled 2 hours or so into a part of South Africa the tourists never see. As we drove out of Middelburg, I was again freaking out a little about being on the wrong side of the road. Like in England, the steering wheel on the bus is on the right, so the bus is driving on the left side. I see a car coming at us in the lane I think we should be in, and my heart races until I realize Oh Yeah. South Africa.

The trip to the church in Siyabuswa (see ya boo swa) where we would hold today’s clinic was hilly and winding, and we didn’t know how long it would take us to get there, because we might have to stop for animals in the road. Random, wandering animals.

We saw, in this order, a baboon on the side of the road, an antelope, a female impala (I don’t know how Knut knew it was female but at this point we trust everything he tells us!), an actual living-in-the-wild giraffe(!), more giraffes, donkey, goats, hens with chicks, a monkey, and cattle. The cattle were kind of skinny; not the nice fat ones you see at home.

Since we had asked Knut animal questions, he felt free to expound on the three different groups of poisonous snakes in South Africa. I tried to tune him out but when Knut decides to tell something, it WILL be told. There are neurotoxic snakes whose venom attacks the nervous system, cytotoxic ones which cause some awful thing to happen to one’s flesh, and hemotoxic creepy snakes who change something in the victim’s blood. There. Now you know too. I’ll thank Knut for you.

We passed a lovely dam reservoir, where we stopped on the way home to take pictures.

When close to our destination, I witnessed living conditions I knew existed but had never seen up close and personal. So much trash on the ground in large open areas. Houses the average size of which would fit in my living room back home. I wondered why people were standing on the side of the road, and thought they might be waiting waiting for a bus. No, they were waiting for water. No running water in the homes.

When we arrived at Siyabuswa, some of us needed to use the restroom badly. When we saw the facilities we had so looked forward to using, we wondered if we might be able to hold it for another eight or nine hours. But this is how these people live!

So when the clinic opened, those of us working there had a rough idea how hard life was for our clients. God allowed us, His servants, to be instruments in changing the lives of people the world has left behind. He sent us there to love them, check their eyes, maybe give them the gift of better sight. I was both humbled and awed at the gift I had been given, to serve in this way.

One of the local ladies who visited our clinic today had perfect vision. I told her God had blessed her, that she didn’t need to wear corrective lenses at all! But she was disappointed that she didn’t get to go home with new ‘spectacles’ like most of the others. We stock sunglasses for these clients. When she put them on she frowned deeply, and complained that everything had gotten so dark! She took them off, and I walked her outside where she and I were squinting in the bright South African sunlight. I asked her to put the sunglasses back on; I said they would protect her eyes from dust and harsh sunlight, and maybe prevent some of the eye troubles we were seeing in other clients. She was amazed! She had never seen sunglasses before. She was so proud and happy to own these ‘special’ spectacles!

You might know by now that we use a small crock-pot of salt to heat up parts of the frames we need to bend or unbend. In rural areas, there is no guarantee of electricity. During today’s clinic when I was working on a particularly challenging pair of spectacles, trying to get them to fit just right, I noticed the salt wasn’t as hot as it had been. Electricity had gone away until the evening hours. I knew this might happen, and I knew what to do, but I hadn’t ever tried it before. I lit a votive candle. I held the spectacles over the flame, and walked the tightrope of getting the frames not so hot they would scorch or melt into blobs, but hot enough to bend. What a challenge! But Hazel and I soldiered on and fit those spectacles to all those heads even in what I might call primitive conditions.

I’ve learned so much, and the funniest thing is about me. My name, Linda. The first two clinic days, I heard my name said over and over by the Zulu-speaking workers, Muzi’s people. “Leenda” is how they pronounce it. But they weren’t talking to me, or even looking in my direction. I hoped they were saying nice things about me, that I had given a favorable impression. It dawned on me that maybe the “Leenda” I was hearing was actually a word in Zulu. I asked my new-best-friend Hazel who works with me at the fitting station. She smiled and told me it means “waiting.” As in, “You will be waiting here until your turn go to the next station.” They weren’t talking about me at all! When I told Hazel what I had been thinking, we both laughed until we were in tears.

Tears came again when it was time to leave for the day. I’m overwhelmed with the joy of this mission. I get to hand God’s children their life-changing spectacles, and watch them leave with glad and grateful hearts. I tell each one of them, “These are yours now, a gift from God, who loves you. God bless you!” We are thanked profusely by the happy clients, but also by Muzi’s team and the local church. Today I thanked them back for the privilege of working alongside them. And I meant it from the bottom of my heart.

When we arrived back at the Mission House tonight, we sang songs and had our devotions and sang some more. What a joy! Lord, let me always “be singing when the evening comes.”

Love to the folks back home!

Respectfully Submitted,
Linda Meier
Missionary (!)