One of the things that is on any furlough to-do list is taking care of outstanding medical issues. Praise the Lord we have made it this far without anything major that need addressing (and with 4 boys no less!) Despite this, there are a few items that were good ideas to take care of, not for their urgency, but because of timing; thus we got to experience lasers in the eyeballs this last week when we had the privilege of a medical holiday to get LASIK surgery!

This last term on the field we discovered the joys of maintaining glasses and contacts in the bush. Did you know contact solution can’t be found in your typical PNG pharmacy? We didn’t either, and so when we arrived on the field we found ourselves quite undersupplied. Eventually Stacie’s glasses became a Frankenstein creation barely hanging in there with copious helpings of tape, hot glue, epoxy, and very gentle face movements. It’s not so bad really. It ’s just that you have to order supplies months in advance (which is easy to mess up) and any lost or broken contacts were literally irreplaceable once her prescription expired.

In one instance, we were hiking through a rainstorm when Stacie, wiping water out of her eyes, accidently swiped her contact out. When caught in the rain one generally doesn’t want to get down and grope about in the mud and rivulets, but what option is there when you have no replacements? The Kovol people meanwhile looked on with confusion as she recovered the object, which was completely foreign to them, and cleansed it in the rain. They then stared wide-eyed as she unflinchingly placed it directly on her eyeball!

We’d like to give a huge shout out to Stahl Vision in Dayton Ohio, who offer heavily discounted rates for pastors and missionaries- –your whole team was a huge blessing to our family!

They also do medical missions trips. This is from their most recent trip to Jamaica

Seeing as we were going to be in the area, we came a few days early to visit the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum in Kentucky. It was incredible and humbling to see such a huge physical representation of God’s provision for humanity— amazing!

Built as a full sized replica of the Biblical ark, it makes for a big boat!
At the Creation Museum the boys got to see how Biblical history and natural history coincide

And so we return from Ohio and Kentucky with a better vision of how God created and preserved the world, and with literally better vision.

Categories: EnglishStous

2 Comments

Colette Harding · 08/11/2020 at 4:02 am

Amazing. I’d just finished listening to a Ken Ham live broadcast when I found your blog to read. I’d love to go there, but from the UK, it’s pretty far. Glad you managed to get your eyes done.

Bryan · 08/11/2020 at 9:56 am

Great you could get eye surgery!
Also really cool that you went to the Ark Encounter!
I’d love to go there myself one day :D.
I can only image the look on the peoples faces when you put in the contact lens.

We’re praying for all of you from the Netherlands!

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