Some reflections on completing our mission

The kids above are without a doubt some of the favorite ones who we served within the span of the past six days. I'd like to say that I recall each and every child who we served, but, in all honesty, the entire experience has passed by like a whirlwind, with few moments of true rest and reflection. Even when we sit down to process, we are pouring over paper charts that need to be transposed into Excel charts that need to be cross checked with order forms and converted into new spreadsheets to check test/retest reliability. All in all, we saw about 200 kids in five full working days. Tomorrow is officially our last day of work, as we'll be seeing one final kid who was bussed in over the weekend and all of the staff of Under the Same Sun. But there still will be so much more to be done in terms of sorting through the massive "paper trail" of vision records, dental records, health histories, order forms and spreadsheets; consolidating it all to make sense for the staff at UTSS who will then be responsible for providing for the follow-up care to the kids; and setting up next steps as much as possible for future teams and our local partner optometrists. Please do pray for that entire process, for focused time, organized efforts and good discernment.


I do want to share that on our final two days of serving scholarship children, we met dozens of older students with albinism who were already making inroads in secondary school, college and graduate studies. Some of them were studying social work, others working towards becoming educators and still others well on their way to becoming practicing lawyers. Education is one of the main vehicles that UTSS uses to transform the culture of Tanzania and we were able to catch these small glimpses of the near future leaders of this society. Praise God for that! In a related story, last night we were invited to an art show and concert headlined by a band featuring a very talented drummer who happened to have albinism. It took the crowd a little bit of time to get warmed up, but, before long, it seemed like the entire room (full of local Tanzanians, Europeans and Americans--i.e., us) had morphed into a giant conga-line, led by the infectious beats of the drummer.


But there are two sides to every story. I recall the feeling of unease that came upon me one of the mornings as we drove towards the UTSS office, seeing an older, disheveled man with albinism stumbling through traffic towards our car, begging for money. And in addition to all the older kids and young adults with high aspirations, already living out their promise in so many ways, we saw more than ever people with albinism with missing limbs, chopped off and sold to witch doctors, sometimes by their own family members. There is still so much that needs to be done in this place, so much darkness tied to wrong ideas, beliefs and attitudes towards people with albinism. My prayer is simple: that God would reclaim this city, this people and this nation as His own, that He would wipe away the lies and deceit, and overthrow the powers and principalities of the enemy in this place.


Finally, I want to leave you with a picture of something beautiful, of some of the kids in the playground who we met during our journey up north. One of the dentists decided that she wanted to pull out her camera and snap a few pictures, and then the game was on as the kids rushed forward, waving and dancing and wanting to get into every frame. A few seconds later, the dentists decided that they had to jump in, too!