A calling beyond reason

When I started Sight.org in 2012, a well-meaning mentor asked me, “How long do you plan to do this?” When I responded, “Indefinitely,” she bluntly replied, “That’s not reasonable.” This mentor meant well, but she didn’t grasp what God had done in my heart.

After my first year serving on Mercy Ships, I surrendered my life to Christ. Less than a year later, I felt God was calling me to take a road trip from Sierra Leone to Togo, radically changing my life trajectory.

With two African friends, it was a 2,400-mile drive across a part of Africa that is 2.5% Christian. I had been a follower of Jesus for about ten months. I was spiritually bankrupt when God radically changed my heart, and I wanted to share Jesus with the unreached.

My precious mother called me after talking to the US Embassy of every country I was passing through, and in tears, she expressed how every Embassy said to warn me not to go. I responded, “If the Gospel is true, my temporal life is less valuable than another’s eternal life.”

I am grateful for her concern for me, but I’m even more thankful I went. That experience and the many I have had since then continue to fuel my veins. With an African interpreter, I gave the least eloquent, most timid gospel presentations of my life, yet to this day, I have not seen people respond to the gospel with such hunger.

Entire villages, none of whom have met a Christian, unanimously rushed forward, falling prostrate to the ground to receive Jesus. Only the power of God could do that through a timid new believer, and when I saw this, I knew my life would never be the same.

I would have to unsee what I saw to bring myself to stop, yet I can’t unsee what I saw, and those experiences were just a few of the many testaments of God’s power and goodness I had witnessed over the years.

If we trust Him with our lives, He reveals His faithfulness. On this single trip, God led us to give a ride to a soldier who opened the door to stay in the safety of a military base when we were passing through a region infiltrated by Islamist terrorists.

God put it on a group of soldiers’ hearts to rescue us by towing our broken-down vehicle to safety when we were in an area overrun by bandits.

Then, we met the bandits. They threatened to hunt us down, rob us, and skin me alive for being white, so we ran. We drove until sunset and approached a stranger, asking for refuge to hide us and our vehicle. He responded, “Of course! I’m the uncle of the lady you helped this morning!”

When we were being Good Samaritans to this man’s niece that morning, who had a minor motorcycle incident, we later discovered God was working to make a way of escape. These are just a few testimonies of His faithfulness from this trip; yet, there were more instances from this single trip that God demonstrated His faithfulness than I can remember.

I believe God called me to take this trip to show me that if we lay down our lives for the Gospel, He equips us with supernatural trust and boldness, shields us to fulfill His purpose, and the Holy Spirit touches the hearts of those we meet.

God also used this trip to reveal to me that the hearts of much of the unreached world are crying out to know Him, and that the Holy Spirit is willing to use simple, ill-equipped people like me to reach them.

Soon after this trip ended, I felt God was calling me to something even more terrifying. Rather than a short-term endeavor, a voice deep in my spirit said He wanted me to surrender my whole future to Him and place it in His hands, and I was to follow His voice wherever it led. I refrained for months, and then, one night, I did the most terrifying thing of my life. I said, “Lord, I accept my calling.” I felt like I had just jumped off a cliff, and God immediately responded, “Go to Peter.”

I knew precisely which Peter God was referring to, and it was a man I barely knew. All I knew about Peter Dossou was that he was an African pastor who worked as an assistant on the Mercy Ships’ eye team. I began to get to know Peter, and pretty quickly, I had the impression that God had a calling on Peter’s life that God wanted me to be a part of. Without Peter knowing I had already said “yes” to being a part of this calling, I asked Peter, “Peter, what is your calling?” Peter responded, “Two years ago, I dreamt I was in a rural part of Africa, surrounded by blind people asking for their sight. As I woke, God said, ‘Go to the rural villages, give sight to the blind, and share the gospel.’” After sharing, I told Peter I believed God called me to be a part of it. One month later, I met my wife-to-be, and the three of us began what became known as Sight.org.

In the beginning, with very little money, minimal experience, no credentials, and making life-altering decisions in pursuit of what we believed to be God’s voice, people must have thought we were crazy. But praise God; He uses the simple and ill-equipped to emphasize His glory, and years later, the fruit speaks for itself. All the glory is His, and His ways are always best!

God is the Way Maker, and I believe God made a way to reach the unreached by first giving sight to the blind. Blindness in Africa is catastrophic. Malnutrition and social isolation are common, and the economic drain on a family, including a child usually missing an education to serve, often results in generational poverty.

When we go to a village, we must receive permission from the chief to share the gospel. Through giving sight to the blind, we have never been denied permission since 2012. Hundreds of chiefs, predominantly Muslim or Voodoo, have granted our requests, giving us access to villages where the gospel was forbidden. God made the way.

He is worthy of our Love, worthy of our trust, worthy of our obedience. No one and nothing in existence has ever been more worthy, and He is eternally faithful. Be bold and courageous, and may the Holy Spirit go before you!

To God be the glory!

Lewis Swann
Cofounder & CEO