by Lewis Swann | Jan 5, 2017 | Blog, Lewis |
Dear friends & supporters,
You are truly amazing and we thank you.
Since you and I began this journey of restoring sight to the blind and furthering the gospel in Togo, we have touched more lives than I had ever imagined. Even if you have only given $150 in the life of Sight.org, there is a person in the world who was blind that can now see because of you. It may be someone who is now able to work, or a child who can now go to school. If it were not for your selfless act of reaching out to make a difference, someone in Africa would very likely have remained blind to this day and for years to come. You would have never given to Sight.org if you didn’t have a heart for others, and this characteristic in you is something the world longs to see.
You have been generous, and the world is a better place thanks to you!
Through your support, the team has been growing in tremendous ways. We’re finding that even though we are performing eye surgeries and sharing the gospel, the greatest thing God is calling us to do is to love. Every time I go to Africa, I’m hearing God telling me that my job is to love and his job is to heal. And as a result of simply loving others, I’m seeing healing in the lives of others that far surpass what I have ever seen.
On my last trip to Africa, we went to visit a new house church that we planted a few months prior. Everyone is a new convert, and we spent the majority of each day doing church, praising, worshiping, and reading from the Bible, and throughout, we would take prayer requests. On the second day, we asked the group if they had testimonies to share. This question was brought up every day, and every day we received reports of miracles! To my knowledge, God answered every single prayer that the villagers requested! From physical healings to relational healing, God was moving in such tangible ways that the missionaries (me included) were taken by surprise! As a result, a buzz went across the village of news that this little group of Christians was hearing from their God. It was amazing in ways that I cannot describe.
I have never seen a group of new believers so excited to be Christians.
Here is one of my favorite examples of an answered prayer: A lady requested prayer for her son’s return home. He had been gone for four years. She had no idea where he had gone, she had no way of contacting him, and she didn’t even know if he was alive. The following Tuesday, guess who came into town? That’s right, her long lost son! He took three days traveling across three countries to return to his mother. After four long years, her son was finally home!
As we look back over 2016, we are so thankful for supporters like you.
Last year, we performed 450 eye surgeries. The transformation of a blind person being able to see is enormous. But what I’m finding is that the transformation through surgery doesn’t hold a candle compared to the transformations we are seeing in people who have had an encounter with God. I would like to further express the power of love through the testimonies of the following stories of Jeanaway and Malibow. For each of them, we asked God to show us how to love these two people. We knew little of what to do, but we knew that if we could love these two people, God would do the rest.
Jeanaway was seventeen years old and had been blinded by cataracts since he was seven. We immediately checked his eyes, and afterward, we asked if we could pray for him. He said that no one had ever prayed for him before, and after we prayed, he gave his life to Christ. A week later, we performed eye surgery on Jeanaway. But since then, he only wants to talk about Jesus. Months later, everyone who knew Jeanaway before has expressed that he is unrecognizable compared to who he was before.
Today, Jeanaway is a man of deep conviction whose calling is to pray for others.
People are traveling far to receive prayer from Jeanaway, and many are leaving the local witchcraft traditions as a result of his prayers over them. This is the Jeanaway we have always known, but Jeanaway tells us a darker past. Jeanaway loves to tell us about the man he was before, as he rejoices at the transformation God had made in his life. Jeanaway tells us that he tried to end his own life by drinking poison…twice. Good people stayed away from him, and bad people were attracted to him. Every time he could get ahold of money, he would spend it all on alcohol.
By his own words, he was living for hell, but now, Jeanaway says he is in paradise.
Jeanaway asked that I shared this message to others: “If I can say anything to people who have lost hope, tell them the history of my life and say, if you go and wait for Jesus, your life will change like how God changed my life. Don’t lose hope because Jesus loves you.”
Malibow is a young lady I met a few months ago who joined a house church that we started in her village. Malibow has epilepsy, and at one point an episode caused her to severely burn part of her face. Sadly, people in Malibow’s situation are often treated as outcasts in rural African society.
When I saw her for the first time, she was drenched in shame. At the time, she kept her head down and couldn’t even look us in the eye. But over the course of these few months, God has done a major work in Malibow. Before, I refrained from taking photos of Malibow due to her emotional condition, but now, it’s a different case.
These days, she is glowing! She is a star member of our church, and every time she prays, tears start raining down her face. I feel like these pictures speak for themselves!
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and know that you are a big reason why all of this was possible. These testimonies are being shared to hurting people throughout Togo thanks in large part to your support! You are doing a wonderful thing, and we are very grateful for you!
Written by: Lewis Swann, Founder of Sight.org
by Lewis Swann | Oct 27, 2016 | Blog, Volunteers |
“Yovo yovo, bonsior, ça va bien, merci!” The little Togolese children would chant their greeting as they waved at me as I entered their village. They were all too delighted to alert their friends and family to the rarity of seeing a pale-faced foreigner such as myself in their land. “Bonjour, Ma Ma!” they would say. “Bonjour!” I would reply and wave to the children and adults alike who would crowd around to see the “Yovo” or “foreigner” who had come to their village. Soon enough, the children would crowd around me, begging me to listen to their heart with my stethoscope, or waiting for the chance to stroke my pale skin.
In August, I had the opportunity to serve with Sight.org in Togo, Africa, as a nurse. Sight.org is a ministry based out of Tyler, Texas, that performs cataract as well as pterygium surgeries for the people of Togo. Over 80,000 people in Togo, young and old alike, suffer from blindness that cataracts or pterygium cause due to sun exposure. In a country where over half the population lives on $1.25 a day and running water and air conditioning are fantasies that most only hear about, the idea of receiving a life-changing surgery to correct their blindness, free of cost, is unbelievable. What could possibly provide a clean and sterile environment for performing these surgeries? An ambulance donated by East Texas Medical Center.
Seeing the familiar green ambulance parked on the outskirts of a small town in Togo gave me so much pride to work for a hospital such as ETMC. Over the course of three days, I was overwhelmed to help guide 60+ blind patients enter and exit the ambulance to receive their sight again. A Togolese eye surgeon, Dr. Nestor Avia, welcomed me in to the ambulance to observe eye surgeries my second day in Togo. It was not uncommon for Dr. Avia to kneel down beside the stretcher of a patient in order to calm their fears of the surgery looming before them. Tenderly, Dr. Avia would perform the surgery while reassuring the patients, in their own language, that all was going well.
While helping in pre-op, I got to meet and talk to the patients via a translator. I met Yawa, a 70-year old-woman who said she could not remember how many years it had been since she had last had full sight. All of her family members in her village had died due to sickness. She had lived on her own for six years. Komlan was a 65-year-old man who was looking forward to farming again. He could barely see and walked around with a cane. He said that “farming will be much easier” after the surgery. Masalou had not been able to see for the past seventeen years. The 69-year-old lady told me that she was not afraid of her upcoming surgery. She was ready to be able to cook, bathe, and eat on her own so her family did not have to help her. Not all the patients were elderly, however. Enyonam was a 35-year-old woman suffering from pterygium. She explained to me how painful it was to endure the discomfort in her eyes during her daily tasks. She said she felt shameful because she did not feel beautiful when people looked at her.
After surgery, the patients wore patches over their eyes until the next day when they returned to have them removed. The patients eagerly waited hours before the appointed post-op time. Upon removal of the eye-patches, patients would blink their eyes in disbelief at having their sight again. I would see many smile for the first time since I had met them. Others wept. One patient exclaimed, “I see a Yovo!” upon seeing me standing before her. Another woman kept whispering, “Merci, Jesus. Merci,” as tears rolled down her face. One man who was a teacher said, “I don’t have to lose my job now!” Often times the patients would dance or throw their cane into bushes to celebrate the gift of sight that they had been given.
When not helping with surgeries, I was able to travel to villages with the Sight.org team and meet all the medical needs that we could. Often times, the villages would be so remote that the only “road” to get there would be a trail not even a foot wide.
It was not uncommon for there to be no well for the villagers to drink clean water from. Once a village heard that a nurse was coming to their village, it was certain that I could expect a crowd upon arrival. Many children and adults had malaria and dysentery. Other villagers would present their infected wounds to me to clean and bandage. One woman came to me with a soiled cloth around her foot. Upon removal, she explained to me that she had burned her whole foot about a month ago when hot oil spilled on it. At one particular village, the villagers informed me that soap was too expensive for them to afford. One child about nine years old crawled around on swollen knees due to one of her legs being deformed since she was two years old. After traveling to a bigger city in Togo, I was able to return to the same village with a $22 pair of crutches for the little girl named Canditt. I taught Canditt how to walk again with crutches.
In a country like Togo, it is incredible to see how so little can help so much, like soap, $22 dollars, and a donated ambulance. The health needs of the Togolese people are astounding. It was a privilege to use the skills that ETMC has cultivated and taught me as a nurse to help others in such an impoverished country. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to serve with this amazing ministry.
by Lewis Swann | Oct 19, 2016 | Blog, Rileys |
In September we started expanding the ministry weeks in the villages here in Togo, Africa.
We have been visiting different villages each week. We get permission from the chiefs of that village first.
We do health teaching, children’s ministry, show the Jesus Film along with other Bible films, fit and give eyeglasses, do door to door ministry, and pray for those who ask for prayer. We also meet any other needs that we’re able.
We also have been finding a “Person of Peace” in each village who will be responsible to play the audio Bible. We leave it in their care to help spread God’s Word in these villages!
The audio Bible is wonderful because it is played in Ewe, which is one of the languages they speak.
We want to teach the children different ways to worship God and we are using instruments to do this.
Wayne and I asked a blacksmith to make bells and triangles to add to the musical instruments that we have been collecting here in Africa! We also have African shakers and home made shakers.
The children love singing and playing the different instruments. We now have about 23 instruments and will add to these as we can. Usually we have about 50-150 children in one village, depending on the size. We “take turns” passing the instruments around and sing a lot of songs, to give everyone a chance to worship our Lord!
We also try to have a coloring sheet with a Scripture that goes along with the lesson of the day. This can be costly to make copies for each village, but when you see their faces and watch them color, it’s worth the expense! Crayons are not readily available here but I sure am glad I bought several large boxes of crayons. They will go a long way!
Sight.org has collected MANY used/unwanted eyeglasses. These are given to people who need a little help with their vision. Many want glasses in order to read their Bibles! They even bring their Bible to the screening to make sure they can see with the glasses! The eyeglass cases are just as important because they don’t want anything to scratch their glasses.
Seeing is everything!
So if you have some eyeglasses that you have outgrown, contact our Sight.org office in Tyler, TX to make your donation! Or if you don’t have any eyeglasses and would like to buy some reading glasses from the weakest strength 1.25 – 2.50 strength. We run out of these quickly! You can also make a monetary donation to help with the shipping costs.
We would like to invite you to help with the work here in Togo, Africa in giving $10 for color sheets or instruments.
We truly appreciate all our family, friends and church body who support us each month in order for us to do the work here in Togo! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!
