The Hensons In Cusco: October 2009

I realized today that it has been a rather long time since I posted to the blog, so I will have to catch up! We have continued to have great experiences the past few weeks. Last week Nathan was able to do several pediatric strabismus surgeries, which is to correct a "lazy" or "wandering" eye. He was really excited to have the opportunity to do those surgeries. One of our favorite stories from the week is about a 6 year old child that Nathan did cataract surgery on. After his surgery he was admitted to the hospital ward overnight to recover from general anesthesia. The next day, after the dressings were removed, the child was looking at a children's book. He started trying to grasp all the images on the page (leaves, trees, bugs). It was obvious that he was seeing these things for the first time. His family was overjoyed! It was really good for Nathan to see the wonderful result of helping this child. We pray that as this child grows, the Lord will give him spiritual sight as well.

Last week, the Strausses invited us to eat dinner with them and a local pastor here in Benin. Pastor Christophe and his wife took us to dinner at an Indian restaurant (it was really good) ,where they shared about their work in training and disciplining young men to be pastors. He is currently working in many countries including Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Benin, Togo, and Cote d'Ivoire. He holds a pastor's training conference every year in Benin and normally has between 800-1,000 pastors from West Africa present. He and his wife have tremendous vision for this whole area to be reached with the gospel. We were really excited and encouraged to see the work that is taking place here.

This week we were invited to go to Pastor Christophe's house for dinner. What a fun time to get to experience African cuisine and to spend some more time with his family. He also took us to see a hospital/clinic that he is building, which will help to service a poorer community outside of Cotonou. It is a huge work-in-progress, as the hospital is sill a lot of concrete and dirt. We were able to dream with him and offer suggestions for the future. I did wear African attire to dinner, which was fun.

Ship life continues to be interesting. We are becoming very good speed scrabble players (seems to be the game of choice among our friends). We plan to put our coffee making skills to the test again, as this week as we will be baristas at Starbucks. I have been doing a water aerobics class with a few ladies in our small pool on the top of the ship. It was been really fun, although I am sure we all look really silly!

Thank you for all your prayers about my seasickness. Fortunately, there have not been many more rough days. It is occasionally rocky, but I seem to be able to tolerate it much better. Praise the Lord that He calmed the waters.

We cannot believe that our time here is halfway over. Many days it feels like we just arrived, others it feels like we have been here a year. What an incredible experience this continues to be! The Lord provided exactly what we needed to prepare for Peru. In our last weeks, we will be trying to make sure that we have a good idea of everything we could potentially need to do eye care in Peru.

Pray with us that we finish these last three weeks well for God's glory.

Here are a few pictures from the last two weeks (sorry there are not a lot of fun medical pictures. It is hard to get pictures of patients)