Through our South Sudan Cataract Mission, hundreds of people experienced the love of Jesus Christ and the opportunity to see again.
Cataract surgeries are life-changing for people living in remote areas of South Sudan.
At 10 years old, Chiray began to lose his sight. For the longest time he’d blamed it on poisonous leaves that had touched his eyes. At least, that’s when the pain started. Shortly after, he was blind.
Whatever had caused his cataracts, the loss of sight was life changing. He’s had to depend ever since on family and neighbors for everyday needs. Because of his blindness the last 14 years, he’d never finished school or been able to work. He had to wonder if he’d ever have a family of his own, or even a future without a caretaker.
Highly skilled eye surgeons commit to the project so they can share the love of Jesus Christ through the life-changing surgery.
“As a grown man, I should be married by now, but I have no cattle to pay the bride price. I have nothing to call my own, because I cannot even fend for myself,” Chiray, who lives with his aunt, told Samaritan’s Purse nurses as they examined his condition.
A lot of that changed for him last month, though, after our surgeons removed his cataracts in a simple and quick procedure. When the bandages were removed the next day, his face lit up with joy as he could see for the first time since he was a boy.
We sent him home to his new life of sight with an audio Bible in his language and encouraged him to begin attending church. He promised he would. He’d be the first in his family to do so.
New Sight. New Life in Christ.
In February this year, our cataract surgical team set up an operating room in Mankien, South Sudan, where surgeons and nurses provided the gift of restored sight to more than 350 cataract patients.
Ministry teams, including pastors and chaplains, were onsite as well, offering emotional encouragement to patients, sharing from the Word of God, and telling patients and families about the Good News of Jesus Christ. Teams also showed The JESUS Film and provided patients with audio Bibles narrated in their own language. Many patients received new spiritual sight in the same week that their cataracts were removed.
There are many young patients whose eyesight started to deteriorate at very early ages.
Patients came from many miles around, some walking for days, relying on the kindness of strangers along the way. One patient was brought in on a wheelbarrow and celebrated her new sight as she was wheeled back home. Others were guided by their young children.
Joy fills the faces of patients with newly restored sight.
All of them experienced the love of Jesus Christ through our surgical and ministry teams. A number of patients also started new lives with Jesus Christ, which is what happened to 80-year-old Nyekur during her few days in Mankien.
For the first time in her life she heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ during a service at the hospital chapel.
That’s when she received Him as her Lord and Savior. She was praising Him aloud the following day as the bandages were removed and, for the first time in seven years, saw her twin sister. They’d walked together to Mankien.
She Could See Her Grandchildren Again
Nyakwane, 58, traveled three days, taking a canoe at points along the way to make it through land-turned-swamp in South Sudan’s rainy season.
Patients came from many miles around, traveling there by any means necessary.
A little over two years ago cataracts had taken her sight and she’d given up hope of ever seeing again. But within only a few days of arriving at our clinic, our surgeons removed her cataracts.
“My greatest joy in this is that I can see my grandchildren,” she said. Two of her grandchildren were born after she lost her vision. “Now I will be able to care for them without needing them to guide me around.”
Nyakwane was also excited to learn more about God after hearing a local pastor share the Gospel during a special chapel service. When she returns home, she said, she plans to attend church near her village, and to take her family, too.
She is grateful she can walk there on her own, seeing the path now with her own two eyes.
“I want to learn more about God and tell my family about His love for them,” she said.
The surgical staff use high-powered optics to remove cataracts.
Please join us in prayer for these patients as they return home to their villages and families. Pray for continued healing and that God would move in powerful ways through the testimonies of God’s provision they each bring from Mankien.
One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see. John 9:25
Our cataract surgical team flew in and out of South Sudan aboard our iconic DC-3 aircraft.
