The Importance of Vision!

Beau climbing by the water

Uncle Matt was with us for the week doing dentistry!

The importance of vision has taken on quite a new perspective for our family over the last several weeks. Many of you have already heard, but Shea lost almost complete vision in her left eye several weeks ago. She ended up having something called Pan-uveitis. It is essentially an inflammatory condition where your body inappropriately makes white blood cells that cause significant swelling inside of the eye. It has provided our family with an unexpected curve ball, and Shea with a lot of stress. Thankfully, with the advice of my Ophthalmology friend Cedric, an eye doctor in Guatemala City, and a lot of prayer she is finally starting to make out shapes again with this eye. We hope she'll make a full recovery over the next several more weeks, and are really grateful for all of the prayers.

Having someone you love loose sight, has not only impressed upon me the gratitude for my own physical vision, but also the importance of spiritual sight. The spiritual analogy of sight is an obvious one, and you don't need a masters in divinity to understand the correlation with sight as it pertains to the spiritual world. Both Jesus, and his disciples often used this analogy of physical vision when giving us insight into spiritual blindness. Jesus physically healed the blind multiple times in scripture. Often after these physical healings he would use that as an oppurtunity to teach about spiritual blindness and the importance of seeing, and understanding our sin, and need for a savior.

Dr Luis preaching outside one of our village clinics.

In several instances the book of John quotes Christ. In John 3:3 "Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God" In John 9:39 "And Jesus said, "For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind."

I know for my friends and I, the moment we truly understood the gospel was like seeing for the first time. Understanding the magnitude of my sin waited against the perfection of  God, and knowing that He sent his son for my substitution, and complete forgiveness of sins is mind blowing. Because of this I can truly see,
and I'm so thankful for it!

Gracie pretending to be a dog....why not?

Of course the kids found a mud pit to play in.

More hospital pictures coming soon.