Throughout the past year our team has enjoyed the opportunity of working with The Luke Commission on many occasions. The Luke Commission (TLC) is a medical missions organization that specializes in bringing mobile medicine to rural communities across Swaziland. Harry and Echo VanderWal, the founders and directors of TLC, run the mission along with a fleet of national staff and their four sons.

Working with The Luke Commission has been a favorite for the whole team. There’s just something about leaving the farm at 6:30 am, with cooler stocked full of PB and J, not knowing whether you’ll be back at 8:00 pm or 3:00 am the next morning – TLC won’t leave until every patient at the clinic has been seen. It’s always a long day, that’s for sure! But the atmosphere at TLC is always worth the work. Everyone does their part and works hard – with smiles on their faces! Truly, being a part of The Luke Commission feels more like being a part of a family than anything.

There were always a variety of jobs available for us to do at any given clinic. The first station we were trained on was Triage – blood pressure, blood sugar, and HIV testing. This is where Amy and I most enjoyed being – but it’s not for the faint of heart! Most of the day would be spent poking fingers – old gogos and little kids weren’t usually happy about it either. Our team also worked at the eyeglasses station. There they spent the day using eye charts and finding the corresponding glasses to improve the vision of gogos and younger adults alike. Another station was clothing distribution – where we took in the school children and sent them home with a new item of clothing. One clinic we were also able to hand out Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child boxes to a huge group of students. That was a special day.

Overall I can say that working with The Luke Commission was a huge blessing to our team. The clinics were always something we looked forward to. And looking back on the long days, and nights, we spent working with TLC I know that we will always cherish the memories of the thankful gogos, mothers, and smiling children that we met at every clinic. I know the whole team is so thankful for these opportunities that we had.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 7th, 2011 at 2:42 pm and is filed under The AR Ministry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.