Springville Road Community Church Missions Conference 2011

Sunday evening Mary, Joe Jones and I had the pleasure of witnessing Steve Saint’s presentation at the Missions Conference at the Springville Road Community Church in Birmingham (http://www.srccweb.org/ ). Like many of you, we own copies of both “End of the Spear” and “Beyond the Gates of Splendor” and watch these frequently throughout the year. In addition, last year Steve gave us a copy of the unauthorized DVD “Steve Saint: The Jungle Missionary” and we have added it to our collection and periodic reviews. Also we own and have gone through Steve’s complete “Mission Dilemma” program. 

This is a Video series of seven half-hour lessons that accompany a booklet that is designed for small group study. It offers the most compelling evidence of how short term mission teams often do more harm than good and then gives solid advice on how to avoid contributing to unhealthy dependency. This study is simply the best such study that we have ever seen. Steve is now in the process of planning for and producing a sequel series called "Missions Resolution." This series promises to have a greater emphasis on better missionary practices.   

We have heard Steve speak at the Annual Global Missions Health Conference (http://www.medicalmissions.com/GMHC/Home.html) in Louisville several times over the years. Mary and I are both great fans of Steve and his ongoing ministry to empower indigenous people and to spread God’s word throughout a broken and suffering world. That ministry is shared by his son Jamie and functions exclusively through I-TEC (http://www.itecusa.org/).

The US training center for I-TEC is in Dunnellon, Florida. The acronym stands for Indigenous People’s Technology and Education Center. The center’s stated objective is to train and equip indigenous God-followers to say “I-CAN”.

At the SRCC Mission Conference I picked up a copy of the 2011 New Look at Missions DVD. This disk has several promotional videos that explain and demonstrate I-TEC’s four major initiatives for 2011. These include

·        I-See, a turn-key approach to empowering indigenous people to fit and distribute both near and far vision eyeglasses.

·        I-Dent, a complete training program that allows indigenous people to provide basic dentistry (both extractions and reconstruction) in remote locations.

·         I-Med, a non-verbal communication method to teach basic aspects of sanitation and hygiene.

·        I-Fly, a status report on the Maverick LSA, the only fully licensed and successful flying car in the world today.

The I-Fly program is exciting as an example of applying an advanced technology but is of little practical value for most of us at this time. The I-Med program is limited at this point to one non-verbal video. But it would be of tremendous value in basic health instruction, especially where there is a language barrier, if you have access to a projection system. Both the I-See and I-Dent are programs that are potentially applicable to the kinds of missions that are supported by AHMEN (the Alabama Honduras Medical Educational Network). In addition, I suspect that they would be of tremendous interest to organizations like UMVIM (United Methodist Volunteers in Missions - http://www.umvim.org/ ) and SIFAT (Servants in Faith and Technology - http://www.sifat.org/ ). Both the I-See and I-Dent programs have been fully tested all over the two-thirds world and have been demonstrated to be an asset in spreading the Gospel, especially in countries that are openly hostile to Christian evangelism. 

I-Dent

There are two enabling features of the I-Dent (http://itecusa.org/ident.html) program. The first of these is a completely mobile dental clinic. The dental chair, solar powering unit, and drill apparatus are all contained within a thirty-three pound backpack that can be fully assembled within sixty seconds. The design of this mobile clinic was driven by a simple distribution logic – it is more resource efficient to take the dental clinic to the patients than to bring the vastly disperse patients to the clinic.

The second enabling feature of the I-Dent program is to empower the indigenous people to do for themselves and break the dependence on the foreign, short term and short sighted, missionary teams that have historically provided dental care.

Experience has demonstrated that competent dental care can be achieved with only two 10-day training sessions:  The first seminar provides instruction in giving anesthesia (shots of Novocain) and pulling teeth.  The second 10-day seminar, usually taught a year later provides instruction in filling teeth.  The most important aspect of this program, however, is the determination and verification of the minimum proficiencies that are required of the students and the certification of those capabilities. This is all done within the I-Dent program. 

The most exciting applications of the I-Dent program have been within communities where there is substantial opposition to the Gospel. Christian pastors in countries that are dominated by Islamic law or brutal dictatorships have been able to use I-Dent as a means of access to suppressed populations. Relationships are established and the love of Christ is demonstrated. As a result many who would not otherwise have been led to the Lord are saved.      

I-See

Like the I-Dent program, one of the most salient features of the I-See (http://itecusa.org/isee.html) program is its portability. The I-See system revolves around a simple backpack kit that contains all the charts, lens ladders, technician’s tools and simple lens glasses that are required to evaluate and fit both near and far vision glasses. The process is one whereby the patient uses a sequence of single vision positive and negative sphere glasses to improve his or her performance on a unique hand symbol eye chart. These sequenced test glasses are incorporated into two devices that I-See calls lens ladders which function like over sized retinoscopy racks or “ret bars”.   

It is worth noting that the portability and simplicity of the I-See program does come at a cost. The tradeoff is in terms of the “goodness of fit” between the needs of the patient (the actual prescription required to correct vision) and the specifications of the glasses that are readily available. The “best” mission vision care program is still the KOM system that matches patients’ prescription as determined by a Retinomax via computer with a substantial inventory of available used glasses. But this approach is extremely cumbersome and best suits a stationary clinic format. AHMEN’s current stock of computer accessible glasses is 3840 pairs and takes one pickup truck to transport (we are in the process of shifting to a specially outfitted twelve-foot pull-along trailer). Current setup and knock down times are one half day each. Although this is a very accurate means of fitting glasses it is not highly mobile.

In actuality the I-See approach offers a very good first order approximation for the glasses prescription required for both near and far vision. Even in the presence of mild astigmatism, the I-See solution yields the “spherical equivalent” fit for the best eye. And as long as you pre- and post- measure the patient you will be able to know if you have achieved significant improvements in vision. The real advantage to the I-See program is in terms of its application as a micro-business enterprise. The entire system is easily taught to interested persons within the community. They then can carry the entire operation into even the most remote communities. And they can charge a nominal fee for the glasses. The pricing scheme suggested by I-See allows for a modest, but reasonable profit for the new entrepreneur. This is empowerment operating at its best. Add in a Christian perspective and you have local ministry that is sustainable.  

The “I-TEC 2011 New Look at Missions” DVD is attainable through I-TEC http://itecusa.org/contact.html. We whole heartily recommend this DVD for anyone involved in Medical Missions.

Amor en Cristo,

Guf