I went to university in the capital with dreams of becoming a journalist in Latin America!  My dreams were soon shattered as the financial support that I was relying on fell through.  I was selling yogurt outside the school gates at 0.5 cents a piece and doing all sorts of manual jobs to make ends meet.  I was miserable and started crying out to God as I did not know where my life was heading. 

One night, as I knelt down in prayer, I fell asleep.  I dreamt that I was in a room full of ill and hurting people.  Jesus asked me to do something for them.  ‘But who am I?  I don’t know what to do!’ I protested.  Then Jesus guided my hand to touch them.  And as I touched each of them, broken bones were restored and wounds disappeared.  I woke up knowing that I was called to medicine.  I was excited but felt ridiculous as I had neither money nor connections to study health care.  'Besides', I thought, 'This is Africa, where opportunities like that do not happen easily!'  I did not share this dream with anyone.

Soon after, I bumped into an America missionary couple David and Teresa Bill after a Sunday church service.  They were my spiritual mentors back when I was a teenager.  They were passing through the capital on their way back from their furlough in the States.  They invited me to dinner, to which I gladly accepted.  After dinner, they said, ‘This may seem a bit out of the blue.  Perhaps you will not be interested at all… but we wonder if you might like to study at Bongolo Nursing school.  We would like to financially support you’.  I broke down in tears at the amazing way that God works.  Eventually, I also received a full scholarship to study under Dr. Adrian Hopkins, now the director for the Mectizan Donation Program in the other Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo)..

We had always had a pioneer spirit and a calling to help the needy in Africa.   We went to Gabon as medical missionaries in 2008.  After two years in Gabon, we had to come back to the UK as Joyce was undergoing a high risk pregnancy.  We also felt that God was telling us that our time in Gabon was over, that our next step was to come back to the UK and to wait until God shows us the step after that. 

After we went back to the UK, we started praying and seeking God’s face to show us where He wants us to go.  One day, we went through the map of Africa and we were drawn to Congo.  We found out that the north of Congo has not got any provision of eye care. We were in shock that no one was doing eye surgery.  This was a sign from God to us because we had been asking God for a place where we can pioneer. We feel that God is calling us to go there and open an eye clinic to help those people in need, and show people about the love of Jesus.