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“A CLEAR VISION: TYLER EYE DOCTOR TAKES NEXT STEP AS MEDICAL MISSIONARY”
Patrick Butler
Third Prize - $4,000

Patrick Butler covers religion for the Tyler Morning Telegraph in Tyler, Texas, where he is the religion editor. He has lived or worked in 22 countries, observing the customs, concerns and approaches to life of ordinary people within the context of their various faiths. “For me, religion is the most dynamic and dramatic of newspaper writing,” he said. “It’s where the average human heart strives to discover what life is all about.” Mr. Butler graduated magna cum laude from Pacific Lutheran University in western Washington with a fine arts degree in journalism and B.A. in American history. He and his wife, Janet, have three children, Stephanie, 20, Timothy, 19 and Rebekah, 15.

“The time is now,” said Glenn Strauss, contemplating his career-changing – and life-changing – move from the world of lucrative professionalism to that of the medical missionary. He sat in his modern office at Heaton Eye Associates Thursday, a highly controlled and archetypal vision of medical perfection, surrounded by a new-looking and germ-free environment. He quietly weighed the different lifestyle he will embark on, come January.

“I’ve been preparing for this my entire life, really. I don’t see all the steps in front of me. I just see the next step, and my wife and I believe this is the next step.”

Strauss will be 50 soon. He is a nationally recognized figure who has helped pioneer a revolutionary eye-healing procedure. He is a stalwart at his local clinic and a sought-after practitioner. In the next 10 years, Strauss could have his most productive financial years, reaping the rewards of a forward-looking career in medicine.

He’s got it made, according to standards many Americans live for, and by.

Instead he’s going to leave it all for a position with the international medical and relief organization Mercy Ships of Garden Valley, overseeing its international medical outreach on its small fleet of ships and land-based facilities. It will be a change that almost cannot be imagined by those who have never participated in volunteer relief work, a task that is as satisfying as it can be unpredictably frustrating.

At Mercy Ships, Strauss will not be paid – not one of the 850-plus staff members at Mercy Ships is paid, from the founder on down – but instead will be responsible to pay his own way for the privilege of working long, hard hours to meet a demanding need worldwide that is often overwhelming. Unless he is a unique case, it will also mean he will sink into comparative obscurity as he labors in a field relatively few care about or keep up with: The world’s most unfortunate victims of disease.

He, and his wife of 29 years, Kim, are still determined to do it.

“The time to make this move to the medical mission field is now,” he said, “precisely because I am at the top of my game. I’m at my peak and my skills are the best they have ever been. I can give God the pinnacle of my abilities today. In 10 years, it will be too late.”

Strauss calls this “the principle of the first fruits.”

“So many doctors wait until they retire and they’re all used up and tired,” he said. “Then they say, ‘I guess I’ll do some mission work now,’ and give God what’s left. The principle we’ve based this decision on is giving God the best that we have, not what’s left after we get through with our lives.”

The transition from the “newer and better” that life has to offer to a full-time volunteer lifestyle is a reality that keeps some well-intentioned volunteers off the field. In some organizations, just being willing to endure hardships in foreign countries, making do with whatever materials are available, performing surgeries in Third World facilities that are primitive at best – or even by the roadside in emergencies – is simply the tip of the iceberg. The lack of finances to travel to destinations, pay required insurance for personal vehicles or foot the bill for repairs for such simple items as a broken water heater or clogged sink drain come into play. A lack of a relatively few dollars can keep even the most willing from changing the lives of the poor.

Simply put, the field is not for the faint of heart.

“If I were smart, the way some think of smart, I’d wait 10 years or so, get investments or monies together, and have that available to me,” Strauss said.

But then there is still the problem of energy, ability and stamina, he said.

“I just wouldn’t be able to do what I want to do if I wait until retirement,” he said.

And what the Strausses want to do is impact the world, “to make a difference,” he said. Coming in light of Strauss’ background, the phrase does not sound like the catchy cliché it can so often become.

What made a difference in both then - Kim Purrington and Glenn Strauss’ lives – was Purrington’s brother, who told them in high school that a “relationship” with God through Jesus Christ was available. Having been raised Lutherans – Purrington in the American Lutheran Church and Strauss in the far more conservative Missouri Synod – this was a revolutionary thought in the 1970s.

“I’d never heard of such a thing,” Strauss said. “Kim and I looked into it.”

While at the University of Texas at Austin, Purrington and Strauss married and ultimately decided to be baptized again to simply show they made a conscious choice to “follow Christ and have a relationship with Him,” said Strauss. The reaction from his parents was memorable.

“We thought they would be so happy for us,” he said. “They were not.”

Not happy to the point that they approved of his ex-communication from the church. For 10 years, Strauss would not hear from his parents. They refused to be present at the birth of their three grandchildren or participate in birthdays or Christmas celebrations.

“God gave us grace, though,” said Strauss, reflecting on those painful years that he said “will never be recovered.”

“Those years are gone, but we felt this was what it meant to be Christians; that when you publicly stand for Christ, people may turn against you, sometimes even your own parents. They came around eventually, thankfully, but it was lost time,” he said.

A further cost of their choice was that medical school would no longer be financed by his parents.

“That was a lot of money,” Strauss said. “I took up odd jobs, carpentry, repair work, anything, just to get by. Kim rode a bike to the market with three children on it. We didn’t know what beef was and found ways to make do. Having played trombone in high school, I knew about music and guitar for money. We refurbished items others threw away and got them working just fine.”

It was during that potentially stressful time that God provided for them, he said.

“One day, someone slipped an envelope under the door that had enough money to make it through the month. Kim was in tears of gratitude. It taught us to trust God.”

In medical school, too, God was the priority, he said.

“If I couldn’t have God, family, ministry and school prioritized,” Strauss said, “then I purposed that I would not be a doctor. If I became a carpenter, I told myself I would be content.”

In the meantime, Strauss studied the Bible. When he graduated from medical school, he began his own practice – and also became pastor of a church.

“We had about 150 people in a little Baptist church,” he said. “Making a spiritual difference in people’s lives is a priority, no matter what you are doing.”

For 20 years, the Strausses did marriage counseling. They invited missionaries to rest in whatever rooms they had, and still do. The life preparation to make a move now, they say, is a continuation of years of following God.

“We’ve been ‘hung out in the breeze’ before,” he said, a euphemism to explain not being able to know exactly how any given situation would turn out. “You take one step at a time.”

“We asked God for three things to confirm this move to Mercy Ships,” Mrs. Strauss said. “One was we could pay off our house and live in it when we were in Texas, that we could communicate with family from the ships, wherever they were in the world, and that our church, Grace Community, would help form a ‘sender team’ that would take care of the details that a ministry like this generates, and come get us if something would happen to us.”

With a sender team of 10 that would pray for them, send out newsletters and look after their house while they are gone nine months out of the year, things looked good, she said.

“Heaton found a large sum of money that Glenn had coming to him,” she said, “and it paid off the house. Mercy Ships got satellite communications on the last of their ships just a year ago. We’re good to go.”

“We still have no idea of what the future holds,” Strauss said. “We have no idea how this will all turn out.”

But God does, he said.

“We will accept donations, but we won’t fund-raise.” Strauss said. “If I have to make tents, like Paul did, I’m ready to do it. Joshua 1:9 says, ‘Be strong, and courageous. Do not be terrified: do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go’ ” (NIV).

THE VISION

Strauss loves his job and the tools of his trade, he said. For years, he has kept his eyes open for a surgical procedure that could be easily taken to remote locations. Having volunteered for short-term trips during his vacations from work, he knew firsthand what limitations prevented effective treatments.

“The LASIK surgery is far too complicated for the Third World,” said Strauss, naming the surgical procedure that actually cuts into the eye.

“You can’t drag finely calibrated, dust-sensitive, gas-driven equipment to Nepal,” he said. “It won’t work.”

At a medical convention a few years ago, he found a little-noticed procedure called conductive keratoplasty that requires so little technical support to function, he metaphorically described it, saying, “all you need is a tree to tie it to, and away you go.”

He took it with him to the Dominican Republic in 2003 and witnessed medical “miracles” with it.

“In the clinic, we would give people a Bible and ask if they could see the words to read them,” he said. “If they couldn’t, we took them into the surgery and they would lie there, with the Bible on their chests.”

Putting the CK device, about the size of a VCR, near the patient’s head, it only takes about two minutes for the radio frequency procedure that strengthens the cornea and corrects near vision to be completed, he said.

“They would pick up the Bible from their chest and be able to read it right away,” he said. “They would laugh and weep for joy. It worked. It was so cool to watch.”

The dangers of infection and eye discomfort are greatly reduced, he said. No sterile areas are needed. With a handful of surgeons, he said he helped introduce and train hundreds of doctors in the United States in the procedure and was the first in Texas to use it. It was one of the pieces of the puzzle that made his medical mission tantalizing, he said.

“Now we have something we can carry anywhere in the world,” he said. “Mercy Ships is a perfect vehicle to use CK, and my involvement in getting it out to the world is natural.”

His new title will be director of health care services, which will include all medical operations done by all medical staff of Mercy Ships worldwide. The size of the task does not bother him, Strauss said.

“I like to go to mountaintops or by oceans, anyplace that makes me feel small,” said Strauss. “Then I can realize how big God is and how little I am and that He can do anything.”

It’s in Ephesians 3:20 that he gains his perspective for the coming task, he said.

It says He is “able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us,” Strauss said. “I love it when I am small and He is tall.”

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