Africa - life changing

For 10 years, Siouxland orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Steven Meyer, the president of STEMM (Siouxland-Tanzania Education Medical Ministries), has journeyed to Tanzania where he has performed 450 orthopaedic surgeries. Recently the first lady of that country told him a story that he called "the most profoundly impacting thing" that has happened to him during this time.
She told him of a child with fluorosis, a bone disease caused by excessive consumption of fluoride which cripples many Tanzanian youngsters. Meyer had operated on the boy, cutting his leg bones in several places and putting in steel rods to straighten and strengthen the legs. The boy was 8 years old and couldn't walk before the operation. The boy's uncle was a Muslim and chief of the boy's village. When the boy walked back to the village, the chief decreed they would have a big festival to honor the miracle that Allah had performed to make his nephew's legs straight. "Somebody was accountable enough to go to the chief and say, 'You know, that's not really the right thing to do because some Christian guy from Sioux City, Iowa, is the one that did the operation,'" Meyer said. The chief then went to the hospital to see if this was true. "Then he came home and decreed that they would tear the mosque down," Meyer said. "And he built a church. And now where 300 people were Islam, they're now Christian."