We’ve all been blessed by the efforts of a couple who planned to retire in Alleghany County. At a friend’s suggestion, they built a summer cottage here, but it hasn’t worked out as expected.

Pattie and David Linton met as education students at western New York’s Houghton College. Between then and now, David’s vocation led him through music, chorus, and vocational education, and doing construction on the side. Pattie taught grades from kindergarten through college, but high school English claimed 15 of her 31 years in Dade County, Fla., where their vocational lives blossomed.

During those years they were especially active in their church, and had a special interest in missions. “Putting their money where their mouths were,” they took their two teenaged children to Jamaica during the 1976 Christmas vacation, and worked as volunteers in a Bible school. David attended to the facility’s maintenance needs while Pattie catalogued its library books.

At Christmas, 1977, it was off to Port-au-Prince to add a bathroom in a missionary’s home on the campus of a Christian school used primarily for missionary kids. Pattie helped organize the school’s library. That experience put a warm spot in their hearts for the people of Haiti. The couple returned to Haiti for a year during the 1978-1979 school year.

On unpaid leave from their Florida teaching duties, they raised funds through family, friends, and the home church. Leasing their Florida house helped take care of assorted stateside expenses. Despite myriad inconveniences, the efforts were very rewarding.

David supervised the expansion of a mission hospital on the southern peninsula, boosting the bed count from 12 to 120. That hospital still serves Haitians, despite their terrible economic and political turmoil. In what Pattie calls her most difficult teaching assignment, she taught grades two and four for the surgeon’s kids, and seventh and ninth for their own. That included everything from basic arithmetic to algebra, and from spelling to world history.

While awaiting a 1990 retirement, they put their children through college and dreamed of more missionary efforts as retirees.

Unfortunately, their plans were delayed by health problems for both. Their early work with Alleghany CARES made good use of another several-year interval.

In February, 2000, Pattie’s brother, an ophthalmologist in California, called to talk with them about his twice-a-year, two-week stints spent treating eye problems in Sierra Leone, Mexico or Haiti. When the Sierra Leone hospital closed, he led “eye teams” to Africa’s Zimba, Zambia missions hospital. It didn’t take him long to ask this mission-minded couple to visit Zambia, and build an eye clinic. The Lintons left for Zimba in September, and remained for a year. Once settled in, David assumed the responsibilities of overseeing the construction of a 100-foot-by-32-foot eye clinic. Meanwhile, Pattie took care of matters in their mission house, kept the building project’s books and helped the new administrator learn accounting and the use of a new computer.

The construction efforts were often complicated, much like the earlier project in Haiti. Lumber, for example, was hand-cut, which meant an order for 50 2x4s, eight feet long, might arrive as boards 2x2 at one end and 2x6 at the other. Sand to make concrete came from a dry creek bed. Gravel was scrounged wherever it could be found. The need for a power saw and electric drill required driving 200 miles to Lusaka, where the poorly-made tools lasted scarcely longer than it took to go there and back.

The Lintons will soon make a fourth trip to Africa, to complete a visiting doctors’ residence begun in 2003-2004; however, this stay will be for just three months.

When asked about their greatest rewards as missionaries, their answers are moving.

Pattie responded quickly. “Getting to know people — especially fellow Christians!”

She recalled a Communion service in Haiti, and remarked on the sweetness of the Lord’s presence. “The service began in silence, then people started to sing; softly at first, but swelling in worship. I understood the meaning of the church universal. This is what serving Christ is all about!”

David knuckled away tears and gathered his thoughts.

“We like to think of ourselves as enablers. We’ve always enjoyed building foundations that others can build upon to accomplish greater things. Haiti, Alleghany County, and Zambia, have been examples of projects God has allowed us to be a part of. In Zimba, scores of people blinded by cataracts camped under the eye hospital’s eaves for days and awaited the doctors’ arrival. In just three hectic weeks, surgeons saw 700 patients and performed 150 operations. People who’d been visually handicapped for years hugged each other and the doctors, excitedly crying, ‘I can see! I can see!’ ”

Missionary work always rewards its workers. Clarity of vision is just one of the ways.