First Eyeglass Clinic

 It's finally here! The first day of the eyeglass clinic that has been so many months in the making. Months of planning, training, praying ... and it begins. You want to know what we all want to know ... how many people were seen today. How many people received the gift of sight? How many people heard of God's love for them in their native language? Well, keep reading ...

If you're not familiar with an eyeglass clinic, we'll give you a brief overview of what happens. If you are familiar, enjoy looking at the pictures of this first day in a brand new location!

The clinic utilized tents and other structures to provide shelter and shade. Each station is identified with a sign and church members help direct each person to each station. The first, of which, is registration.

 

 

Karen then educates them on the process to come and also on eye health and communicable diseases, and then checks each person for any such eye problem and overall optical health. What a blessing that her translator is also a nurse!

 

Next, they move along to the testing station. They are testing for distance and reading with simple eye charts and flipper lenses (better now or better now?).

This fairly basic testing gets their prescription within .25 (i.e. prescription is 1.5 and the actual need ranges from 1.25 to 1.75), which will be honed in later.

While Tracey takes the prescription and pulls glasses within the range described above, the person gets to sit and hear the gospel shared by a member of the local church.

They, then, move on to another station where they try on three sets of glasses (six if they need distance and reading glasses) and find the glasses that work the best. This is usually where you start to see the smiles ... and not just from Larry! 

The final stop is Fitting. This is where their new glasses are tweaked and modified to fit their face, cleaned, and given to them with a case.

Okay, let's answer your question ... how many people came through the clinic and were served on the first day? The total people served was 188! 188 people that might see clearly now. 188 people that heard the gospel of our Savior, Jesus! Pray for that message to take root in their hearts. Pray that this clinic has created a relationship with this local congregation, so they may hear more about our Jesus.

Pray, also, for our team. They saw clients until about 6:30pm, then packed up the clinic. After their night in the hotel (some are dealing with jet lag and not getting as much sleep as they would like), they were on the road at 6:20am to head to the site of the second day of clinic. It was expected to be a 3 hour drive, then they set up and are currently running day 2 of the clinic. 

Thank you for following their adventure and for your continued prayer support. Any comments we receive are shared with the team, so feel free to post! 

I'm looking forward to receiving and sharing more pictures, details, and stories in the coming days!

God's blessings.