June 17 - Blessings of Joy (Day 2) with pictures!

This trip has been a lot different than the last trip. Last trip there were 10 of us, this trip there is 20. We have more people and more projects. It’s crazy but it is also nice. Today Carlie and I visited Blessings of Joy again to perform eyeglass tests. It was a hard experience. The villagers were waiting for us when we arrived at the school and as soon as we got there we began setting everything up. Blessings of Joy is a very very poor school and the villagers are very poor with their house very far apart. I am not sure how far they have to walk to go to the school but it has to be a nice distance because there were no homes close to it at all. We get to the school by driving over a small dirt walking path (there isn’t even a road). It is a very very very poor school and their name fits them perfectly.

None of these people speak fluent English so we had to get an interpreter to speak to them. We set up the eye tests and the villagers began coming in one by one, then ten by ten. One of the first men that we treated had been beaten up by a gang and was as far as we could tell blind. Through the interpreter I learned that he could only slight shadows. After asking questions for a while and trying some different tests I had to tell this man there was nothing I could do for him. I started to cry and cry. He was the sweetest old man and I was so devastated thinking about how he walked to the school without being able to see, the hope he must have felt, how he sat and waited for us to come, and then how he waited in the room until we could help him – knowing Americans were here to help him see, and then how in a few short minutes I burst all of his hope and told him there was nothing I could do and sent him right back out the door.

Last trip I really came to appreciate my freedoms and blessings of being born in America. As I cried I realized I hate that I have been given so much and that others have been given so little. I hated that I could do nothing for this man to see again and I hated turning him away. I tried to get back to testing eyes quickly because I knew that there were some I would be able to help.

Others came who I could not help, but there were some I know I did help. Those moments are what made it worthwhile. All the people that I saw were so sweet and gentle and sincere and loving. After helping someone and giving them a pair of glasses they would get down on their knees and grab my hand and bow their head and say thank you. What a humbling experience because I really feel like I should be thanking these people for what they are teaching me and for the love that they exemplify.

Although I didn’t get pictures of every happy and sad experience, here are a few:

This lady was finally able to see…

This man had an infected eye and it was swollen to his temple and forehead and infection was leaking out a hole in his eyebrow…

This 16 year old boy began to see spots and slowly lost his vision all together. One eye is deteriorating away, the other has no pupil.

This man caught some sort of disease and the skin was being eatin away from around his eye…
This one – is self explanatory right?