Déjà vu all over again!

Today was another amazing day of activity at the All Nations Springs of Life Church in the Bahati area of Nakuru. This was our third workday at this church, and there seems to be an unlimited supply of people who need vision care and filters for access to clean water. We again split our team in half with great support of SWOK students, drivers wives and friends of the ministry. We had all hands on deck. Trainings were conducted for two groups of water filter recipients, totaling 279 individuals! That represents over 1300 additional family members who will no longer be relegated to having no access to clean water and all the diseases and negative effects that resigns them to. 

 The remainder of the team and students again set up and conducted an overflowing vision clinic. We ran continuously from mid-morning till late afternoon, with members taking turns for lunch breaks. The pressure is constantly on Chris, since there is no one else qualified to do the in-depth eye exams he provides. He seems to thrive on the work but is exhausted at the end of the day. He is a dedicated professional that I'm blessed to be able to call my friend and brother. And he has been on the team since 2019, dedicating his expertise to bring improved vision to thousands of Kenyan youth and adults. We were able to see more than 170 patients in the clinic and dispensed sunglasses to everyone, approximately 125 pair of readers and 65 patients each received a pair of prescription glasses fabricated specifically for them. It is wonderful to be able to give patients the gift of being able to read again by providing them with reading glasses. We purchase readers at extremely reasonable cost to our team from Restoring Vision, a ministry whose mission is "To empower lives by restoring vision for millions of people in need." We are blessed to partner with them in this effort. A frequent response from patients being fitted with the best strength reading glasses for them is: "Now I'll be able to read my Bible again!" Andi was fitting a woman today and asked her to try reading the test card to be sure the power was correct. She instead pulled her Bible from her pocketbook and proceeded to read it with a beautiful smile on her face. It is such a joy for the team members to participate in helping to return this reading blessing to our patients!

For those of you who have followed our blog posts in past years when we did vision clinics, you might notice that we are using a different system this year for prescription glasses. In the past, we had an inventory of 1920 pairs of random categorized prescription glasses that had been donated to a vision ministry by online retailers. These were brand new glasses that had never been used, but they were of random prescription characteristics. When Chris would use an auto refractor to test the patient's prescription, that data would be fed to a computer that would compare the needed prescription to those of our glasses in inventory and find the best matched pair that we could have the patient try. The system was sometimes hit or miss and at times we couldn't find a prescription that would work for some patients. This year, we switched to a different system that allows us to make glasses specifically for each patient. One of our team members helps the patient do a self assessment with a glasses apparatus with variable prescription that they can adjust themselves to see their best ability to read an eye chart. The numbers from the test apparatus are then written down and used to fabricate a pair of glasses from a kit that has a selection of frames and all the various prescriptions that we need. The system is made by Global Vision 2020, and it has worked very well for us.

We had so many patients today that we were unable to handle all the patients that were waiting in line by late in the afternoon. So instead of going back to Gituamba to do more construction work tomorrow, we have taken the opportunity to use Chris while he is here and do an additional vision clinic in the same location. That will be our last workday before we need to head back to Nairobi for our return flight to the US on Friday night.