Next mission trip to Honduras

 We will be leaving for Honduras Wednesday, March 8, 2023 and we will return Friday, March 17.

We will be doing eye clinics in remote areas as we always do. We ask that you be in prayer for our team and especially for the people that we can hopefully help have better vision. Also, please pray that many will get saved at our evangelism station and will hopefully take the plan of salvation cards home to share with other family members.  Thank so much.  I will be posting while we are down there.

Friday clinic at El Pino

Today we had another clinic at a church in El Pino.  On the way, we ran into one of the demonstrations where the road was completely blocked.  Shane Cooper drives the truck that pulls our trailer and then we have a driver, Polo, who drives the van that everyone rides in.  I was in Shane's truck when we got stopped. Shane jumped out of the truck and went up to the place where they had the road blocked. He told them what we were doing and our clinic would be just a very short distance. He promised them that they could come to our clinic later to see if we could get them a pair of glasses if they would let us through. It turned out that Shane actually knew one of the people doing the demonstrations. These are mostly teachers and doctors.  They did let us through!  We made it to the clinic and set everything up and then some of those who were doing the demonstration did come to the clinic and we were able to help some of them.  They asked if they could be seen first but the other patients didn't want to do that.  Shane explained to the other patients who were waiting that these people let us through and if they had not let us through, we would not even be there to have a clinic.  They worked everything out and everyone was ok with it.  God worked out a miracle today that we were worried about at first but He had a bigger plan. Glory to God for his goodness to us and the people of Honduras!

We have decided to leave tomorrow to head towards San Pedro but not sure where we will stay. We are wanting to get close to the airport so that we are not stopped by demonstrations Sunday morning which is when we will be flying out to Atlanta.  All prayer warriors - please pray that we won't run into any more problems with traffic, demonstrations or anything else that would stop us from making it home Sunday.  Thanks so much for all your prayers.

Great clinic today. Totals and pics below.

Total readers - 74
Total prescription glasses - 51
Total patients - 80
Total saved - 4

Totals for the whole trip:
Total readers - 351
Total prescription glasses - 251
Total patients - 508
Total saved - 40
That's 40 more for Jesus!

This is Shane who helped us get through the blocked road

 

 

 

Thursday clinic at Municipal

Today we had a clinic at a church in the town of Municipal. I have pictures below about our clinic adventures today.  We saw a total of 86 patients and gave out 49 prescription glasses and 63 readers.  Most of the patients were older patients who were in need of glasses. There were only a few that we could not help because we didn't have the right prescription glasses.  We did not connect with the pastor of the church to see how many were saved.

We did make it to the church with no problems as far as demonstrations blocking the roads. Everything was fine.

 

Another pic of the inventory trailer with 3840 prescription glasses

 

Rick and Emilie testing prescription glasses with patients

 

 

Joe checking a patient in triage (checking for cataracts and other eye problems)

 

Near vision station

 

Autorefractor station with the equipment which will check the

patient's vision and match them with prescription glasses (hopefully!)

 

 

 

 

Wednesday clinic at El Siete

Today's clinic was hot and exhausting but so worth it.  We saw 82 patients today and we were still able to finish by 2:30!  There have been only 36 saved during these last 4 clinic days but that is 36 more for Jesus!  Sometimes I look at the total numbers instead of the heart of each of those individuals.  I don't know God's plan. I do know and trust that God knows far in advance what the outcome will be. All I should do is pray and trust Him to bring each person to His saving grace.  And that is what it is about - His saving grace.  Jesus died for all sinners - an astronomical number that we will never know.  His blood covers everyone.  We only have to ask Him into our hearts as our Lord and Savior and trust in His grace for our salvation.  This is something that we don't fully understand. But we don't have to understand it. We just have to have faith in His grace and believe.  His grace covers it all. It doesn't make us perfect. Just forgiven. Our good works will never be enough.  I try to be so perfect every day and fail so miserably but I will never be perfect and that is ok because He loves me so much. 

I want to say a thank you again to all our prayer warrior/rope holders. Your prayers have brought us to where we are at this point.  There has been some political unrest in Honduras lately. The government has been trying to privatize education and medical care. Teachers and doctors have been peacefully demonstrating to stop this.  We have had some concerns about being able to get to our clinics but we have made it each day.  We need 2 more days of reaching our clinics and then being able to get to the airport on Sunday.  Please pray for our protection and ability to reach our destinations each day. 

We will be at a clinic in Municipal tomorrow.

Totals today:
Total readers - 62
Total prescription glasses - 45
Total patients - 82
Total saved - 10  One more for Jesus!

Post test station after the autorefractor. I am in the background

trying to hydrate which I am bad about not doing often enough!

Triage station and far vision station

Autorefractor station. We have to sometimes cover the patient's face when

we are reading their vision with an autorefractor if the light is too bright

Autorefractor again. Worked fine this time without the hand towel

 

 

Tuesday clinic at Crusadas

We had a clinic today at the church at Crusadas, El Tabernacula. There was a lady who came through who was 101 years old. Her vision tested at 20/200 in one eye and blind in the other eye.  After testing her and pulling some eyeglasses from the inventory trailer, we got her down to 20/40.  As always, she was a very happy patient. Another lady came through that we had to test with the autorefractor. When I read her vision with the autorefractor, it only came up with one match in the whole inventory that showed up. When we tested her, the glasses did work great for her and really improved her vision. 

We worked today with another AHMEN team that was a medical team.  It was a great opportunity to work with another team and be able to help so many people with medical and vision problems.

It was a long and very hot day but we are all felt so blessed to be able to help the people here have a little bit better life with improved vision.

Today's totals:
Total readers - 59
Total prescription glasses - 50
Total patients - 83
Total saved - 12   One more for Jesus!

Es una cosa de Dios!

Monday clinic at Corozal

Today we had a clinic at a school at Corozal. The building and the rooms were very small but, as always, God made it work. We had a good flow of patients all day through the clinic.  We had the kids from Casa Cielo helping us again today and they did an awesome job working in each of the stations again. There was one lady who came through the clinic who was in her 80's. We worked to get her some prescription glasses. When the post test station team members tested her vision with the glasses, she got all of the numbers correct on the far vision chart. She was so happy, she started dancing!! That was a first for our team but it was hilarious and we loved it! She did too!

We actually finished seeing patients again around 2:30 and had plenty of time to get the inventory replenished before we packed up and left.  Awesome day!

Totals for today:
Total readers - 59
Total prescription glasses - 40
Total patients - 84
Total saved - 12  One more for Jesus!

Es una cosa de Dios!   It's a God Thing!

Near vision station

Post test station for prescription glasses

Having a great time as always!

Triage station

Breysi with the autorefractor testing a patient

Evangelism station

Breysi taking a pic of the inventory trailer as a selfie!

1st Clinic Day - Saturday at El Cacao

Our first clinic day this year was at a church in El Cacao.  It took a little while to get set up but everything went great.  We had a great prayer time at the beginning with the people who came to the clinic.  I always have some good stories to tell each year about some of the patients who come through our clinic.  One gentleman came through our clinic whose vision was over 20/200. We worked to get him some prescription glasses that would help improve his vision at least a little. Unfortunately the program only came up with 2 pair that would work for him out of over 3800 pair . When Rick gave him the first pair, they didn't help much at all. Then he tried the second pair which was actually a woman's pair of glasses. Those glasses got him to 20/20!! And he was so happy. He didn't care how they looked - just that he could finally see with such an amazing improvement!!  We love stories like these that make our work here worth it.  The kids from Casa Cielo Children's Home worked with us also. They did a great job running errands and doing any task we gave them. 

On Sunday we will go to church as Crusadas and then check out the bodega (our storage warehouse) next to the church to get some more supplies.  It's been a great start for our mission trip.

Today's totals:
Total patients - 93 (by 1:30!!)
Total readers - 34
Total prescription glasses - 16
Total saved - 2 
One more for Jesus!

Es una cosa de Dios! It's a God thing!

Near vision station

 

Two of the Casa Cielo boys working the sunglasses station

Far vision testing with 2 of the Casa Cielo girls