The Epiphany Honduras Mission team has been doing Mission trips to Tegucigalpa for over 7 years and has been working with the Divine Mercy parish in the area. Past focus has been to bring clean water to families through the Sawyer filtering packs, building homes, and providing scholarships for the children. This year, by chance, our Honduras team leader, Rosemary Smith, got us involved with KOM to start measuring eye glasses. One thing led to another and we decided to apply for a grant to take the Eyeglass ministry to another level. We were able to secure enough money to train four team members, rent all the necessary equipment from KOM and buy enough glasses from KOM to fit 400 + people. We even got our Healing Blanket people to make 400 eyeglass cases for us from the pattern that Holland provided to us.

The support that we received from Holland Kendall and Sam Frizzell of KOM is second to none. They were both with us every step of the way through the learning process and gave us moral and real time support while we were going through the process in our first attempt at this ministry in Honduras. Holland and Sam answered the phone on the first ring when we called. We never felt alone out there in the field. KOM was always there to ensure our success. They even helped us through our nightmare experience of losing total power in the area. We were never alone on this amazing adventure.

The equipment is state of the art and never failed us. Everything that we needed was provided in the cases and labeled. As we progressed through the week with our ministry, we became so confident and sure of ourselves; just like Sam said we would!

The Eyeglass Ministry is just the best "feel good" ministry that we could ever have experienced. Everyone involved, from intake, to eye charts, to doing drops, to interpreting , to the refractor, to the computer guru, to the actual runners and fitters.... We all experienced so many Ah Ha and Alleluia moments that will stay with us forever! Amen!

This was our first eyeglass mission trip, and we weren’t sure how things would go. The first day was a little hectic and confused, as we got everything set up. We could not do as suggested, having only 6 persons inside the room where the clinic was held. There was no space outside for people to wait, so it was pretty loud at times, with 20-30 people waiting. The last day, we were at a different site, and were able to follow the suggestion, thus making it more orderly and quiet.

On the second day, we lost electricity for about 2 hours. Neither this nor the noise of the patients and their families kept us from our mission. We reached our goal of seeing 400 patients in 5 days. That was about 200 readers and 200 prescription glasses. We had many “Alleluia” moments. The photos show some of them. One photo shows an old man who has received his glasses and is looking at his hands as if he were seeing them for the first time in a long time. Another is a precious little 3-year-old girl, whose mother told us she could now see well enough to run around the house for the first time.