Holy Spirit parish made it's twelfth visit to our sister parish in Texiguat, Honduras from June 21-28, 2016. We held 3 days of eye clinics in two small aldeas, Vado Ancho and San Andre's, as well as in Texiguat, a small town in the dry, rugged mountainous region of southern Honduras. We saw over 420 patients and tested for and dispensed 170 prescription glasses as well as over 200 readers and sunglasses each.

We had a large number of youth on this trip. They all were interested in doing the testing so we held a training session prior to our visit. Normally, I have operated the computer as most of our older travelers seem to be intimidated by computers despite my showing them the simplicity of using the Glasses Inventory program.

The youth had no fear and quickly asked me to show them how to use the program. After watching me complete a few patients, they said they understood. I supervised them for several patients until they seemed comfortable. So the majority of the time they ran the autorefractometer and the computer. This allowed me to spend time problem solving for difficult patients and answering questions from our volunteers in other sections of the clinic.

One of the difficult patient was a gentlemen who had damage to both eyes relating to a nail or nail fragments. He could see a little from our eye chart screening, but the autorefractometer could not get a reading due the damage being near his pupil. Since I now had some time, I was able to take him back to the eye chart area and train the screener on how to use the lens rack to approximate his prescription. We determined this for both eyes and took him back to the girls operating the equipment in the testing area. I then showed the girls how to plug in these values to search for glasses in our inventory. By the grace of God, we found a pair that really helped him to see much better. We gave him eye drops since his eyes were very red. Not unusual due to all of the natural and man-made pollutants in the air. He was a very happy man when he left that morning.

Our testers and screeners were then able to use this process for some of our patients with cataracts. My hope is that the youth will continue to help the poor and needy both here and in developing countries. Maybe some will pursue a career in healthcare from this experience as well.