Living Hope Bible Church of Issaquah, WA has partnered with SEPE International for many years, offering free odontology and ophthalmology services at Clínica Betania and putting on a Vacation Bible School at Iglesia Bautista Betania in Siguatepeque, HN. This post takes a closer look at their unique eyecare ministry and its gospel impact.
INITIAL EXAMINATION
As the only short-term mission through SEPE International to offer ophthalmological care, in partnership with the Global Eyeglass Ministry (GEM), Living Hope Bible optimizes the opportunity to serve in this way with a thoughtfully precise setup and process.
Patients from the community are first evaluated in triage, where their eyes are initially examined, without eyewear and in view of an eye chart posted 10 feet away. The right and left eye are checked, and the STM staff is trained to make a determination on the patient’s current vision and the potential of stigmatism, based on the patient’s accuracy in deciphering the symbols on the “E” chart.
READING TEST
At the second station, patients are evaluated to see if they need reading glasses. They view a reading chart in Spanish with John 3:16 printed several times in fonts of decreasing size. Depending on the level of what they can see, they are sent to one station to receive free readers with a strength anywhere from +1 to +3.5, or another station for further evaluation of the eye via auto-refractor.
THE AUTO-REFRACTOR
At the auto-refractor station, patients are given blackout sunglasses that function to dilate their eyes. After about 10 minutes, the eyes are dilated, and they sit individually in a darkened room where the auto-refractor measures and diagnoses their eyes. Depending on whether the patient is nearsighted, is farsighted, or has a stigmatism, a computer program uses an algorithm to determine whether there is a pair of glasses in the inventory that is a match or near match to the patient’s prescription. These results are printed on a slip that notates the confidence level of the potential match, which can range anywhere from, say, 0.1, which would be nearly perfect, to something as far off as 2.5.
The STM staff use this slip to look through about 2000 cataloged eyeglasses for this very purpose, detailing the prescription, whether the glasses are for a male, female, or child, and whether the lenses are bifocals or trifocals, etc. The patient then tries on the appropriate glasses and retests with them on, and if all goes well, they return home with a pair of glasses improving their vision.
The use of the auto-refractor is especially helpful in the case of a stigmatism, because giving a patient a single-vision lens for merely short or long-distance will not serve to completely resolve blurry vision in these instances, whereas providing glasses with a spherical equivalent will.
MANUAL DETERMINATION
Sometimes the machine cannot accurately identify the prescription of the patient or the contents of the inventory. In this case, the patients are manually tested and provided for at the final station.
There are circumstances in which a patient is a child or has an eye disease or other diagnosis that is too complicated to be treated with the equipment available to the team. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, the hope is to improve the eyesight of each patient to 20/30 or at the very least 20/40 or 20/50. This is a huge improvement for those who may not have been able to see anything on the eye chart or even read a Bible before going through this process.
On a blog documenting their daily updates, Living Hope Bible shares one particular success story that demonstrates the tangible value of such a brigade:
A young girl came through the eye clinic whose vision was so poor that she couldn’t read her watch on her wrist, even if it was a few inches away from her face. We were able to find her a pair of glasses that allowed her to read the entire “E” chart from ten feet away. She hasn’t been able to attend school because of her vision, but now with these glasses she will be able to! Praise God that we had a pair that worked for her!
THE BLIND NOW SEE
The greatest benefit of this ministry is spiritual, as the waiting time between stations gives the team members opportunity to proclaim the gospel to each patient.
Pastor Joe Lum echoes this when he shares that this labor of love is ultimately a means to an end:
We know that this world and our physical health are only temporary, and the vision ministry, of course, is a wonderful analogy to one’s spiritual life, because when somebody receives eyeglasses, sometimes they haven’t been able to see the Word of God. And to them, when they see blurry, and that’s all they’ve seen, that’s their world. They know nothing. So they think it’s normal.
When you put eyeglasses on them, suddenly, like yesterday – I put eyeglasses on this girl, and she had this huge smile because suddenly everything became clear. And what an analogy it is to when God opens the eyes of our hearts and so we’re able to see and understand spiritual things.
Living Hope Bible’s intentional service is truly an example of where physical and spiritual need collides, and where gospel witness and medical care come to meet it.
