A Gift for Us

Hello Again, Today is Thursday, December 4th and today our team received many more gifts than we gave through Give the Gift of Sight. You may wonder what I mean since we are here to Give Sight right? True enough but today, we received the wonder of receiving 2,530 smiles from the patients we helped through One Sight! That's right 2,530. The number alone is staggering. So imagine if you can the enormity of the task. There were times today, when I really didn't know if our team would make it through. The people just kept coming and coming.
There were were at least 500 people just starting the process of registering and standing in line at 6PM. And then there was the rain. Buckets of rain that started pouring down at noon. But those people did not budge. And you know what? We didn't either. The more we gave to them, the more they gave back. Sylvia received the most amazing smile, hug, thank you and fruit from a lady that was so grateful. Sylvia was so full of emotion, the tears flowed faster than the rain.
Another lady, gave me a hug and spoke quickly with great urgency as she turned to go. I asked the translator what she said and I was told "I know I will see you on the other side". It took me a moment to realize that this elderly lady meant in heaven and as I realized the meaning of her words I was a bit stunned. To think that the 5 minutes it took me to provide her with sight meant so much to her.
Yet another elderly lady said "My sight is my world". She uses her glasses to read letters from her children in the states. They are her lifeline and her only connection to them.
There were little children with Down's Syndrome. I paused a moment to consider the challenges for such children in the U.S. where we have so much, and here they have so little.
And finally there was a woman with a -25 prescription, which means she has very little sight, who had never worn glasses before in her life. We were only able to match her with a -15 but those glasses were such a tremendous help that she was speechless upon receiving them and so happy.
At dinner this evening at 8:30 PM, the group looked so tired, but when asked to share their stories from the day we all perked up to share stores about what the day meant to them. Tonight are hearts are full and we look forward to tomorrow, our last clinic day in Tuxpan. More to come, thanks for reading our blog.-Darlene R.