Today was my first day out in the village! So far, I have only met people from town, or at the Mbale Church of Christ. This morning I headed out to a village west of Mbale as a part of the eyeglasses ministry. With five of us in the cab, four more in the bed of the truck, some plastic chairs and two trunks full of eyeglasses, we all left from the church at 10 AM and drove about 45 minutes out to the village. We were welcomed by our translators and were carefully observed by about 30 curious children. After unloading our truck, we were given the place of honor at the front of the church, where everyone could see our shining, white faces, and were introduced to the congregation by William, who is in charge of the rural ministry portion of the Mbale Mission Team. Everyone clapped and cheered for us, and we joined together in singing Luganda praise songs. Though I couldn’t understand a word, I could appreciate the beautiful singing. Later, five women who were a part of the church’s chorus sang another song about Jesus’ return and the end times, the melody of which I loved and have been humming to myself all day. After this, William stood up and delivered an impromptu sermon, and worship was dismissed so that we could begin distributing eyeglasses.
After a quick lesson on eyeglass prescriptions (which I should have known already, seeing as I wear glasses) I was paired up with a translator and my first patient was sent in. My instruments included two “glasses-on-a-stick,” which I was able to flip over and, with some assistance from my translator, determine which prescription produced the clearest results. After encouraging the individual to read (or at least focus on) an article about a new BBC series entitled, “London
Helping people find the right pair of glasses was incredible. Flipping through prescriptions and finally finding the pair that allowed them to see smiles that made translating unnecessary. What we did today was by no means healing the blind, but to be able to provide these children of God with the ability to clearly see the world around them was such a joy! It made me think of how Jesus healed the man born blind (John 9:6). There was no mud made from saliva today; we try to keep things as sanitary as we can, but I hope when people share the story of how they got their glasses, many more will come know Christ.
After we helped those in need of reading glasses, I wandered outside to meet the dozens of kids milling around the building. At first, they were very shy. Only a few spoke English, and they didn’t really understand who this talkative mzungu (white person) was, or what she doing. But after pulling out my bottle of bubbles, we got along just fine! The kids crowded around me, all wanting to pop the bubbles as they floated loftily in the breeze. I tried to give each kid a chance to try their hand at bubble blowing; even some of the adults gave it a try!
I snapped a few pictures of the kids, handed the bottle of bubbles over to one of the older girls and went back inside for lunch. We were served rice, goat, a sort of broth with tomatoes, and millet bread. The rice, goat and broth were excellent; the millet bread was…interesting. It’s more of a sticky, gelatinous mound of millet grain mixed with cassava (sort of like a potato) than bread. I washed it down with a Coke. After thanking our hosts for our delicious meal, we packed up our truck and drove back through the bush to town. It was a perfect day, and I can’t wait to go out again next month!
The video is a snippet of worship service at the church in the village, and the pictures below are of the kids I befriended with bubbles, and Vince and his translator assisting a man find the right pair of glasses.
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