We have given away all 250 pairs of eye glasses and the five pairs of sunglasses that we brought. Once people realize we have, them, there is an epidemic of blurred vision. In order to prioritize, we established that no one under 50 gets a pair and they have to be referred by a physician.

Despite this, it does not stop us from seeing some younger women with reading glasses walking around with the size tag still on the frames.

Below is a perspective written by Mike Hayes. He is not with us this trip but was active in collecting glasses for this trip and ran the glasses program in Peru, 2013.

Hi All,

When I inherited the eyeglass portion of the mission I didn't realize how much I would learn about eyeglasses. I met an optician, Adrian, through Fr Roberto. Turns out he has his own non profit eye clinics he sets up around the world for people in need of glasses! He taught me how to read the glasses lens power with a lensometer. What fun! Who would of thought I would be doing this? Anyway, when I finally packed up the collected reading glasses it was difficult to say goodbye to them.

Mike