TX-MX Mission revisited

In my eagerness to get to the Mexican vanilla story in my last blog I failed to mention two very important aspects of our Mission Team: Those Who Stayed Behind & The Vision Care Team.

Five of us stayed behind intentionally to shop for the next day and begin prep for the evening meal. We cleaned up each morning after the Work Teams left to build "casitas" in Matamoros.

Our tasks were simple, but important. After breakfast clean-up we made a shopping list and headed for Walmart in Port Isabel. Fresh fruit, 12 to 16 bags of ice, and bottled water were staples on the list. Lunch for us was catch-as-catch-can (leftovers). The Work Teams had made and packed lunches to eat at the work sites.

Debbie, one of the five who stayed behind, brought her sewing machine. She taught us how to recycle the plastic shopping bags, making them into sheets of material melted together and sewn into a reusable shopping bag. With that same recycled material we also created large flat sheets of heavy plastic which we hope will become awnings over the doors of the "casitas" that our team built.

Two from our team, Dr. Mike (an optometrist) & Laura (optician), provided vision care for some fishing islands off the coast of Mexico. They left before sunrise, drove along the coast for about an hour or more, then took a boat to the islands. They came home late, long after the others had had the evening meal. Their day was long and their work, intense. On the second day, late in the day, Laura had a reaction to the heat and spent the next two days recuperating. Dr. Mike recruited a helper to work with him; Thomas, the first day and John, the other. On Friday Laura rejoined Dr. Mike for the last half-day of our work.

Dr. Mike & helper would arrive in an island village by boat, tote equipment and supplies to a pre-arranged testing sight (a porch, shade tree, some one's living room, etc.). With the eye chart taped to the wall or a tree, they were ready to begin eye exams. People began arriving, would receive a number, and find shade to wait in the sweltering heat. After testing the clarity of vision Dr. Mike would begin to examine the health of the eye, often feeling very helpless in light of the severity of some of the damage he saw--the eyes of shrimp fisherman damaged by the sun, congenital defects, lack of care earlier in life....

The Vision Care Team touched many lives. In the 4 1/2 days of exams about 225 reading glasses were distributed and in many cases he would give a patient eye-drops. Dr. Mike also wrote several prescriptions that he brought back to his office to fill and send back. When one woman received her reading glasses she was overjoyed that she would be able to read her Bible again.

More about our MOLAMCO Team can be seen on the Southwest Good Samaritan Ministries website at www.swgsm.org