1999 - 2017

We decided that the Holy Spirit was leading us to Uganda where we could work with American missionaries and build bridges to the church, so as soon as we got home, we emailed Ian and the Team had a meeting and formally invited us to come for eyeglass clinics. We went to Uganda and worked with them every year for 10 years.

During that 10 years we had a marvelous time! Everything was organized before we even got there, and the Team could not have been more helpful, working with us for 3 weeks every year, holding about 15 clinics every time. We would help hundreds of people at every clinic. We worked in Uganda and Kenya and even made 3 trips to Sudan.

Diana retired from her optician employment in 2010, and we thought we wanted to move to Mbale for a year or so, but it didn't work out - the Holy Spirit had other things in mind, and we did 3 more glasses clinic tripe: to Burkina Faso in 2012, Malawi in 2014, then back to Uganda in 2015. Altogether we helped about 40,000 people with glasses!

Write While we were in Malawi in 2014, we met a couple from U.K. who were both doctors. They were short-term missionaries who were holding addiction recovery seminars. We were all staying in the same hotel; it was full board, so we ate breakfast and supper together every day and became close friends. We decided our ministries could work side by side and we would enjoy doing some traveling together. In fact, we started planning on going to Uganda for another round of glasses clinics in 2015, which we did, and the Blackburns accompanied us and held addiction recovery seminars.

“Out of the blue”, in mid-2016, there was a plea for us to help schoolgirls stay in school by providing them with free disposable sanitary pads. The Luchivyas had been learning how pads were made, and we thought it was a great idea, and that God was not finished with us, so we started buying all the necessary equipment to manufacture pads. .

Now,10 years later, we are helping 15 schools with almost 2,600 girls every month!your text here...