Okay. That’s how Jesus and the Holy Spirit worked things out to get us both on the same path, and that path led to Africa. Looking back at our experiences brings up some really great memories – preaching in brush arbors, under a tree, in nice church buildings, at refugee camps… taking people by the truckload to be baptized in the river, in baptistries, in the ocean, in ponds, and in pools of murky water… Diana teaching the ladies about being good mothers and women of God… singing and taking communion while sitting on a rock or a low wooden bench… Diana sitting with the ladies, separated from the men…

Then, to our disappointment, we were not able to return to Africa to do WBS work for lack of personal funding. Diana became an optician in 1995, and in 1996, as we were finishing a meal with some old friends and talking about Africa, our friend Larry asked us how long it had been since we had been to Africa, and would we like to go back? We said we really wanted to, and he said he knew someone who might be interested in helping. 10 days later we had enough money for me to go to Malawi! In 1997. Using this new-found opportunity, I travelled to Malawi alone to teach seminars about Jesus. Because of Diana’s job, we knew a lot about the Lions Club glasses recycling program, and the availability of free glasses for distribution in the Third World, and we wanted to investigate the need for eyeglasses in Malawi, so I took a few pairs of readers along to see how they would be received.

When we reported the extremely enthusiastic results of my survey trip to Larry, he asked the same question, “Wanta go back to Africa?”, and that same friend provided funding for the 2 of us for another trip to Malawi, this time to start an eyeglass clinic ministry.

In 1998 we arrived in Malawi with about 3,000 pairs of glasses from the Lions Club. They were in 5 huge boxes, and that plus our luggage attracted the attention of the head Customs officer at the Lilongwe airport, who came up to us and asked what we had in those boxes. We said “Eyeglasses for free distribution”. He said “Glasses? Like mine?” and took a pair of readers out of his pocket. When we said yes, we had our first eyeglasses clinic right there in Customs, with several satisfied Customs officials sporting new glasses. No more doubt about whether there was a need for glasses! People want to see clearly.

Before we even went to Malawi for the new eyeglass clinic ministry, we met some missionaries from Uganda and told them about our proposed new ministry, and they immediately invited us to consider them as our next destination. We emailed them as soon as we got home from Malawi and asked if they were still interested; they said yes and we went to Uganda every year for 10 years, holding eyeglasses clinics with the missionary team, in Uganda, Kenya and Sudan. It was a group effort, requiring a minimum of 7 people to run every clinic. At first, the clinics were conducted with Lions Club glasses, but they proved to be too labor-intensive for the high-volume clinics we were running, and the Lord provided us with additional funds so that we were able to switch to brand-new reading glasses, and later on to add brand-new minus powers for far vision. The addition of the over-the-counter readers increased the number of people we could help tremendously.