Children are very special...

 This week, we returned to the Dilkusha Orphanage, not to examine their eyes this time, but to take them some late Christmas presents donated by my office and my grandkids.  As you can see in the photos below, they were thrilled with their gifts.

This little boy was recovering from a bad
fall which had left him paralyzed for a 
time on one side.  He still had no 
movement in his left arm, but was 
trying to walk around.  So sad!

Kind of like Christmas morning!

After the children started playing with their presents, while I blew up the beach balls, Ann taught them how to make bracelets made from multi-colored yarn. The children just loved this activity.

This beautiful 17 year old girl lost her mother 
in a car accident ten years ago.  She never 
knew her father.  She is beautiful inside and
 out and a wonderful example and 
caregiver to the younger children.

While we were there, we delivered some
new glasses to a girl who we found, at our
last visit, had a huge amount of astigmatism
and had never worn glasses before.
Because of the high prescription, we had to
special order the glasses from my office in
Calgary, and then ship them over to Fiji.

It was great to see this girl was enjoying her
new glasses already.  It makes it all worth while.

When we were leaving, this sweet girl didn't want
to let go of Ann's hand, and was asking
when she was coming back again. We wished we
could adopt her as well as many of the other children.

On another day, we stopped by the Elementary
school where we had checked their eyes three
months earlier.  Many of the kids came and hugged
us, and this one girl wouldn't let go of Ann's hand,
either!  The children are so special here in Fiji.
We just love them to pieces.

We were able to deliver another pair of
special order glasses, shipped from Calgary
to this sweet girl, also with lots of astigmatism.

 This week, we also had the privilege of going to another orphanage,  St. Christopher's Home, to check their eyes.

This is one of the "Sisters" who have dedicated
their lives to taking care of these sweet kids.

There were some wonderful smiles from
these children in the orphanage.

We found this oldest girl in the home, with
special needs (and non verbal), needed glasses
in the worst way, and had never had glasses
before.  Being a -7.00 myope meant she
would have been classed as legally blind.
The smile on her face told me she was very
pleased with being able to see the world
around her now, for the first time in her life.

As we were about to leave, the children
began singing the blessing on the food.
It sounded amazing; they are such
wonderful singers and special kids.

They also sang us a special good-bye song,
and then one of the older girls said some
very kind words and thanked us for our visit.
We left with tears in our eyes and love in
our hearts for these special children of God.

 On another day this past week, we had the privilege to go out to a remote village, called Lomanikoro.  After driving an hour, we had to take a boat across a river (since there was no bridge or vehicle access) to get to the community center where we examined everyone's eyes.

You can see that since there was no table to
put the glasses on, Ann placed them on an
old freezer in the Community Hall.

This man, Mr. Buresova, was the one who
accompanied us to his village. He's a really
good man who provides a lot of service  to
others, and is now a retired government worker.

Our friend Frank Stanford, the man who has
been helping organize our schedule during
our whole time here in Fiji, joined us to
visit this village, and enjoyed chatting with
many of the people who were waiting.

This is the first set of twins we have seen
while here in Fiji.  They were very cute.

Following our day of eye examinations,
we took a walk around the village.
This is the community hall, behind Ann.

This was an amazingly long sidewalk, as it
went on for about 2 km through the village.

It was very hot and humid as we walked
this long sidewalk in the bright sun.

This nice Bure building is where the
chiefs from each village within
the province, hold their meetings.

This is the new Methodist Church.

They used to just sit on the floor during
their meetings, until the LDS (Mormon)
Church donated these old bench pews.
The Methodists were thrilled!

Here are some interesting old Bures.

Fijians like to make use of everything they
can.  It's common for them to use old
painted pop bottles in their landscaping.

This is a very old Catholic Church
still in use today, in this village.

This is the home of Mr. Buresova who
brought us to his village.  We relaxed and
ate a wonderful meal on the deck.

We enlisted the help of some of the
local people to help carry our boxes
of glasses and equipment to the
boat to allow us to return home.

One of the utility workers used his wheel
barrel to assist us in this task,
for which we were very grateful.

It was a long and hot walk back to the boat
with my back pack and heavy trial lens kit.

...Saying good-bye before boarding the boat

It can be a little tricky to board a tipsy boat
with a heavy backpack and a Sulu (skirt) on,
but we all made it okay with no incidents. 

We were happy it wasn't raining for our
boat ride across the river back to our vehicle.
The last time we did this it was pouring rain.

We were blessed with a wonderful sunset at
the end of the day, for which we were grateful.

What a wonderful week it has been, with such a variety of things to do; going to two different orphanages, a school, and then to a beautiful remote village.  We are so blessed with being here in Fiji.