VISION: OPTOMETRIST EYES MISSIONARY WORK

Alan Branson is a missionary with vision.

His vision told him that optometry is a missionary area that's relatively untapped. So he tapped it.

Today, hundreds of people in South America and a poor Caribbean island who were otherwise legally blind see because of his work.

Branson, 26, the optometrist at Royal Optical in West Park Mall, said he traveled last Christmas to the interior of Paraguay, an area of little development with roads of clay and dirt. Last fall and this fall, he went to the island of St. Lucia. Each trip, he said, lasted about a week and a half.

When he fits people with eyeglasses who are otherwise legally blind, it's literally like in the Bible when Jesus healed someone, Branson said.

"Their eyes get bigger. Their whole face lights up. It's just like they were healed," he said.

Suddenly, a non-functioning member of society becomes someone who can work and contribute, he said.

"To a person like that, it's a godsend. It's amazing that two little pieces of glass will change your life. To them, it's a miracle."

That's exactly what happened to a legally blind 35-year-old man on St. Lucia who was forced to live with and depend on his parents, he said. Once he got glasses, though, he could work and begin a family of his own, said Branson.

"He didn't know what to do with himself. He was ecstatic. That gave him life."

Branson is a Southern Baptist lay minister who is originally from Farmington. After attending Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, where he received a bachelor's degree in biology in May 1987, he went to the School of Optometry at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He graduated from there in May 1989.

The missionary work he does is made possible by donations of glasses by Lions Clubs in the Cape Girardeau and St. Louis areas, and area churches and individuals. On St. Lucia, he said, he and two optometrists from Kansas City saw 1,450 people in a week. To meet the needs of that many people, he said, they'll take down about 6,000 pairs of glasses.

Branson said he began his missionary work after graduating as an optometrist.

"I just think it's a ministry that's relatively untapped," he said. "There are so many places in the world where people can't see. Not too many people were going and doing (optometry)."

God gave him his ability, he said, and he wants to use it to minister to people.

"There's no way they're going to come here and get glasses. You have to go as Jesus said go," he said.

Branson said he's worked with just over 3,000 people, of all ages, in his three trips. Of those, he said, between 15 to 20 percent were legally blind.

In the areas he's visited, Branson said, glasses are considered an extravagant item, unlike in the United States, where they are considered, if needed, a necessity. Glasses cost the equivalent of 70 American dollars in St. Lucia while the average wage is $400 to $500 a year

The average Paraguayan earns an annual salary of about $1,100. In the interior, where people live off the land and farm, the average wage is even less.

"Imagine spending one-sixth of your income on glasses. It just doesn't happen. They have a hard time spending money on food."

Older women in Paraguay need glasses to be able to thread needles for the sewing work they do to make a living, he said. The same goes for St. Lucia, Branson said. Only there, the women weave baskets and other tourist items.

Branson said he works through the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board. Either he contacts the board about a possible mission, he said, or he calls a list of missionaries to see if they need optometry services.

Branson said he pays for most of the costs of his trips. Plus, he said, he must take time off from his job without pay.