The Nigerian Eyeglass Project
By Laura Leavitt Hauck
As we were finishing our mission to Uyo, Nigeria, we received gratifying and amazing news. My first cousin, Marv Leavitt and his wife Sue, had been called as office couple to our sister mission, the Nigeria Enugu Mission. This was gratifying because “sissies” are not called to Nigeria and amazing because the majority of the Nigerian missions (there are five), including Enugu , are phasing out their senior couples.
Elder and Sister Leavitt have spent most of their time as the lone senior couple on their mission, other than the Mission President and his wife who spend the majority of their time traveling in this wide-spread mission.
Elder and Sister Leavitt have four children and sixteen grandchildren. They have lived in seven different states during their 45 years of marriage and have built their retirement home in Mesa , Arizona , where they will return after their mission. They also lived for one year on the island of Curacao in the Dutch Netherland Antilies.
A surprising statistic is that between 60-70% of senior couples return to the mission field to serve one or more additional missions. As Sister Leavitt gives the following wonderful account of their eyeglass project, her last paragraph validates the above statement:
Ten years prior to my husband's retirement, we began putting into place firm plans to serve a mission as a senior couple. We realized that our finances had to be sound and our health good. We were prompted to do things that at the time made us wonder why. The “why” was answered as a call was received in January 2007 to serve in Enugu, Nigeria West Africa as the office couple.
At first we were overwhelmed at the thought of West Africa . . . so far away. Our health had to be perfect, our financial affairs in top order. We were grateful for the promptings we had received and obeyed.
As we began our mission, we discovered that there are no North American missionaries called to serve in Nigeria, so our missionaries were mostly Nigerian, with the balance from Ghana, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Enugu has a population of over 2 million people and we were one white couple of maybe 20 from various countries who live here on a full-time basis. Although we loved our calling, which was very busy, we wanted an interaction with the wonderful West African people. Our mission president encouraged us to “get out and do whatever is needed,” especially in our mission branches which are in villages out in the bush.
We prayed to Heavenly Father to give us guidance. When one of the last couples left, Elder and Sister Mills, they left a box of 40 “magnified reader glasses” which had been donated by their stake in England. They asked us to test and distribute these glasses to members of our branches.
We took the glasses as we visited the Okposi Branch and although it was difficult to communicate with members who spoke mostly Igbo or Effik, with the permission of Branch President Agwu and after the block, Elder Leavitt tested the members and I supervised. Before we knew it, we had a line of over 90 people waiting. It was overwhelming. We distributed all the glasses with the promise that we would return with more.
Realizing that we needed a plan to get more glasses, I documented the experience in my weekly journal to family and friends. Our stake president in the Skyline Stake of Mesa, Arizona immediately responded that they were looking for a stake humanitarian project and would love to adopt the project which we labeled “EYES ON NIGERIA.”
A stake humanitarian day was organized and over 1000 glasses were sent to us in Nigeria . This became a huge project, and we went far beyond the mission branches into the branches of the districts and into wards of the stakes. Other friends and family got involved, including a significant donation from Beaver Dam, Arizona Ward. In total we ended up with over 1500 glasses donated.
The impact that these simple magnified reader glasses have had on the West Africans (members and non-members alike) is life changing. The joy in their countenance as you place a pair of glasses on them, enabling them to actually see the words, brings tears to your eyes. There have been many baptisms from people who simply came to a church they knew nothing about because they heard that free glasses were being distributed, and then were touched by the Spirit and expressed a desire to know more.
What a miraculous project this has been. We testify that serving a mission as a senior couple is the most rewarding thing that you can do. As in our case, the call you receive may not be what you had in mind or to a place you did not even know about, but we testify that the Lord knows where you need to be and once there, knows that you are there and will provide ways for you to serve.
We will soon return home where we plan to get acquainted with grandchildren we do not know, check on our affairs, take a small amount of personal time and then . . . put our boots back on and come back into the mission field.