From left to right: Sang-Chul Lee, Chang-Soo Noh, Dong-Hae Kim, Young-Suk Suh, Yong-Jun Park.
Sarang Community Church, located in Anaheim, CA, gave $50,000 in their Christmas offering to help treat those with blindness or sight impairments.
The offering was given to Vision Care Service, a relief organization that offers medical aid to those with sight impairments, through which approximately 400 people would have the potential to be treated.
Vision Care Service currently offers services to 30 different developing countries by hosting free eye care camps and offering surgical treatments for cataracts and blindness prevention. The organization has treated 10,000 outpatients thus far, and had 14,000 surgical procedures. Vision Care Service branches located in the western region of the U.S. is currently hosting eye care camps and providing medical services in Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti, and other Central and South American countries.
A photo from one of Vision Care's eye care camps in Sri Lanka.
"The church is receiving a lot of criticism from the world these days," remarked Pastor Chang-Soo Noh, the senior pastor of Sarang Community Church, "but I hope that we can continue to reduce misunderstandings and critical perspectives regarding the church by participating in works like these, and actively being the light and salt in the world."
Noh further expressed gratitude toward his church congregation for actively and joyfully giving in this particular offering, and said that the church will continue to "be a church that shows love for our neighbors through relief work and giving."
Sarang Community Church also gave back to the community with its Christmas offering in 2013, with which they gave the money to help surgically treat children with cleft lips and also to help financially support churches in southern California that are not yet financially independent.
"The precious offering that this church has given will be carefully used for those who need eye treatment in the third world countries," said Dong-Hae Kim, one of the co-chairmen of Vision Care Service.
