Former Mountain Home man gets gift of new sight

By The Associated Press

Posted: June 24, 2009 at 7:16 a.m.

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MOUNTAIN HOME — The Hagar family gave up everything, including health insurance, to live as missionaries in a remote area of Brazil called Belem. The tropical heat there causes eyeglasses, especially bottle-thick glasses like the ones Earl Hagar has worn since he was four, to slide down sweaty noses.

"Keeping glasses clean is a major, major hassle," said Hagar, 50. "They're always sweaty and dirty. You bend over dripping and they fall down your nose."

But the Hagar family, once of Mountain Home, is used to roughing it. Coping with dirty, slippery glasses was the least of their concerns until Hagar's already-terrible sight began to blur even more from developing cataracts.

He e-mailed his old friend, Dr. Douglas Marx, at Sneed Eye Associates in Mountain Home. Marx had been in the very first group from Twin Lakes Baptist Church Hagar took on a missionary trip to Belem back in 1992. They have been friends ever since, and Marx has kept Hagar supplied with eyeglasses from Mountain Home to save him the arduous trip to a quality eye clinic. Belem is a three-day, river boat ride from the nearest airport.

Just a month ago, Hagar was in an even more remote area teaching bee-keeping. When he took his mask off, his glasses fell and shattered on a rock. He wears glass lenses because they don't scratch as easily as plastic.

"I had to take a bus for two days to get back home for a second pair of glasses," he said, "and then take the bus back, just to drive my truck home."

"The only thing to do is cataract surgery," Hagar remembered Marx telling him.

It wasn't a good option for Hagar, who had no money for that kind of medical care.

Marx took the matter in his own hands. He arranged the generous donation of intraocular lenses, which have been available worldwide for 14 years, but for only three in the U.S. because of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval process, Marx said. Offering his own time and talent free of charge, last week the doctor gave Hagar the gift of sight.

"It's so incredible that someone we don't even know would do something like this for us," said Earl's wife Ronda, 55, of the lens donation. "I'm so grateful."

In two seven-minute surgeries, Marx removed Hagar's own lenses and implanted artificial ones, curing Hagar of cataracts and permanently correcting his vision to 20/20.

"I'm used to a pretty uncomfortable lifestyle, but that was very unnerving," Hagar said of the first procedure. "I could see and then I couldn't. He talked to me the whole time, but still."

With Hagar's own lens removed, he saw only a field of light, and in another moment could see again.

"The richness for me," he said, "is that I give. I'm not used to getting things back. When somebody gives back, it's really special. It impacts your life. It makes a difference."

Hagar's journey to Belem was a long and circuitous one. Born in Maine, he left home at 18 to attend Philadelphia College of Bible (now Philadelphia Biblical University). In 1978, he bought a $100 ticket to London, England on Laker's Airline and hitchhiked from there to Israel, where he studied Hebrew for two years. After finishing his degree at Philadelphia College of Bible and earning a master's at Wheaton College, he came to Mountain Home to pastor the Mountain Home Bible Church and started the KCMH Christian radio station.

But pastoring wasn't the right place for Hagar. On a trip to Little Rock to interview for a job in a completely different field, he and Ronda, riding a motorcycle together, hit a recliner in the middle of the highway.

"I never saw it," Hagar said.

After six months of recovery, he drove a school bus for Mountain Home schools and then bought an investment firm, 30 days before Black Friday in 1987.

"It was fascinating," he said, "fascinating, but for ten years I longed to be involved in ministering. I wanted to equip people to equip others."

After listening to a retired missionary from Brazil speak at Twin Lakes Baptist Church in 1992, he took a trip to Belem. In the following five years, he took 30 groups on trips to Brazil. The Hagars, including daughters Kelly, now 20, and Kimberly, now 17, decided it was time to just move there.

The Hagars started a school they call Embryo. The Portuguese name is Escola Missionaria Beira Rio - the missionary school on the banks of the river. The goal was to reach teens who had finished school and had nothing to do, to teach them a trade like beekeeping, woodworking, sewing, knitting, anything Hagar can find a DVD to use as a teaching tool.

"My ultimate interest is for you to teach someone else," he tells his students.

Religion is secondary. Hagar doesn't believe in telling people that what they're doing or believing is wrong. He looks for what is right in their lives and tries to make it even better.

"Their future is very short term," he said. "They're worried about tomorrow. My goal is to extend their perspective - all the way to eternity."

With the gift the Hagars received in Mountain Home, the road to eternity will be much clearer.

"Life gets more complicated with age," Hagar said. "This (gift) takes one of those complications away."

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