This last day was bittersweet in many ways. The young man that wanted his dying father baptized never came, even though we talked to him in the morning and everything pointed to it happening. Pastor Dennis and Vicar Paul will pursue this until they come to a resolution one way or another, I’m sure. The clinic had a steady and mounting stream of people, and by noon, over 350 patients had entered the church grounds. We ended the day with 606 patients, many of them Muslim, our best day yet. As our LCMS contact Catherine pointed out once again, “We are a last minute people!” Today definitely proved it to be true. We shut the gates at around 3:30pm, since our doctors were only contracted until 5pm and we estimated it would take that long to move everyone through the process that was already waiting. Still, several people managed to straggle in anyway. Catherine was not so fortunate. She didn’t have her car today, so she rode a matatu, a public transportation van that packs 14 or more people in. When she got there a little after 4pm, the 2 Masai warrior guards would not let her past the gate. She tried to call me and my phone was on silent ring somehow. One of the guards pressed a Masai club to her stomach to keep her from passing when she insisted that she needed to get in. She eventually convinced them that she worked with us and they finally recognized her without her car. I commented that I bet no one ever told her how hard church work could be! She took it all in stride and saw the strange humor in the situation. No harm, no foul.
We counted up our totals for the day for each kind of treatment that was delivered and ended with a strong devotion by Pastor Dennis, a prayer and a group picture. There were many touching goodbyes. We took inventory, packed up all of our footlockers, and headed back to our lodge. We went out to dinner at a nice restaurant near the Karen Blitzen museum with Rhoda, Vicar Shauen Trump, an LCMS missionary who will be assuming some of Claude’s duties and Pastor Dennis.
Tomorrow we go out into the countryside at 7am and ride for about 2 hours to Lake Naivasha to see the famous hippos on the island there. We will return by mid afternoon to shower, finish packing, celebrate with the returning mission teams and then will head for the airport for the long trip home. More reports to follow as I am able, with a final report and reflections on the mission soon after we return to Austin. Please continue to keep travel mercies in your prayers for us.
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