Tuesday and Wednesday clinics

KenyaFall2011

Click on the picture above to see the preparation during the past months and new pictures that will be added as access to the Internet permits throughout the mission trip.

Tuesday, November 15
Pastor Dave started our day with Moses and the burning bush, talked about God's purpose for each of us and concluded with a powerful "use me" prayer. We boarded our bus at 7am, which is the pattern for the rest of the week, now that the clinic is up and running. Dr. Terry was able to break away for our morning devotion with the volunteers and announced that we were not lined up in a zebra. We all laughed and alternated between each team member and our hosts. Pastor Dave did a devotion based on Psalm 145, teaching us that God is good, God is great and we are here to glorify him. This, along with some praise music in Swahili got us ready to man the clinic on a high note. We never seemed as busy nor as chaotic as Monday, but we saw more people in each clinic. The Lutheran Hour team was unsuccessful Monday night in showing the Jesus film due to speaker problems. Even so, we saw about 440 patients in the eye clinic and around 170 came for dental work, both topping the previous day's totals. We had dinner at 6:30 and shared experiences around the table, before either playing games or just hanging out checking emails, phoning home or visiting with each other. It was the end of a good day.

Wednesday, November 16
Everybody got a good night's sleep after the hard work of Tuesday. In my experience, it is usually finally Tuesday night before one gets acclimated to the 9 hour time difference with Austin. We breakfasted and I led a devotion based on 1 Corinthians 12 which discusses the necessity within the body of Christ for different skills and talents, all of which are used and inspired by the same Holy Spirit. The clinics began on time and without a hitch. Traffic to each clinic was fairly steady all day long and we had almost 500 vision patients and 252 dental patients by the end of the day. At this pace, and if the weather cooperates, we will end up with about the same or more patients for each clinic than we had last November. The Lutheran Hour team was able to show a portion of the Jesus Film Tuesday night and planned on showing a movie about David tonight, then one about Jeremiah Thursday and yet another film Friday. Even though the clinic ends Friday afternoon, the LHM staff will encourage church attendance the following Sunday with the Friday screening. After dinner tonight, we met to discuss recreation options for Saturday while other teams are returning from their sites. We had several power outages, and since the Internet is iffy at this point, I am going to post these abbreviated descriptions of our comings and goings for now and fill in more details later.

After the power failures
We had many laughes in the dark as I got into a competition with Josh.   We had a shootout between the apps on my Android phone and his iPad.  My phone had a flashlight app, his had goofy screensavers.  My phone had Angry Birds, of course he matched me since this game was born on the iPad.  It went on and on, back and forth, until we were all laughing to the point of tears.  It was a combination of exhaustion and silliness that was sublime.