4-29-2014 Tuesday was another big day at the clinic in many ways

I was right.  The majority of the team slept very well after the initial day of the clinic.  We had breakfast and were on the road at 7:30 to begin another day.  There were only a few people waiting this morning, unlike yesterday when there were reports of people queuing up at 6am.  We unlocked or footlockers, got the various stations setup and ready to go and then waited for Pastor James, the evangelists and the rest of the team to join us for a morning devotion.  We began with another Swahili song and then I did a reading from Acts 2:42-47, which is about the fellowship of the early church, the miracles that were performed and their number being added to daily.  I pointed out that every one of the things mentioned in this passage occurs at every clinic that we have conducted and had been evident already on Monday.  Eyesight was restored to the blind through surgeries that we will fund, we shared in great fellowship in many ways, both in our work and during our sporadic breaks.  The body of Christ had also grown through the 21 new believers that the Holy Spirit blessed us with on Monday.  Our team is truly blessed to be a part of this wonderful experience.  We closed with a prayer and the clinic was opened. 

By 10:30, we had already seen about 225 people at the registration table.  By the end of the day, we had served 545 people, leaving us just 5 short of 1,000 for the first two days.  Thank you, Jesus!  Of course, seeing large numbers of people is one thing that might be expected in a densely populated slum.  But a great deal of the credit for the success of our first two days at Kibera lies squarely on the preparation of the local congregation at the Springs of Life Lutheran Church.  When I first saw Pastor James on Sunday, I had asked if any of our friends from the other Nairobi churches where we have served in the past would be supplying us with volunteers, he was adamant that the whole clinic would be staffed only by volunteers from the Kibera church.  He said some of our friends might visit, but that this would be a partnership between our team and this church.  I was sad at first, because I wanted to see my other good friends.  But, after some thought, I realized that this was a large step for the people of this flock, since they had never been able in the past to entertain a clinic without some outside help.  Not only that, when the volunteers arrived Monday, all of them were in medical scrubs, a nice display of the teamwork that had been instilled in the young people since our last visit two years ago.  The high volume of patients we have already treated is a direct result of the commitment and dedication of the Pastor, the elders and the members have shown this week.  Our friend Helen has been in the neighborhood with a bullhorn and Emmanuel arranged for a local radio station to interview him in Swahili and me in English on Monday about the clinic.  By Monday afternoon, almost every facet of the clinic was being manned by the volunteers and our roles as team members were mostly relegated to helping solve bottlenecks, managing the traffic control and flow of the clinic and providing encouragement and any support that the volunteers required.  We never looked busy all day, which is the way a well-run clinic should look. In fact Pastor James commented that we weren’t moving people through quickly enough, which is what a first impression would tell you, but at the end of the day, a steady drip, drip, drip gets the job done.  What a blessing to have everyone pulling together from both our team and the church.

Three more member of Evelyn’s family were treated this afternoon.  I was able to get to know them, Nancy and her children, as I squired them around the clinic.  We had a nice discussion ranging from the ministry the she and Evelyn are a part of at their large church to personal situations that she was facing.  We prayed together in a corner over everything that was on her mind, it was a very moving experience.  I am looking forward to seeing Evelyn’s father tomorrow morning for a cataract exam and possible referral for surgery to correct it.  There were also several other situations today that always come to a team leader’s attention where we have to decide how much help we can give individuals out of our limited funds.  Sometime we agree to pay half for a procedure if the family and community can come up with the balance, thus stretching our resources further.  Other times, it’s a decision like whether to help a child versus maybe 4 cataract surgeries for adults.  I’m not sure Solomon could figure some of these out and really feel good about the decision either way it fell.  Please pray for guidance for me when these circumstances arise. 

We were surprised to find when we returned from work that our compound was experiencing a power failure.  I wasn’t concerned about the thought of cold showers or no lights, this has happened before.  I was concerned that we couldn’t recharge the four dead batteries for our eye exam equipment.  Rosa Mystica fired up a big generator and I got a cold shower and fell asleep for a brief nap to the drone of the generator.  I slept through my alarm and went down to dinner about 10 minutes late.  We later learned through Catherine that there had been a nationwide power failure caused by a substation going down.  Power was restored shortly after dinner. I already have two batteries ready to go and am hopeful that the other two will complete overnight.  Life in another country can get interesting, you learn to go with the flow from these trips, it’s a good lesson and builds character!

After work tomorrow night, we will be going to a Brazilian steakhouse for our one nice night out on the town and our friends Catherine and Shara will be joining us.  We will have a brief time after the clinic to shower and change, so if there is any blog posting tomorrow, it will probably be fairly terse and factual rather than my usual ramblings.  Blessings to all, please keep us in your prayers for a continued safe and effective mission.  Glory be to God!