Our final day was busy from start to finish. I led the devotion with a short talk on the
end of the 2nd chapter of the Book of Acts and compared the early
church to what had occurred during our week in Kibera.
I was in the triage area most of the day, helping to keep up
with the bottleneck that invariable forms at that station of the clinic. As with past missions, all of the team
members jumped in to more than one area during the day as the need arose. Even though we needed to begin winding things
down at3:30 or so in order to see our last patients before 5pm, we still served
522 people, the most yet. There were
some disappointed folks at the end, as we began to completely run out of weaker
lenses, some readers and most medications.
We had to calmly explain that this was normal, that if they had come
earlier in the clinic, we would have had what they needed. Kenyans wait until the last minute for many
things, and the results are not always good.
We could only invite them to join us at our next vision clinic in
November. We ended the week with a total
of 2220 patients being seen. All of them
had been given a Gospel presentation, had their eye problems treated by us and
our doctors and had been prayed over individually (with only a few exceptions,
some really didn’t want a specific prayer so we blessed them and routed them
for treatment). We saw several hundred
Muslims and nearly every conversation was cordial and respectful as we showed
Jesus’ love for all people and shared His desire that all be saved by His name.
The end of the day was a scramble to pack up our gear and
supplies, inventory the reading glasses we would leave in Nairobi so we can
order for our fall mission and prepare to have a final gathering of the
volunteers and our team to celebrate what God had done through us and for each
of us. We sang a few songs together for
one last time and then we awarded our Certificates of Appreciation to all of
our volunteers, with each one coming up individually to be recognized and have
their picture taken with Bishop Bakari and myself in my role as team
leader. We said our heartfelt goodbyes
and left Kibera a little before dark.
There was a very colorful sunset on our ride home.
We did have dinner at the Mediterranean Restaurant as
planned Friday night. Laura had begun
feeling ill early in the afternoon, so she stayed behind at Rosa Mystica to rest
up for our safari Saturday and the long trip home to Austin. Howard and Ione again had the excellent
lasagna, the portions are huge and I was barely able to finish mine. William had a thin crust pizza with a host of
toppings, Ralph had minestrone soup to calm a bad stomach and the others had
various pasta dishes and shrimp. It was all very good. We walked back to Rosa Mystica to pack our
belongings for the trip home, since we would not return there after our safari.
I got up at midnight to try to reserve aisle seats for
everybody and our Internet at the convent was down. I had better luck at 3am. While my laptop still wouldn’t connect, my
smartphone was able to take care of me, Ralph and William. The Faskes and Amanda were flying on the same
reservation and their confirmation number just wouldn’t work. A partial success was better than none at all
and I went back to sleep until morning.
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