More Fun at Heathrow

We arrived at Heathrow about half an hour after our flight to Nairobi had boarded and was probably already on it's way.  We've been switched over to Turkish Airways and have to fly to Istanbul at 4:30pm London time,  This is another 6 hour layover now here in London and we will have have a four hour layover in Istanbul and then will take a flight at about 1:00 am to Nairobi, arriving at around 7:30am.  We will set a new record for the longest trip by a Redeemer team, which isn't easy, considering our problems on one of the trips caused by the volcano in Iceland.  I have been trying to reach our friend Catherine in Nairobi to alert her to our situation.  We could conceivably still go out to Lake Naivasha directly from the airport if she can arrange for our luggage to be delivered to our hotel.

Hurray! I just got an email from Catherine and all might not be lost.  She's working on us still doing our usual activities Saturday since we really do need to get used to Kenyan time.  If we can sleep from Istanbul to Nairobi, it might not be too bad.  It'll just be tough not getting a shower until Saturday afternoon.  Travel is glamorous!

I'll be able to cross Istanbul off of my bucket list now, wait a minute, it wasn't there!  Our big hurdle now is whether American Airlines can manage to get our luggage to Turkish Air.  If nothing else major happens, this should all work out pretty well, considering what's happened so far.

Please pray for travel mercies and I'll post another report as soon as I can.  

Travel Woes at DFW

We had a nearly four hour extra layover at DFW due to mechanical problems our plane experienced in London prior to coming to pick us up. We are half an hour from landing in London and our flight to Nairobi is scheduled to board 10 minutes later. Impossible with security taking up to an hour or more. I've already prayed for a miracle or that the Lord would use us as witnesses to others in all of this. My understanding at this point is that we would probably have about a 12 hour layover and be put on a Kenyan Airways flight that arrives Saturday morning.  I'd hate for my new team members to miss our long awaited Lake Naivasha photo safari. Time will tell.

I managed to get four or five hours of pretty good sleep on the flight and feel ready to do battle with whatever we face at the airport.  The flight was rough and the fasten seat belt sign wasn't dimmed until less than an hour to touch down.  Our plane is a 777-300 and had ample leg room, newer seats that recline more and the food was better than British Air. These flights were booked through BA but we've flown American so far. I had chicken and rice for dinner and it was pretty good. 

May 28 Travel to Dallas

William and I met Pastor Kevin at Redeemer this morning around 8:30 to load up the footlockers for the trip in Kevin’s truck, get the paperwork together that we would need for the mission and hand over the petty cash that we will need for incidental expenses.  We drove to the airport and met the rest of the team at the American Airlines check-in counter.  We got our luggage and supplies cecked and then found out that our flight to Dallas would be delayed by about 25 minutes.  This turned out not to matter much to us, since our Dallas to London leg of the trip has been delayed by about 3 hours.  We will now arrive in London around 9am local time and only have about an hour and  a half at the most to get to our terminal, clear security and board the flight to Nairobi.  It should be interesting.  During our time here at DFW, William was excited because he found a Bennigan’s and was able to get a Monte Cristo sandwich, one of his favorites.  He met the rest of us at TGI Friday’s, where we had a leisurely lunch.  

The team at DFW TGI Friday's

William's infatuation

The menu looked like it had the British pound sign next to all of the prices and we had a good laugh at Ralph’s expense when He asked our waitress what the exchange rate is.  Wishful thinking, we still have a long flight to London ahead of us tonight.  This is the flight that we encourage the team to sleep on as much as possible, since it will help with overcoming the 8 hour difference between Austin and Nairobi.  We are all very excited to finally be enroute to this latest mission to bring our vision clinic to the Springs of Life Lutheran Church in the slum of Kibera.  More to follow as our trip progresses. 

The Team was Commissioned at Redeemer at all three Services on Sunday

The team and I were blessed by the congregation at all of our services this past Sunday as we were being sent again into the mission field.  I got to say a few words about our mission and then Pastor Kevin prayed over the mission team.  After the third service, we all got to meet various members of the other's families and I'm sure that it gave those not familiar with the Vision for Africa project the comfort of knowing that our safety is of the highest importance and that this will be an incredible experience as we go around the world to serve people in the name of Jesus.  The pictures shown here and in the link below are just the beginning of the photo album for this mission.  I hope you like them.  Stay tuned to this space.  We will report on our comings and goings as our communications allow.  Please keep a safe and effective mission in your prayers.

Spring 2015 Kenya Mission

Pastor Kevin explains our mission to Kibera

Dave gives a bit of history about the vision clinics

Time to Saddle Up again!

We're a little over a week away from our next mission to Kenya to do a vision clinic as part of Vision for Africa.  Our Redeemer team is blessed to have 2 educators with us this time, William and Amanda.  We are going later in May than we've ever gone just so we could include some teachers, college students, etc.  Kailey has just finished finals and will also be with us.  While this causes the airfares to be a little more, since we're bumping up against the tourist season, it is balanced out by more people being able to come with us at this time of year.

We will be serving at the Springs of Life Lutheran Church in the slum of Kibera.  We have many friends there, as we've done multiple clinics at this location since the first team that I led there in the Spring of 2010.  School in Kenya runs year round, they have 3 terms of 3 months each with a month off in between.  The church school is in session, so in addition to helping with the vision clinic, our teachers should be able to interact with the students and teachers and bring another kind of blessing to our friends at the church.

We hope to serve between 3,000 to 5,000 people during the week of the clinic.  All who come will have the Gospel shared with them as they enter the church grounds.  During the vision clinic, they will receive distance glasses, reading glasses, referrals for cataract and other eye surgeries and medications from our team of three to four local Kenyan doctors.  And, everyone will be prayed over individually as their vision needs are addressed.  It's quite an experience to behold!

I am thrilled to have a team this time that is a mix of veterans and first timers.  The veterans will help with getting the clinic up and running smoothly and will renew old friendships.  The newcomers will give us old hands the blessing of seeing their excitement, and we will draw on their energy and their sense of awe as they realize that they have heeded the Lord's call on their lives and as it dawns on them that they really are in Africa!  It can be a little surreal.  I love to see the look on their faces when they spot their first giraffe, zebra or hippo.  We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto!

Stay tuned.  I will try to publish daily reports as long as we have Internet and electricity, both of which can be spotty at times.  We always have a local Kenyan cell phone and are able to phone home to let our families know we have arrived safely in Nairobi on the first Friday night there.  Please keep us in your prayers for a safe and effective mission as we share the love of Christ by helping to take care of the many human needs we will encounter.

Dates have been set for the next Kenyan Vision Clinic Mission

Miss Jane with her admirers!

Always wanted to see a giraffe or zebra up close, or be part of a mission that spreads the Gospel and provides for people’s needs?  Well, now you can.  Redeemer Lutheran Church, as part of the Vision for Africa Project, will be going to back to Kenya from May 28-June7 for a vision clinic and you’re invited.  We will be serving in the Nairobi area with many of the same friends, doctors and other volunteers that we have come to know and love on previous visits.  For more information, please contact Pastor Kevin Westergren at 512-459-1500 or Dave DeVore at 512-323-5343.  Please browse the rest of this blog to view pictures and read stories from our previous trips. To God be the Glory!

First Reflections on the November 2014 Mission to Kenya

Joy at seeing with her new glasses

Now that a week has passed since we returned from Nairobi, the jet lag has subsided and I've had some time to reflect on the highlights of the trip and how God worked through us this time.  I’m sure there will be several more posts regarding this mission trip as I review more pictures and share stories with the rest of my team that I may not be aware of at this point.  Our general statistics were that we saw over 2500 patients in the clinic during the week, all were given a presentation of the Gospel and were prayed over individually in the triage station of the clinic.  More than 100 people came to Christ as their Savior during the week and there were many other blessings both given and received by our team.

Click here to see the November 2014 Mission pictures

From a high level project standpoint, there were two firsts that the Redeemer team was able to accomplish.  One involved our travel.  We were able to fly direct to London this time instead of driving to Houston, dropping off our footlockers and luggage at Bush International Airport, getting long-term parking and then going through security.  Normally, there would be a good two hours after all of that waiting to board the plane at around 4pm to London.  All of this added up to at least an extra half a day of travel.  British Airways began non-stop flights from Austin last April.  This was our first chance to give it a try.  Pastor Kevin picked me up at 2:30pm at my house and we met the rest of the team at 3pm at Bergstrom.  It only took a half an hour to clear security, we had time to have a leisurely dinner and the flight left for London at 6:15pm.  What a difference!  Even if the price was a couple of hundred dollars more, when you factor in gas for the round trip to Houston and the expense of long-term parking, it would still be worth it.  Because we bought our tickets well ahead of time, we actually paid a little less for airfare than if we had gone to Houston.  The only downside to the travel was that there is only a one hour and fifteen minute gap between our flight getting to Heathrow and the one to Nairobi taking off.  We actually got to London a few minutes early and we needed every bit of that extra time.  Even though we got into the Fast Trak line to get through the passport check, the actual security check was a s slow as ever and both Ralph and I got torn apart.  We were among the last of the stragglers to be bused out to our waiting plane on the tarmac.  When we go with larger groups, we may need to get the attention of British Air and Heathrow ground personnel to get us shepherded through.

How do these reading glasses look?

The second pioneering thing that we did on this trip was to order the reading glasses that we would need through a supplier in Nairobi that Catherine had found.  This meant that we could take two less footlockers with us than we normally would have had to this time around.  The quality and the price of the glasses was fine, so we left all of our readers that were left over in Nairobi, after we had taken an inventory of what remained.  This will allow us to order for our next mission and will also mean that we will have three less footlockers to deal with next summer.  One reason this is good is that there are a number of less than reputable organizations that enter Kenya under the guise of doing non-profit work that smuggle a lot of contraband into the country and the scrutiny we have had to undergo as a result of this seems to increase with each trip.  Having less baggage simplifies things greatly.

Over the next week or ten days, I’ll be adding more stories about what happened of note on the trip and several more pictures from other team members.  Here is the first of these stories and it deeply moved all of us.  It happened Friday afternoon, on the last day of the clinic.  We always bring a budget of $1500 for each vision clinic team for the purpose of paying for cataract surgeries or other procedures at local Nairobi hospitals.  The average cataract referral costs us about $50, so this means that 30 people regain the sight in at least one eye on each of our missions.  We had already approved 31 cataract surgeries, one more than the budget and had also agreed to help with half payment for a pair of contact lenses for a young boy with keratoconus (a condition where the eyes are shaped like the end of an American football rather than being more spherical) if the family and community could raise the other half.  I thought we were more than done with surgeries and we were already beginning to assess when we have to close the clinic in order to get packed up and have a closing devotion with the volunteers from the congregation. 

God had another plan and brought us a 3 year old little girl named Blessing (shown here with her mother, me and Dr. Patrick).  She had been born with cataracts on both eyes.  Her young mother had been born the same way.  Our doctors had seen this hereditary condition before and recommended surgery for both eyes and said the cost would be around 20,000 Kenyan shillings or approximately $250.  They weren't sure if that would be for one eye or both, but that general anesthesia would be necessary.  Normally, we fund one cataract surgery at a time, mostly for older people because of the chance of infection and the possibility of permanently losing sight in both eyes.  In the case of a young one like Blessing, the risk of going under anesthesia twice far outweighed these other risk factors, so both eyes would need to be corrected at the same time. I asked that the doctors make some calls and firm up the cost that we were talking about and I also asked if there was any way the family and the community could come together to fund raise for half of the cost, as is our custom in cases like this.  After phone consultations with their colleagues at various clinics, our doctors reported that both eyes, including anesthesia would be a little less than 40,000 KSH.  After a few more calls, we learned that there was an angel donor at one of the clinics and if we could arrange for cash to be paid at the time of the procedure, he would pay about a third of it.  After hearing this and a little prayer, I was moved to OK the operation and little Blessing will have the best Christmas gift of her young life, sight in both eyes!  Thank you, Jesus!  But wait, the story gets better.  Since our return to the States, I have spoken via Skype with Catherine.  There was a similar case to Blessing’s at one of our clinics in a rural area and a program to help children in desperate circumstances was found to help pay for his care.  We are now hopeful that Blessing also qualifies.  Looking back on it, I believe that the Lord brought this little one to our attention at the eleventh hour to teach us yet another faith lesson.  He was going to care for His child all along, He just wanted to invite us along for the ride.  I’m so glad that we accepted His invitation.  Matthew 25:40  “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’