The Clinic Begins in Kibera

We had breakfast at 5:45 and did a daily devotion that I love on the first day of a trip by Oswald Chambers called “What is a Missionary?”. It stresses the need to focus on the one who sent you, Jesus, and noton the many problems and suffering that will surround you. If you remember who sent you and concentrate on the mission at hand you will be effective, while it is possible if you get distracted by every need you encounter, you will not accomplish anything, let alone what you came to do. After breakfast, we got in the van at 6:30 and our new team members got their first ride through the slum as everyone was leaving for work. The hustle and bustle is amazing. We arrived at the church at 7am to get an early start on setting up the clinic, with a goal of seeing our first patients at 8:30am. We succeeded in that, but we had the usual first day shakedown issues that always occur when new team members, new and old volunteers and leaders who know the “right way” to do things such as myself try to get a big undertaking running for the first time. There are belches of smoke, fits and starts and finally the engine starts to run smoothly. By the end of the day, most bottlenecks and glitches had been overcome. We had many wonderful experiences, making friends with new volunteers, getting to know our new Pastor, Rakary Care and others. The local church and the Diocese have done a very good job of advertising the clinic, both in radio spots and via a wonderful little church lady with a bullhorn. She came to meet me late in the morning and I told her we were an eyeglass clinic and could do nothing for her throat! She laughed and probably was convinced that I am crazy. At the end of the day, she may be right! Around 3pm we had to shut the gate to any more patients, since we had around 125 people waiting to get into the clinic already on the church grounds. We were able to serve everyone who was already there, shut down the clinic and be on the road back to hot showers and dinner by around 5pm. We saw 439 people total today for everything from distance or reading glasses to visits with our doctors for medications for itchy eyes, infections and other ailments as well as referring 10 people for cataract surgery to hospitals in Nairobi, a service that we pay for. Everyone was exhausted once we got back to the Scripture House, since we hadn’t stopped for lunch but opted for quick drinks of water and a snack here and there.

As I said at the end of my last post, this trip has been marked by unusually bad glitches in communication, first and foremost no access to a phone that we could call home on until today and still no Internet in the Scripture House where we are staying. We have lots of great pictures that I haven’t been able to upload yet, so keep an eye on the blog at least until after we are back next week. I will continue to work until there is plenty of material about the trip readily available here.

Sunday in Nairobi

As mentioned, Lupe indeed did wander down to the kitchen at 4am, I followed an hour later with my camera and found him chopping up about a quarter of a pig, while our two cooks were working on eggs, hand made tortillas and other breakfast taco fixings under Lupe’s direction. Lupe had brought some spices with him, but his salsa was taken away from him during one of the airport searches. It didn’t matter, he managed to make an incredible salsa with fresh ingredients anyway. The 40 or so who had breakfast before heading out to their respective missions were all surprised and it was a wonderful, joyous occasion. On many of our previous trips, it was much more subdued as we encouraged each other and talked about the different challenges and opportunities that each clinic location presented. This time it was pretty raucous and more than one of the other team leaders tried to trade me two or more team members for Lupe. No way, no deal!
As the different groups all loaded up their vans for travel to their respective clinic locations, the leaders all gathered in a prayer circle and Paul lifted up a beautiful prayer asking for a safe and effective mission for all involved and, of course, that many would be saved by hearing the message of salvation through Christ that we would be spreading throughout the country.
We met our driver for the week, Joseph, and he has turned out to be a wonderful guy to be around. He has a good sense of humor, although he didn’t quite know what to make of Howard and I going round and round at first when Howard insisted I ride up front with Joseph in the “Suicide Seat.” This was a reference to a previous trip in which we came to a screeching halt inches from the side of a large truck at a roundabout with Pastor Kevin in the same spot. As the day went on, Joseph told me I was the funniest passenger he had ever worked for. I’m not sure it was a compliment, but we have already had lots of laughs together.
We arrived at Kawangware for the 10am church service. It was wonderful, as usual, and features many readings, several traditional Lutheran hymns and a wide variety of music performed by 2 adult choirs, the teem choir we had been blessed by the previous night and some incredible praise songs led by members of the Conquerors and others. Pastor Zedekiah asked me to come up early in the service to thank Redeemer for the donation of a large bongo and T-Shirts for the teen choir. I expressed greetings from Redeemer and told the congregation we are happy to help them in their ministry in any way we can. Later in the service, I had the pleasure of introducing Tom Krueger as we celebrated the water well project soon coming online with fresh water for the church compound and for the Living Water ministry to the nearby community that it will provide. Tom and I both praised God for this miracle and he also made a point of stressing that we always receive many more blessings than we could ever give when we serve them and their ministry. Leslie proved to be a human “kid magnet” as every little kid flocked to her and sat with us during the bulk of the service. It was a great experience. Pastor’s sermon was based on readings from the Gospel of John and we were doubly blessed in that this Sunday proved to be a communion Sunday. The whole team was communed by Pastor Zedekiah. When all was said and done, church let out around 1:15 and we stayed for a little while to see which congregation members might be coming to Kibera to help us get up and running faster and to also renew acquantances with many of our friends who were in church with us.
From Kawangware, we went to the Junction for lunch, a nice restaurant in a pretty nice area of town. It was chosen for good, reasonably priced food and for its proximity in the same mall to Nakumat, a large store similar to a Super Wal-Mart. It was very busy, being nearly 4 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, but we did get snacks, water, etc., for the early part of the week and we headed to the Springs of Life Lutheran Church to go over the setup of the clinic with the Pastor.
Catherine already had our footlockers and other equipment at the church and we were not able to actually get to setup in the sanctuary for Monday because there was a function going on. We did get some ideas for improved traffic flow for this week that we might try. We went back to our compound, dinner and a good night’s sleep.
Our Internet and phone access has been very spotty and we hope for that to improve as time goes on. All of us are well and are very geared up to start the clinic.

Saturday, Lupe's Birthday in Nairobi

Saturday May 14th, Lupe’s Birthday in Nairobi
Our day began with a 5am breakfast for those of us going to a wild game park on the city limits of Nairobi. There were less than 5 hours of sleep possible, but in fact we all got anywhere from zero sleep to maybe 2 hours of on and off sleep at the most. This early hour was necessary to give us the most chance of seeing nocturnal animals as they began heading off to bed themselves. It also helps to shock us into a time zone that is 8 hours ahead of our own CST so that we will be more effective when we start work Monday at the clinic. The entrance fee was a nice surprise as it was only $40 in U.S. money. Those of us who had gone during any previous November trip remembered it being $60. We all road in the big bus that we had taken from the airport the night before and it was pretty full, with about 25 of us opting for the game park. Others were able to leave at more respectable hours to see the Karen Blitzen House and Museum and a factory where beads and beaded products are made. Our first hour and a half of the safari was just OK, during which we saw plenty of giraffes up close and personal, elands, water buffalo, water bucks, ostriches and severals species of birds, including crested cranes. We felt like it had been a good, but not great morning so far. All that changed. Leslie and another member of the group spotted a lioness in a distant tree that the rest of us completely missed. We had our driver, Boniface, back up about 50 yards for a better view and then those of us with a range of fancy cameras proceeded to work our zooms pretty hard, since we were at least a couple of hundred yards away from her. I wound up with a very nice shot of her lounging in a nook about halfway up the tree. Not long after that, we ran across quite a few velvet monkeys near the road and enticed them in closer to us by throwing them a banana and some nuts and dried fruit. They put on quite a show for us and we were a little concerned they might jump into a bus window in order to get some more goodies. We rounded out the end of the trip with some great pictures of baboons hamming it up right near the exit of the park. Our next stop was the Veranda restaurant, where we sat outside and enjoyed a beautiful birthday lunch with everyone singing Happy Birthday and God’s Blessings to You in four part Lutheran harmony for our friend Lupe. We got back to the Norwegian compound about 2:30 and I got a much needed 20 minute nap, after which I went over to the LCMS World Missions office and began work on 2 computer that need some maintenance. This was also the first chance to let our loved ones know via email that we arrived safely and I was able to post our first report about our travel. I walked the several hundred yards back to the Scripture House for worship, which was led by Shauen Trump, our LCMS missionary here. He had a wonderful, inspiring message that explained the unusual Moroccan derivation of his first name also was very encouraging about how the Lord protects those he calls, based on Psalm 121. I’ll never pray that Psalm the say way again. We relaxed for a while, I bought a shirt from the local ladies and then we had dinner around 7pm. We fellowshipped with our fellow missionaries on our last evening as a large group, some of us did some refresher training on their assigned clinic stations and Howard and I ended the evening by attending a leaders meeting to go over final details for the week. It was led by Gus Jacob, Paul Althoff and Kevin Pieper of Salem Lutheran Church and I found it very uplifting. What great mentors they have been to all of the churches that have been blessed to share in their mission ministry. Lupe was in bed when I got back to the room because he had arranged a very special treat. He was going to work with our cooks starting at 4am to make breakfast tacos for the early teams that would be having breakfast at 6:30am before their travels to the outlying clinics. It is impossible to stop him from using his special gifts for hospitality. Of course, we would never try, but this does explain why we gain weight on every trip he is involved with!

Travel May 12 and 13th

Got to Kenya safe and sound. See details below!
Travel May 12 and 13th
Tom, Leslie and Lupe all arrived at my house a little after 8am and we stowed all of our baggage in the bed of my truck under my handy dandy tarp and cargo net in case we ran into rain. It’s a good thing we did. We made the short ride out to Manor and were joined around 8:45 by Howard, Martha and Ralph. We were surprised to find out that Louise had fallen ill and would not be making the trip. Leslie transferred to Howard’s Expedition and we followed them through blinding rain, with water stacking up on the road to the point that we were forced to slow down for fear of hydroplaning. We made our traditional stop in Brenham at Scoops for Blue Bell and a rest stop before heading to Bush International in Houston. The rain let up during that leg of the trip and it was dry when we arrived at the Kettle Restaurant on the outskirts of the airport for a final American meal. This would be the last meal for a while where we had any say so over what we would be eating, so most of the group had the soup and salad bar, while Ralph and I indulged in good old fashioned burgers and fries. It’s nice to know what the source of the meat in your burger is, something you are not always sure of when you travel the world!
We arrived at the airport at 1:15 as planned to meet with many of our old friends from previous mission trips and began to also make new friends. We placed our gallon Zip-Loc bags with our liquids, razors and other sharp objects in a foot locker designated for this purpose. Those of us assigned to carry an Autorefractor, Howard, Tom, Ralph and myself also place our small carry-on item in footlockers and noted the number, so we could retrieve our stuff in Nairobi. The Autorefractors are amazing devices that automatically examine eyes for distance vision and produce a thermal paper prescription when all goes as planned. They are sensitive and expensive, so we keep them with us at all times, since the vision clinics could not be run as quickly, efficiently or effectively without them. They are a key piece of equipment. We cleared security in about an hour, it was very warm and several of us got varying levels of extra attention, including the dreaded full body scan. I got one in London last year and was the butt of many jokes, so I had no sympathy! We boarded our plane after last minute cell phone calls to loved ones and took off about 15 minutes late due to weather delays. The first half of the ride was pretty bumpy, so the flight attendants really earned their pay serving dinner. For once, the food was not half bad, the choice was curry chicken or lasagna. I had the latter and it filled me up. Dessert was a very good Eli’s strawberry cheesecake from Chicago. I finally started to nod off about the time we were nearing the east coast and there was a really big bump that awoke many of us and the ride became rough for about another half an hour. I probably got a total of three hours of on and off again sleep on the way to London, which is the flight that we really try to sleep on in order to get lined up more easily with Nairobi time. The pilot made up the little bit of lost time from the late start and we arrived in London right on time at 7:30am local time.
We had about a 3 hour layover at Heathrow, taking most of the first hour going through security once again. As usual, several of us were pretty thoroughly searched, both our persons and our possessions. I had bought a small snow globe in Houston as a little gift for Catherine, our liaison in Nairobi, and suddenly realized that it would probably count as something with liquid in it. Duh! I had carefully stowed all of my gels, liquids and pastes in a footlocker in Houston to avoid the hassle of yet another check and here I was with a snow globe with the space shuttle in it. The security lady pointed out it didn’t even have snow in it, but shiny little floating stars. She had mercy on me and let me keep it with a laugh, even letting the guy x-raying the baggage know what to expect. Our flight from London to Nairobi was much smoother than the first leg of the trip, with mostly sunny weather along the way. The food was not very good and pretty much met my low expectations. I ate it anyway, since I needed to keep body and soul together. It reminded me of my Dad when I was a kid telling me “David, you will eat that AND you will like it!” It was the part about liking it that was always particularly hard.
We arrived in Nairobi a little before 9pm local time, got visitor’s visas, collected up all of our footlockers, exchanged some of our money for Kenyan shillings at a rate of 82.75 per dollar. You have so many 1000 shilling bills when you are done you feel like a billionaire. We keep some U.S. dollars because there are tourist attractions and some merchants along the way that prefer them for payment. We loaded up the footlockers into a large truck and took the 45 minute ride to the Norwegian Lutheran Scripture House compound where the whole group will stay for the first 2 nights. It will be the Redeemer team’s home for the entire mission trip. Once there, we brought the footlockers into the compound, retrieved our personal items from them and got our room and roommate assignments before hitting the sack at around midnight. Saturday will bring excursions to local attractions, shopping for snacks, bottled water and other supplies for the week ahead, some afternoon training in various clinic duties, a team leader’s meeting and the day will conclude with a group worship service and then dinner. Sunday will be a travel day for the other teams to get to their respective locations. Those of us in Nairobi will worship at the church in Kawangware and celebrate the progress on the water well with the congregation. We will then go to lunch at a nice restaurant before taking all of our vision supplies and equipment to Springs of Life Lutheran Church in Kibera where we will be serving.

Preparation for May 2011 Kenyan Mission

Kenya Spring 2011

It's time for an update on how things are shaping up for our May 12-22, 2011 mission to the Springs of Life Lutheran Church in the Nairobi slum of Kibera. At his point, we will have 6 team members: Howard and Martha Faske, Tom Krueger, myself and two newcomers, Lupe Barragan and Leslie Sledge. Ralph and Louise Genz will also be coming with us, but will be helping to start a new rural clinic site at Chesenende, several hours northwest of Nairobi. We went to Salem Lutheran Church in Tomball Saturday, April 8th for training and orientation. It was a real blessing to see our old friends from previous missions and to meet the new people who are on fire to serve the Lord in east Africa. The morning was spent listening to Pastor Emmanuel Agook explain the basic beliefs of Islam and the best ways to witness to the many Muslims we will encounter. In the afternoon, we all took two sessions of training, Lupe and Leslie learned to do the eyechart exam and the autorefractor eye exam, while Martha and I learned about lens pulling according to prescriptions and the available inventory of lenses, as well as boning up on the eyechart. It is important for us to be cross-trained for this trip, since we will more than likely only have 6 team members to cover the 6 stations of the clinic. There is a possibility that one additional missionary from Salem will join the group in London and could be tapped to work with our team. We are all very excited to be going back to Kibera, an area where we held their very first vision clinic last May. During that trip, we saw nearly 2,500 patients, mostly Christians on Monday and Tuesday who had heard about the clinic through church and other sources and mostly Muslims Wednesday through Friday who had heard by word of mouth. It was a pleasure to share the love of Christ with all who came to be served and we look forward with great anticipation to seeing all of the friends we made a year ago at Springs of Life. We will be going to the church in Kawangware on Sunday to worship and to celebrate the dedication of the water well project. If the past is any indicator, chruch will last from 3 to 4 hours, with children being let out of the service in the middle to go to Sunday School. After church and the water well celebration, we will go out for lunch and then will proceed to the Springs of Life Lutheran church to unload and unpack our equipment and supplies in preparation for the Monday-Friday vision clinic. I will be posting updates at the end of each day. We will be 8 hours ahead of Central Standard Time, so new articles and pictures should begin being posted between 8 and 10pm Nairobi time, meaning you should look for them between maybe noon and 3pm.

An Unexpected Brush with God

I had a really neat experience early this morning. I took my truck into the shop for some routine maintenance and when I got home, my Internet was down. I had planned on working on a shop full of computers, all needing Internet access to perform the repairs. Instead, God gave me a little extra time to reflect on what had just happened and I wrote it up. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did being part of this beautiful morning.
God's blessings on your day!
Dave

An Unexpected Brush with God
I went to drop my truck off at my local mechanic for a 75,000 mile going over from stem to stern this morning. I only live about 6 blocks from the shop and was going to walk home. For those of you that don’t know me, I have a computer repair business and one of my customers is this old time mechanic shop. I’m friends with all of the service writers and have always jokingly called an older porter there “Easy Money” whenever I would see him. He’s always smiling and has a good word for everybody he encounters as he ferries customers home in their cars or pumps gas at one of the last full service gas stations in the world. I soon found out the secret to his wonderful attitude. As we got into the truck, he commented on how nice it was. I told him I had bought it used a year and a half ago after a wreck in which I should have been killed and that it was in the split second after realizing I didn’t have a scratch on me I had felt in no uncertain terms that the Lord was blessing my going on my first mission trip to Africa. Before that, I was wavering. He then told me of a wonderful ministry he has at a nursing home, having been there the night before. He always brings some familiar Scripture with him like “For God so loved the world……” and sings songs like “Jesus Loves Me” with the seniors. Outsiders always wanted to know why it was such a happy place when he was around. He always just points to the sky and smiles. When we pulled up to my house, we dallied for a minute or two longer, sharing our witness with each other. We then held hands and he prayed a most powerful and moving prayer over both of our ministries. And to think I was going to walk home. That early morning 6 block ride was something God had planned all along. Who knows? It may lead to opening one or both of our hearts to new ministry opportunities, perhaps with each other. One thing is for sure, I need to be certain I’m always using my “Jesus eyes” when I see what appear to be ordinary people in everyday circumstances. You never know who He will place in your path as an incredible reminder of His boundless love. What a way to start the day!

More pictures and a funny story

Kenya Mission - Fall 2010

Click the photo above to see all of the pictures that have been added to the mission photo album so far. Now there are around 260 of them and I'll be adding captions and replacing some of them with better ones as the team continues to get their pictures to me.

I forgot to mention a very klutzy move on my part after we had cleared security at Bush International Airport and were already out in the arrivals area with our footlockers waiting for a truck from Salem to pick them up. Tammy and Jack had come to pick up Pastor Kevin and I was waiting to help stack my footlockers with the others. I stepped back to get a hug from Tammy, forgetting there was about an eight inch drop off of a curb right behind me. I started dancing backwards, falling through various bystanders as I tried feverishly to regain my balance. It seemed like I was falling, falling for ages when I finally crashed through a bunch of empty airport carts and ended up on my backside. It felt like I was on Dancing with the Stars for over 100 yards by the time I came to a stop. Everyone was looking to see if I'd broken my neck or not. Only my pride and my backside were the worse for the wear, and I got up and made sure I still got my hug! After nearly 30 hours and 8,000 miles of travel, leave it to me to make a smooth move like that near the very end of the journey.