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.’

Pictures of the November Kenya Mission are being posted

Come back often, I hope to have them all available with captions before this weekend is over.  Here is a link to the images below, just remember this is a work in progress and will take several more days to complete.  There were nearly 3,000 pictures to go through, the best 500 or so are being edited, cropped, sharpened, etc., added to the Google+ album and then will be gone through again.  My goal is to end up with 300-400 of the best of the best, have them in an order that tells the story of the past 10 days and then add captions to each so they make sense to our families, friends and followers of this blog.

Click here to see the Fall 2014 Kenya Mission pictures

After the pictures have all been processed and uploaded, I will be publishing at least one more article summarizing this trip, what it meant to us and the wonderful ways that God used us this time around.  He always has surprises in store for us and we are blessed abundantly each time we respond to His call on our lives.

To God be the Glory!

Sunday travel from London to Austin, home again! November 23

We boarded British Air Flight 191 to Austin nearly on time around 10:45am London time.  Although we got a slightly late start, the estimates on our in-flight entertainment screens still predict an arrival time of a little before 4pm Austin time this afternoon.  This will be a real blessing, and with any luck, we will clear customs, get our footlockers and personal baggage, and hope to arrive back at my place in central Austin by around 5:30pm.  Many times when we’ve flown out of Houston, I wasn’t home until 8pm or later after getting my truck from long term parking, loading up our gear and driving back to Redeemer.  I think we will all be in the best shape ever because of this.  We are just now over the western coast of Ireland and have about 9 hours remaining of a 10 hour flight.  I expect we will be eating soon and then I’ll try to get a little more sleep. 

Over the next few days, I will be getting my feet back on the ground, shaking off the jet lag from a 9 hour time difference and will celebrate Thanksgiving with Redeemer, friends and family. As always, I will be reflecting on what this trip has meant to us in the near future, the God things that we witnessed and were blessed to be a part of.  As stated earlier in this space, I will also begin tackling the job of sorting through several thousand pictures, selecting the best of those, making them even a little better and then will post them out on the web.  Stay tuned for the next week to 10 days as the finishing touches are put on my account of the trip, the images are published and we settle in on the dates for our next mission to Kenya in June of 2015.

Saturday at Fourteen Falls and travel to Heathrow, November 22

This was written beginning at about 11pm as we waited for our slightly delayed flight to London, which was to depart at 12:15am, worked on for a while as we approached London and at Heathrow. 

I did wake up at midnight Friday night and was able to get an aisle seat for myself, but when I tried for 45 minutes to check in for Martha, Howard and Ralph, the Internet connection at Rosa Mystica got flaky and the British Air web site was unresponsive. I tried again around 3am and also came up empty.  At 6am, I was able to take care of the Faskes, but Ralph’s booking had problems and he had to wait until we got to the airport to get a seat assignment.  After a night like that, I got one last shower at Rosa Mystica and finished packing.  We had breakfast with our driver Mambo and Barrack and said our goodbyes to the kitchen crew.  We loaded up the last of the cases of water from our rooms and our luggage and were on the road to Fourteen Falls by 8am.  We stopped and topped of the air in the tires and bought some gas to cover the rest of our travels.  The price was 108.90 Kenyan shillings per liter, which translates to about $5.25 per gallon. We only saw one gas station that was a slightly different price, less than a penny’s difference, since the government controls the price. 

We headed out, went through downtown Nairobi and then out on one of the new super highways that the Chinese have helped to build.  It was similar to an American interstate, with a few exceptions. One was that because there has been massive development of apartments, businesses and schools along the route of this expressway, there is a need to cross it on foot occasionally, since many Kenyans don’t drive or at least tend to walk much more than we do.  You could be driving along at highway speeds and then, out of nowhere, if you weren’t paying attention, is a large speed bump and a crosswalk, where pedestrians are navigating from one side to the other, perhaps to shop or to take a matatu (van) into town or to their jobs.  I’m sure that vehicles are supposed to yield to pedestrians, but like all traffic n Kenya, there appears to be unwritten, but generally understood, rules that make it seem more like a high speed video game.  I wonder how many rear end collisions and pedestrians being hit that this setup causes. I also wonder if this is the way such highways are designed in China or if this is unique to Africa.    An elevated walkway like we use would seem to be a better solution all around.  As a side note, Kenyans refer to one of these speed bumps, found on any and all roads, as a “sleeping policeman”, since it is a passive form of traffic control.  There is always one right before and right after a school, no matter where you are, whether in a city or in a remote area.  Sometimes the driver of one of vans will remember the first bump, but speed up and smack into the second one, often with us going airborne and/or bottoming out the van as well.  It’s quite an experience!  The other big difference from our highways is that they are not nearly so limited access, with many more exits and areas to pull off due to the need for matatus to pick up and drop off passengers frequently. 

It took us about an hour and a half to reach the Fourteen Falls National Park.  Once we got off the main road, it was maybe 2 or 3 miles to the park entrance, where the red dirt road was obviously muddy in some places.  One of the locals on a motorcycle had us follow him into the park after we had paid our admission fees.  There was a fee for each non-resident (us), a resident fee that was next to nothing for Barrack and mambo and a charge per camera.  They only saw one camera, so that worked out OK.   The motorcyclist went around to the right and lured us into a muddy area where we proceeded to get stuck.  This is not the first time I had seen this.  There was about 10 minutes of getting buried deeper and deeper and then, miracle of all miracles, some other guys showed up to push us out.  We paid them for their kindness.  If this had been my first trip, I would have written about the harrowing experience, the worry of maybe not being able to get unstuck, our relief and thankfulness at being saved by friendly people.  I’m not going to write any of those things.  This was a well-orchestrated trap that always turns out this way.  We aren't mad about this, it’s a fact of life when you have people that are wealthy by world standards visiting areas where people are just getting by.  I look at it as supporting the local economy and it didn’t cost more than $10 and a little of our time.  We were never in any danger, and with a veteran team, none of us were ever concerned about the eventual outcome.  We made it the rest of the way into the park and left the van on a high and dry spot.  Two young men, John and Peter, came along and were our guides.  Taking us down one side of the river, helping us as we climbed up and down the even rocky terrain and getting us to some great vantage points to get pictures of the magnificent falls.  The area is called Fourteen Falls, because when the water is at an average depth and flow in the river, there are fourteen distinct falls and they counted them off for us to prove it.  During rainy times the water can be up to 8 to 10 feet deeper and then the fourteen falls become one big falls.

I had my Nikon D5200 DSLR setup with a Sigma zoom lens that would go from 18-250mm (the equivalent of 24-375mm on a 35mm camera) which is from wide angle to zoomed in pretty far for things like birds in flight or animals you don’t want to get very close to.  I had given Barrack my backup camera, a Canon SX-510 superzoom bridge camera to also get some shots with.  Both are good cameras and I expect to be able to post some outstanding images within the next week or so.  Please stay tuned for that, it will be well worth it, I promise. 

We eventually made our way to where there were some old, green wooden boats along the short near a rope that was stretched across the rapidly flowing river.  The boatman said he would take us across for 500 Kenyan shillings each and back again for another 500 Kenyan shillings, so I invited Barrack to go with me as my guest while the others waited for us.  I told the boatman we would pay upon our return.  The terrain is very rocky and slippery near the falls.  I play a lot of singles tennis and am in pretty good shape for a 62 year old man, but the next 45 minutes was quite a workout.  First, we climbed into the boat and then the guys poled it over to the rope.  They then pulled us about 100 yards across the river.  We disembarked and then went up, up, up, stopping at 3 or 4 plateaus for increasingly beautiful views of the falls and the river below.  It was rough going, jumping from one rock to the next, steadying ourselves, sometimes needing one of the boys to pull me to the next stop, since I was using one hand to protect my camera.  I have a new appreciation for mountain goats!  We finally made it to a spot right below one of the bigger falls, about 100 feet above the river.  There was a cliff diver at the top and I got some great stop action shots of him raising his hands above his head and then leaping down to the base of the falls below.  John said it is about 36 feet deep there, so striking the bottom was not one of the risks the diver needed to worry about.  We slowly made our way back down, which was actually harder than the climb had been, with much more slipping and sliding.  After several stops along the way to get some more pictures from various angles, we finally arrived back at ground level, where we got some pictures of storks or pelicans (need to identify what they were) and some other birds on the water and in flight.  I made it back to within about 10 yards of the boat and then stepping all the way over my ankle in mud with my right foot.  John quickly was able to wash it off at the river side.  I’m glad this was the only minor disaster, a bad fall would have been much worse.  All in all, it was quite worth it.  We made our way back across the river, paid the boatman and tipped John and Peter.  While were gone, one of the locals washed the van for 200 Kenyan shillings (about $2.50).  I think this was the last part of the getting stuck scam, these guys are really good! 

Please don’t think that everywhere you go in Kenya, people are out to take advantage of you.  Our day probably cost us less than $100 for the six of us and we had a great time.  One of Kenya’s biggest economic drivers is tourism, so most experiences are perfectly wonderful, the people are very friendly and we always feel safe and welcome.  In defense of trying to get a little extra cash out of us, tourism is hurting a little bit the last few weeks due to Americans and Europeans being overly concerned with ebola and not realizing that this terrible, real problem is over 3,000 miles away from Kenya on the other side of the African continent.  I can understand when every news story about Africa seem to have the word ebola in it, how unreasonable worries would tend to prevail.  My prayer is that reason and common sense would come the fore and that people would resume coming to Kenya in droves.  It is a wonderful country, full of friendly people, natural wonders, incredible flowers and food.  I consider it the closest thing to paradise I’ve ever seen.

We drove back to Nairobi and had one final lunch at the Junction before going back to the Little Daughters of St. Joseph convent to meet the other teams prior to heading to the airport as a group.  The teams flying KLM had to wait for us to arrive on the first Friday night, now it was our turn to repay the favor.  We headed to the airport a little after 5pm, after saying our goodbyes to Catherine, our drivers and Barrack.   The KLM flight was leaving around 10:30pm and we were slated for 11:55pm, but were delayed until about 12:15 because our plane had not arrived from London yet.  We had some food and conversation with other teams in a Java House in the airport and groups began to leave one at a time until 3 teams were left to fly with us back to London.  The London flight was great.  Right after dinner, I slept almost the whole night, straight through until we were only about an hour and a half from London.  I must have needed it.  I am finishing this post at Heathrow, where we have about a 4 hour layover before our team flies alone back to Austin.  We are glad we missed the cold snap while were gone and will be returning to seasonal weather.  We are all looking forward to worshipping on Wednesday night at Redeemer for Thanksgiving services and to give thanks for God’s providence on this trip.  To God be the Glory!

Friday ends a great clinic. November 21

We had our customary breakfast of eggs, sausage, toast and bananas at Rosa Mystica and then drove to the church for the last time this trip.  It was cool and dry and patients began flowing into the clinic from about 8:15am onwards.  We had seen around 300 people by noon and saw a total of 684 people before we shut down the clinic at 4:15 to pack up and then have a final devotion with our volunteers.  The total for the week was 2560 patients, a good week by any standard.  We handed out the certificates and everyone was appreciative of them.  As always, it was hard to say our goodbyes, but many of us have been doing so since 2009 or even before.  We said to our friends that you have to say goodbye so we can say hello again next time. 

As I write this, it is 9pm and we have just come from dinner in the food court at the Junction where we all had a quarter chicken, fries and cole slaw.  It hit the spot.  I am getting ready to start packing my stuff up, since we will have a 7am breakfast and then drive out to Fourteen Falls, a nice national park that I have not been to yet.  We will meet the other teams at the convent we spent the first two nights in on Saturday afternoon and will leave for the airport around 5:30pm.  One group is flying KLM and will have an earlier flight than hours and will get back to Houston via Amsterdam.  Our team and a couple of others will be flying British Air to London around midnight.  I have all of our travel info next to my laptop and will wake up at midnight to try to get us the best possible seats, since we can't check-in online until 24 hours prior to our flight.  We all like aisle seats, since you can get up at will, drink lots of water to stay hydrated and get up again when the inevitable results occur.  This post is relatively short because of time constraints and the hour.  I will try to post another story before we leave Nairobi, but if this is not possible, I should be able to get something out to this blog when we are at Heathrow on Sunday morning London time, since we will have about a 3 hour layover.  Once home in Austin, I will begin posting pictures as soon as possible.  Normally, I put the 300 best pictures on the web, but have to choose them from several thousand and then work on each of them a bit.  I hope to complete this task by the end of the Thanksgiving weekend.  Thanks for all of your well wishes and prayers.  It means a lot to us.  Thank you Jesus for a great clinic that brought many people to know you for the first time or that helped others to grow in their faith!

Thursday's clinic reached new peaks. November 20

It was nice all day, just a little damp in the morning.  We had a pretty steady flow of people coming all day, with the exception of the lunchtime lull that has become the norm.  By the time we were finished letting the last people in around 4:30pm, we had seen 561 patients, although 583 people had been counted at the gate.  There is always some discrepancy between those that register at the gate and how many people are actually treated, but it is usually not quite this large.  It’s possible some patient treatment cards will turn up in the morning.  Either way, it was a busy day. In addition, we had many more cataract referrals than on previous days.  We have now agreed to pay for cataract or other eye surgeries at a Nairobi hospital for 27 people.  We typically bring enough money to cover 30 procedures.  You might be surprised to know that these sight restoring surgeries average only $50 each, so this part of our clinic budget amounts to the best $1500 value you will ever find.  Our doctors arrange for the operations, we do one eye at a time, and I almost always see some of the same faces on our next mission come back to have the other eye healed.  Thank you, Jesus!

The team and I just returned from dinner at the Junction’s new food court.  It’s on the second floor of the mall and had previously been enclosed.  Now the street facing side has had the wall of that floor removed, so it has a nice open air feel to it.  A waiter comes by, gets you drink orders and then you can select items from any of the different food booths.  Ralph and Martha had Chinese, while Howard and I chose pizza.  Pretty weird, go halfway around the world and have a pepperoni pizza, but that’s exactly what we did!

We have spent the last half hour preparing the Certificates of Appreciation for our clinic volunteers.  We will hand them out at the end of the day and each volunteer will get their picture taken with Pastor James and I.  These diploma quality certificates really mean a lot to the young people at the church.  One young man had his name misspelled last year when we were here and has fretted about it since.  I am going to issue a replacement for last year to patch things up.  This just demonstrates how working with us and being given responsibility for the various jobs in the clinic has a profound impact on the self-worth of these kids.   I hope it has a lasting effect.

Well, it’s about time to call it another day.  Tomorrow will be very busy and it will be hard to shut down the clinic since many people will show up expecting last minute care.  We will have the closing ceremony and will need to inventory and pack up our supplies for shipment back to the States or for storage in Nairobi.  I’m sure there will be more stories to tell tomorrow.  Keep your prayers coming our way for our team and the congregation at the church in Kawangware as we share the Gospel and meet human needs through our clinic.