Sunday in Nairobi 6-7-2026

 We worshipped nearby at The International Lutheran Church with Catherine this morning and then had lunch with Mama at Java House. Think of Java House as Starbucks with good food. Here are some photos of our group after lunch at Litte Daughters. It was a joyous occasion!

Mama, me and Catherine

Meissa joined us

Mother and Daughter

After a short nap to sleep off the huge bacon cheeseburger, fries and Coke (yes a real Coke like in Mexico made with sugarcane!), I wandered around the grounds of Little Daughters taking pictures of some of the remarkable flowers. Here are a few examples, more to follow.

Bougainvillea

Orange Trumpet Vine

Hibiscus

Hibiscus in nice light

I just finished dinner and saw Elizabeth and Andrea off to the airport. They have a direct flight to JFK and then on to Austin. Hoping all of our travels are as smooth and uneventful as the trip was to get here. At least if we have lost luggage it will show up eventually. I finally bit the bullet and got Tile Trackers for my luggage and backpack. Hopefully, I won't need them. 

I have a safari at the Nairobi Game Park in the morning, and my driver is a dear friend, Paul. He is Catherine's brother. My friend for many years, Barrack is also joining me. I will be concentrating on birds but won't refuse to take a picture if a Lion or Cheetah show up! Melissa and I fly out tomorrow night at 11:50pm and head for Amsterdam on KLM. She flies to Detroit from there and I will be going to Minneapolis before a final leg taking me to Austin. Since Minneapolis is my port of entry, I'll have to go through immigration, get my bags and check them in for the final flight. I should have just enough time if all goes well. If I get stuck, I have travel insurance and can book a hotel.

I will probably be able to post a couple of more times on the way home and then I will be gathering photos from team members to make a nice album that I'll share here. It will be the basis for our annual report to the church in August when the kids are back in school. Blessings everybody!

Reflection on the clinic

 As I reflect on our recently concluded Vision Clinic, the cooperation of the local church, called Pipeline, was exemplary. About five years ago, a team from Redeemer led by Pastor Kevin worked with their first location. They have since planted several more and we worked with folks from each of them. They arrived ready to work, didn't wander off but stayed focused all week. We always had at least one Pastor and one Evangelist helping me supervise the clinic at all times. Hospitality is a high value in Kenya and the congregation supplied a good meal as well as teatime

twice a day at their own expense as their contribution. All were joyful and shared the stories of their lives with us. This picture is one example, cooked potatoes and bananas. It was tasty and filling! More to follow as I have time and the Internet here, on plane rides and back home allow. There are many stories left to tell. 6-3-2026

The clinic finished on a high note today - Friday June 5th

 Our clinic finished with a bang with 437 patients being served, for a total of around 1900 for the week. Thanks everybody for following along. More to follow with pictures as I am able, a large theological group is here and are taxing the convent's Internet bandwidth to the max. It's hard to send an email let alone post pictures. Hoping to be able to share more over the weekend. Melissa and I will be going to the Giraffe Centre tomorrow (Saturday morning), have lunch and then tour the National Museum of Kenya to learn more about this beautiful country and its history. Blessings everybody!

462 Patients were served in the clinic today! Thursday 6-4-2026

 It just got better and better day by day here at the clinic. My Internet connection has been sketchy, so it's hard to post pictures. I will be staying over after the clinic until Monday night to do some local sightseeing I haven't done before with my friend Melissa and will have more time to catch up on stories from the clinic then and maybe more pictures. I'll also have lots of time on long flights back to Austin to write more as well. Pictures always seem to be added later anyway. Just to quickly recap our day, we were missing two team members due to minor illnesses, but our local volunteers and the rest of our team were able to make do and we saw 462 patients today. It was a big morning, with 253 by noon and then a steady drip, drip, drip in the afternoon. More to follow to fill in the blanks as I get more time. 6-4-2026

The registration, waiting and evangelism areas in that order from left to right

Inside the clinic

A new high number of patients today!

 We had another good day in the clinic, seeing 346 patients by the time we closed the clinic to head home and to our nice dinner at the Talisman. We always have one nice night out as a team and were joined by the Catherine, our friends Billie and Allison, their son Gabe and the other team in the area. It was excellent. It is now after 9:30pm here and time for some good rest to start fresh again in the morning. i will continue to post as I am able and will be around for a few days after the mission and will have more time for a few more stories. There were some good ones today! Thanks for following along!

Tuesday was a near repeat of Monday

 But cataract surgeries were performed when we sent a van with 6 patients to a nearby medical center this afternoon. We saw 302 patients and all were treated with dignity and respect. After a song and a prayer by Pastor Peter (one of the Pastors from the Pipeline Churches), I was blessed to do the daily devotion and I chose Mark 5:14-20 which describes what happened after Jesus healed the demon possessed man by have his demons go from him into a large herd of pigs which promptly ran off of a cliff into the sea and drowned. My main point was the Jesus would not let the man come with him but sent him to tell his people what the Lord had done for him, a very powerful evangelism tool to this day. I mentioned that in my studies, some think he was the first missionary and was responsible for the 4000 people being there when Jesus returned and fed them. So, God can use any badly broken person to spread the Good News! Also, any one of our patients may be broken in some serious way and the Lord is just waiting for them to receive faith by hearing the Word and they in turn may tell others. What a great concept!

We got stuck in a huge traffic jam and it was almost an hour and half ride home. I went straight to dinner and worried about my shower later. Time to get some rest so we can do it again tomorrow!

The first day of the clinic was incredibly smooth

 We arrived at the clinic on time very easily because it is Kenyan Independence Day, a national holiday celebrating breaking away from British rule, something our two countries share in common. There was very light traffic, we'll see how that changes tomorrow! The setup of the clinic was quick because 5 out of 6 of our team are veterans of previous trips and each of us was able to get a station running and our volunteers trained quickly. 

We saw 323 patients, all of whom got thorough eye exams and various services including distance and/or reading glasses, cataract or other surgeries and various medication. We saw many examples during the day of our volunteers making sure each patient was treated with love and respect, even if we couldn't provide a particular care that they might need. It's the end of a very long first day, so here are some pictures to give you an idea of the location we were in and what a functioning clinic looks like. Much more to follow over the coming days and after I return from Kenya next week. Blessings everybody,

Morning devotion before opening

Eyechart exam on other end of the building

Evangelism tent

Waiting tent for eyechart exam

Inside of the clinic as we began the day

Later as we got busier and began to see more than 40 patients per hour.

End of the day devotion

Final words from Pastor Richard and myself thanking everybody and encouraging them to get some rest to be ready for big day Tuesday.