Wednesday began with a downpour

Our volunteers straggled in later than usual after having trouble getting to the church this morning during a tremendous half hour burst of rain. Our local dentists spotted an empty matatu (a van that is used for public transport that holds a driver and 14 passengers in very close contact!) and commandeered it by paying the driver more than he would have gotten for a full vehicle if he had been picking up individual riders as needed. Fortunately, our own team had already gotten there just before the sky began to weep. On the way to the clinic, I got to do one of my favorite devotions from Oswald Chambers entitled "What is a Missionary?" The main point of it is to remember Who it is that is sending you and not get so wrapped up in what is going on all around you that you take your eye off of the primary mission that He has given us in the Great Commission. I had a few conversations during the day about aspects of the devotion that tell me that it was received well and had provided food for thought. Even with the rainy start, it was a good day, with over 500 people coming to the clinics and about 200 of them going through the dental clinic. We had a Muslim woman return to the vision clinic asking for Pastor Goodwill (he had spoken to her earlier in the week)and he had a wonderful exchange with her that eventually led to her speaking with Pastor Zedekiah and promising to come to church the next Sunday. Another Muslim woman was very angry with God, and after much probing and back and forth, it was found that she had a paralyzed husband. At first, she didn't want any prayers, but at the end of the conversation, she allowed us to pray for her and her husband in the name of Jesus. We all included her and her husband in our own individual evening prayers, knowing that if her husband was miraculously healed, it would be a powerful witness to her family and community of the healing that only Jesus can bring for both spirit and body. In the evening, we went to the Carnivore, obviously not a vegetarian restaurant. The meal started out with salad and bread. Then a scalding hot plate was set in front of each of us and for the next hour or so, we only dined from the meat food group. There was chicken, pork sausage, ostrich, beef, chicken liver, pork, turkey, chicken gizzards, pork ribs and on and on and on. We took Rhoda, Catherine and her son Eugene with us as our guests. Eugene is 14 and has a scary capacity for food! Rhoda had the staff come and do a birthday celebration for Jon Zoch, which came as a bit of a surprise to him, since his birthday is in April! In the morning, I will meet our mission coordinator at the LCMS World Mission office to use my gifts and get her email working right. She's getting some extra supplies for the dental clinic and I will ride with her to the church in Kawangware when she takes those supplies to the team. Tonight, Pastor Kevin and I will be dinner guests of Pastor Carlos Winterle and his wife, who are from Brazil. I will be doing some tuning on his computer as well and we will compare notes on the water well project and his mission over the years. He has been instrumental in working with the street boys, has been behind a new shower facility for them that was dedicated last July and has been a strong proponent of the water well. He has a blog and his writings have resulted from donations coming to Redeemer for the project from all over the U.S. I am adding new pictures to this site daily, so keep coming back. You can get to them by clicking on the title of this article. Once we are back in Austin and I can gather up all of the pictures that the group has taken, I will redo the picture aspect of the blog. So far, you have only seen what I have seen and I want a more balanced birdseye view of our experience. Each missionary has a different perspective and has had unique encounters. For now, you will have to be satisfied with what has come in through the lens of my camera and my heart.