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.