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We all breakfasted at 6:30 and were on the road by 7am. It’s a real blessing being less than 20
minutes from the church in Kiambu. We
can usually run the clinic a little longer each day if we need to and still be
back at our lodgings by dark, an LCMS safety precaution that we fully agree
with. As with every first day I’ve ever
been involved with, it was pretty amazing to see the church interior go from
our equipment and supplies stored in footlockers to a fully laid out clinic in
the space of about half an hour. Our
tents were already up having been erected sometime Sunday. Pastor James led a brief devotion and we sang
a song to kick off the day on a high note.
The vision clinic was ready to go before our target of 9am.
As the clinic actually began seeing our first patients, I
went from station to station, refreshing each team member on the various
aspects of their jobs, while Pastor Kevin helped smooth out the details of
traffic flow through the clinic. Even
with the normal hiccups, fits and starts that accompany getting a new clinic up
and running, it was relatively trouble free morning. I was called over by Pastor James at one point and he was sitting with a man with an obvious growth on his left eye. Our doctors had already examined him and said he needed a procedure for about 2500 Kenyan Shillings (approximately $30). He had fallen away from the Catholic church and was going to join our Kiambu congregation. Pastor Kevin agreed with me that we would pay for the referral to heal his eye out of the funds we brought for cataract surgery referrals. That was special to me, that we could make such an enormous difference in this man's life for so little. We saw around 70 patients by noon, about as
expected. We had heavy rains that
started around 4pm, forcing an early close to the operation with a total of
around 150 people being treated.
If this was my first clinic, I might be despairing right
now. If the weather permits, we will see
an ever increasing number of people at the clinic as the week progresses. In fact, at dinner I looked up what our week
was like in November and we saw 147 people on the first day. Our actual number today was 148 and I felt
compelled to give credit to Pastor Kevin in front of the team for defeating my
record! We do have a team that laughs a lot, working for the Lord is good for
your disposition.
More to follow as our adventure continues. Thanks be to God for a wonderful day.
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