11/12/2010 Enroute to Nairobi from London on British Airways Flight BA065
It’s nearly 6pm Nairobi time and we have made good time today. We should arrive at the airport around 9:30pm, due in part to a shorter than normal layover at Heathrow. This layover was so short I didn’t get a chance to break out my laptop for another report. Our security check went very quickly with no problems that I’m aware of. Dan Zieschang had arrived in London from Chicago about an hour before we did and he found us without a hitch. I have brought a computer projector bulb for Pastor Carlos Winterle, one which can only be purchased in the U.S. Dan and his son Danny have put together a DVD of film clips of greetings from Redeemer kids and we would like to show it Sunday to the children’s Sunday school hour. If there is no projector available at the church, we are hopeful that the first use of Pastor Carlos’ bulb will be for this occasion. I no longer am much of a believer in coincidences, I’m much more inclined to think that God may be intimately involved in this circumstance. I got the request for the bulb with only a week to go before our trip, the supplier had no provision for expedited shipping and UPS tracking had predicted it’s arrival somewhere between November 10th and 16th. We left on the trip early on the morning of November 11th. The package with the bulb was on my porch the evening of November 9th with a full day to spare! Thank you, Jesus!
The rest of our long day looks like this. After arrival in Nairobi, we each will get tourist visas. This process involves filling out a form, paying $25 in new U.S. currency and having our pictures taken. Next, we will proceed to the baggage claim area. There are money exchanges there, so each of us will change $200-$300 into local shillings, which last spring produced about $78 shillings per dollar. Each missionary will then retrieve the two footlockers that they were assigned ages ago in Houston. We will then go through one last security checkpoint, load all of the footlockers up either in a truck or on top of the bus that will take us on a 45 minute ride to the our lodgings at the Norwegian Lutheran Church’s Scripture House compound. We’ll break open the footlockers with our personal effects in them, get assigned to both rooms and roommates for the weekend, have a group prayer, hear some words of instruction from the Salem leaders about options for Saturday activities and maybe get a shower before hitting the sack. It looks at this point like this trip will end up being about 31 hours from start to finish, counting from the group gathering at Ralph and Louise’s house Thursday until our arrival at the Scripture House Friday night. This is not trivial travel, but everyone has been in great spirits the whole way and the entire team of about 40 members really has lifted each other up along the way. Just arrived in Nairobi safe and sound, ready for bed!
Friday, November 12, 2010
Travel 11/11/2010
11/11/10 Enroute to London on British Airways flight 194
As predicted, there were both Blue Bell and The Kettle on the way to the airport. Lutherans like tradition or put another way, we seem to hate change! We ran into very little traffic, it was overcast most of the way and I’m sure the Veteran’s Day holiday contributed to the lack of traffic congestion. We arrived at Bush a little before 1pm and immediately began to help with the footlockers, which had just arrived by truck. Some porters actually did a lot of the work, bringing in footlockers on big carts that held about eight of them at a time. We placed baggage tags on each one and made sure they were clear of UPC tracking labels from previous missions. Those of us that are carrying the twelve expensive autorefractor eye exam machines placed our personal items in empty footlocker space set aside for this purpose and we duly noted the locker numbers that held our own belongings. This will make life much easier when we are looking for our individual items late at night after arrival at our lodgings in Nairobi. All of us were assigned two footlockers to be responsible for, which we also noted the numbers from as if they were our own checked luggage. This saves about $400 per locker in shipping, making these missions feasible, since the cost would be prohibitive otherwise. It never ceases to amaze me how well this system, developed over many mission trips by Salem Lutheran Church to the Honduras and Africa works. I’m sure there has been a fair amount of trial and error over the years, but to look at it now is a thing of beauty in its precision. Check-in went very smoothly until we got to the security check area. It was pretty backed up and very warm. Some of the team members were full body scanned with the latest TSA machines and one of our team, who shall remain nameless, was physically searched pretty aggressively. We had about an hour and a half to kill before boarding the plane, time that was well spent renewing acquaintances with friends from previous mission trips, making new friends with first time travelers and placing final phone calls to loved ones before our departure. I am writing this at around 7pm Austin time, over northern Michigan. According to the running totals on the onboard map, we are about as far north as we are going to get and will follow the coast of Newfoundland before heading out over the Atlantic for London. Arrival there should be in about 6 and a half hours, meaning the flight will have been about nine and a half hours in the air. We are flying at about 35,000 feet at nearly 650 miles per hour on a Boeing 747-400. More to follow during our layover at Heathrow.
As predicted, there were both Blue Bell and The Kettle on the way to the airport. Lutherans like tradition or put another way, we seem to hate change! We ran into very little traffic, it was overcast most of the way and I’m sure the Veteran’s Day holiday contributed to the lack of traffic congestion. We arrived at Bush a little before 1pm and immediately began to help with the footlockers, which had just arrived by truck. Some porters actually did a lot of the work, bringing in footlockers on big carts that held about eight of them at a time. We placed baggage tags on each one and made sure they were clear of UPC tracking labels from previous missions. Those of us that are carrying the twelve expensive autorefractor eye exam machines placed our personal items in empty footlocker space set aside for this purpose and we duly noted the locker numbers that held our own belongings. This will make life much easier when we are looking for our individual items late at night after arrival at our lodgings in Nairobi. All of us were assigned two footlockers to be responsible for, which we also noted the numbers from as if they were our own checked luggage. This saves about $400 per locker in shipping, making these missions feasible, since the cost would be prohibitive otherwise. It never ceases to amaze me how well this system, developed over many mission trips by Salem Lutheran Church to the Honduras and Africa works. I’m sure there has been a fair amount of trial and error over the years, but to look at it now is a thing of beauty in its precision. Check-in went very smoothly until we got to the security check area. It was pretty backed up and very warm. Some of the team members were full body scanned with the latest TSA machines and one of our team, who shall remain nameless, was physically searched pretty aggressively. We had about an hour and a half to kill before boarding the plane, time that was well spent renewing acquaintances with friends from previous mission trips, making new friends with first time travelers and placing final phone calls to loved ones before our departure. I am writing this at around 7pm Austin time, over northern Michigan. According to the running totals on the onboard map, we are about as far north as we are going to get and will follow the coast of Newfoundland before heading out over the Atlantic for London. Arrival there should be in about 6 and a half hours, meaning the flight will have been about nine and a half hours in the air. We are flying at about 35,000 feet at nearly 650 miles per hour on a Boeing 747-400. More to follow during our layover at Heathrow.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Travel day is here!
It's around 7:45am in Austin as I write this, Howard and the crew will be picking me up by 8:30 this morning. If past tradition holds true, we will be making great time through Manor, Elgin and Giddings and then the SUV will get a mind of its own and turn into the Blue Bell in Brenham, even if it's only 9:30 or 10am! One last treat before we must pretty much eat whatever is placed in front of us for the next 11 days. We also have made a habit of stoping at The Kettle, just outside of the airport for lunch. You can get an entree or the buffet is pretty good as well. We'll gather up around 1:15pm at Bush International Airport to get all of the footlockers in from a Salem truck, then get two each of them assigned to all of the missionaries. We'll surely have a group prayer before heading through check-in and security en masse. We'll fly out around 4pm for London and arrive very early London time, probably around 5am. Our flight to Nairobi will be around 10am local London time and we'll arrive there around 10:30pm. After clearing customs,getting visas and traveling to our compound, it will be well after midnight Nairobi time. My next post should be sometime Saturday, as we'll be 9 hours ahead of Austin time, so there may be something for those of you in the States to read with your morning coffee. Please continue to pray for our safety and an effective mission that touches many lives with the Good News. To God be the Glory!
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Pictures from the mission so far
Here are pictures up to and including our commissioning last Sunday. Click on the "Pictures from the mission so far" link above to see them!
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
We're all ready to go!
We have finally arrived at the point where there is not much more we can do other than pack our personal baggage before the mission trip and pray for God’s will to be done. The many months of planning, ordering and purchasing supplies, countless emails and phone calls are coming to a much appreciated end.
On Sunday, the Redeemer team was commissioned at all three worship services. Pastor Kevin told the congregation about the love of Christ that is shown through both the vision and dental clinics and stressed that while these health services and human care ministry that we provide to the people of Kenya are wonderful and worthy of doing in themselves, they are actually a means to an end. Our primary purpose is to fulfill the Great Commission, as given by Jesus to the disciples in Matthew 28:18-20 which reads:
Mt 28:18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Mt 28:19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Mt 28:20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
As long as we never take our eye off of this overarching purpose, our efforts will be a success, even if only one person comes to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior during our clinics.
I have mixed emotions about our travel. It is usually a 30-35 hour from start to finish affair, beginning with a drive down to Houston from Austin early Thursday morning, flying to London around 4pm after gathering all of the missionaries together at Bush International airport and assigning each of them two footlockers of vision or dental equipment for their checked luggage. Because we do this to save on shipping the equipment, each of us will need to live out of a carryon and the small personal item we can take on board for the next 11 days. You learn to travel light! We will have a 4 or 5 hour layover in London before flying on to Nairobi. We'll get to our lodgings around midnight and be in bed by 1am if past experience is a good guide. While this is not trivial travel, I look forward to the variety of people I'll get to meet and share with. On one trip back from Kenya, I got to talk to a Kenyan U.N. delegate who was on his way to New York on U.N. business for about half an hour. He turned out to also be a Christian and we wished each other well, after sweltering while waiting for our plane to start boarding. Our seats on the planes are always quite scattered, intentionally, so we can interact with other passengers who are not part of the mission team. Who knows how much evangelism is done just through our travels and chance encounters? I'm not much of a believer in accidents anymore, so I look at it as showing Christ's love to whomever God has managed to place in my path. Most people seem genuinely interested in our mission and will ask all kinds of questions, giving us the opportunity to explain what motivates us.
Please keep our safe travels in your prayers and that things go smoothly as we go through various security checkpoints along the way. With the heightened security after recent events involving Yemen, it may be a bit more of a hassle herding our large group with all of our supplies through the process at each airport.
On Sunday, the Redeemer team was commissioned at all three worship services. Pastor Kevin told the congregation about the love of Christ that is shown through both the vision and dental clinics and stressed that while these health services and human care ministry that we provide to the people of Kenya are wonderful and worthy of doing in themselves, they are actually a means to an end. Our primary purpose is to fulfill the Great Commission, as given by Jesus to the disciples in Matthew 28:18-20 which reads:
Mt 28:18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Mt 28:19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Mt 28:20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
As long as we never take our eye off of this overarching purpose, our efforts will be a success, even if only one person comes to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior during our clinics.
I have mixed emotions about our travel. It is usually a 30-35 hour from start to finish affair, beginning with a drive down to Houston from Austin early Thursday morning, flying to London around 4pm after gathering all of the missionaries together at Bush International airport and assigning each of them two footlockers of vision or dental equipment for their checked luggage. Because we do this to save on shipping the equipment, each of us will need to live out of a carryon and the small personal item we can take on board for the next 11 days. You learn to travel light! We will have a 4 or 5 hour layover in London before flying on to Nairobi. We'll get to our lodgings around midnight and be in bed by 1am if past experience is a good guide. While this is not trivial travel, I look forward to the variety of people I'll get to meet and share with. On one trip back from Kenya, I got to talk to a Kenyan U.N. delegate who was on his way to New York on U.N. business for about half an hour. He turned out to also be a Christian and we wished each other well, after sweltering while waiting for our plane to start boarding. Our seats on the planes are always quite scattered, intentionally, so we can interact with other passengers who are not part of the mission team. Who knows how much evangelism is done just through our travels and chance encounters? I'm not much of a believer in accidents anymore, so I look at it as showing Christ's love to whomever God has managed to place in my path. Most people seem genuinely interested in our mission and will ask all kinds of questions, giving us the opportunity to explain what motivates us.
Please keep our safe travels in your prayers and that things go smoothly as we go through various security checkpoints along the way. With the heightened security after recent events involving Yemen, it may be a bit more of a hassle herding our large group with all of our supplies through the process at each airport.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Final Preparation and Packing for the Dental Clinic in November
We've been very busy for the last few weeks on the dental side of the mission trip procuring last minute items such as headlamps for the Nairobi dental team, batteries to run them and the like. We (Martha, Howard, Louise and myself) had the "party" described in my previous post on Wednesday night, October 13th at Casa Genz. We consumed a large pizza and counted, bagged and labeled thousands of pills. There were antibiotics, painkillers and Benadryl, which is used to curb allergic reactions. I brought my laptop and a small laser printer and handled creating the labels as needed and affixed most of them to the bags the others had already filled. I had bought 3 pill counting trays from one of my customers, Nucara Pharmacy, and once the gang got used to using them, it was pretty amazing how quickly things went. It only took about 4 hours to complete the job. Tomorrow, Saturday October 23rd, Martha and I are going to meet Gus Jacob and Dr. Terry Councill (our Houston dentist) at Salem Lutheran Church in Tomball to pack the dozen or so footlockers with the medications, dental instruments and other supplies that will be needed. The next time we see these footlockers will be November 11th at Bush International Airport.
Monday, October 4, 2010
A Look at Preparation for the Fall 2010 Kenya Mission or What I Did During Summer Vacation!
Welcome back to to the Notes from the Mission Field blog after a summer hiatus between mission trips. While there have been no recent postings to the blog, this doesn't mean we have not been hard at work planning for our November 11-21 mission to the Nairobi slum of Kawangware to put on a vision and dental clinic for the community surrounding the Lutheran church there. Even while we were still in Kenya, during our May trip to the Springs of Life Lutheran Church in Kibera, we were already meeting with local church leaders, LCMS World Mission workers and others to begin to set expectations for our upcoming mission.
The summer was spent working by phone, email and in person with our good friends and mentors at Salem Lutheran Church in Tomball. We have been going over the million and one details that fielding a team totaling 35-40 missionaries half way around the world entails. A particularly eye-opening aspect of our planning has been what goes into supporting a dental team. For the first time, Redeemer will be largely responsible for the dental clinic. In the past, the team from Salem has shouldered this responsibility for us. Like all great mentors, they have begun to nudge us out of the comfort and safety of the nest and are gently forcing us to take our first flight lesson. In the past, Redeemer supplied Dr. Zoch and his wife Diana to run the team and we handled the dozen footlockers that the clinic requires during our travel to and from Nairobi. All of the supplies and medications to be used or dispensed to the patients at previous clinics had been provided by Salem and their donors. For this trip, we have purchased the medications and are currently assembling the incidental supplies that are necessary, everything from duct tape to the portable headlamps and required batteries that the dentists need to be able to do their work. There are many things such as these that we will need to bring with us, as well as a list of items that we need to purchase in Nairobi upon our arrival.
Our team was in Tomball last Saturday for orientation. This was a great refresher course for the old hands and it helped to answer questions and assuage any worries that first time members of the team may have had. The one point that can never be overemphasized that was made is this: our first and foremost purpose is to fulfill the Great Commission. Even though a wonderful human care ministry takes place in these clinics by which we can demonstrate the love of Christ, we must never lose sight of reaching lost souls with the Good News. We had a wonderful speaker in the morning, Emmanuel Agook from Sudan, who in a two hour presentation described the main tenets of Islam in great detail and gave us many practical pointers on how to witness to the people of this faith that we will undoubtedly encounter. The question and answer session was particularly valuable, as members of previous mission teams were able to also share what had worked for them and were able to ask Emmanuel for his suggestions for ways in which we can be even more effective.
Once again, our team will have a core group of veterans being led by Pastor Kevin Westergren. They include Howard and Martha Faske, myself, Ralph and Louise Genz, Dan Zieschang and Dr. Robert and Diana Zoch. One newcomer from Redeemer, David Hanson, will man the autorefractor station, while the Zoch's son, Jonathan, who is a DCE in the Houston area, will help with the dental clinic. Three first time travelers from Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Cedar Park will be Pastor Richard and Patricia Goodwill, and Rick Masselink, who is involved with outreach and missions. Our twelfth and final team member will be Dr. Terry Councill, a dentist from Houston who is a veteran of many dental missions to Honduras and Kenya.
There are two major pretrip tasks that remain. After the orientation, we gathered up the thousands of pills that will be prescribed during the clinic to bring them back to Austin. We are able to get great prices on these antibiotics, pain killers and other medications because we buy them in bulk and they are for charitable purposes. The practical downside of this is that we have to count and package the medications into standard sized doses. An example is the 6,000 acetaminophen tablets that need to be broken down into small Zip-Loc bags in groups of 30 and then labeled, with the required expiration date (or we may have trouble with customs) and the doctor's recommended usage notes. We are planning on having BBQ one night very soon at the Genz residence, and instead of playing cards or 42, we will be having a pill counting party! We will have a small team of volunteers return to Tomball on October 23rd to pack up all of the dental tools, supplies and medicines into the dozen footlockers according to a very detailed manifest. We can't just throw a hodgepodge into any old trunk, since we have a weight restriction of 50lbs per footlocker. We are very grateful that Dr. Councill has gladly agreed to be there with us to supervise and identify what each item is as we pack it. While we do have a good list to work from, our volunteers that weekend will not include any other dental professionals and we might as well be monkees packing transmission parts were it not for Terry!
Please keep an eye on this blog, as the postings will be more frequent as the final stages of preparation for the trip unfold. Once we are on the ground in Africa, I will try once again to make daily postings, along with pictures, to keep you informed of our comings and goings. As always, please keep final planning as well as our safety and effectiveness in spreading the Gospel in your prayers.
The summer was spent working by phone, email and in person with our good friends and mentors at Salem Lutheran Church in Tomball. We have been going over the million and one details that fielding a team totaling 35-40 missionaries half way around the world entails. A particularly eye-opening aspect of our planning has been what goes into supporting a dental team. For the first time, Redeemer will be largely responsible for the dental clinic. In the past, the team from Salem has shouldered this responsibility for us. Like all great mentors, they have begun to nudge us out of the comfort and safety of the nest and are gently forcing us to take our first flight lesson. In the past, Redeemer supplied Dr. Zoch and his wife Diana to run the team and we handled the dozen footlockers that the clinic requires during our travel to and from Nairobi. All of the supplies and medications to be used or dispensed to the patients at previous clinics had been provided by Salem and their donors. For this trip, we have purchased the medications and are currently assembling the incidental supplies that are necessary, everything from duct tape to the portable headlamps and required batteries that the dentists need to be able to do their work. There are many things such as these that we will need to bring with us, as well as a list of items that we need to purchase in Nairobi upon our arrival.
Our team was in Tomball last Saturday for orientation. This was a great refresher course for the old hands and it helped to answer questions and assuage any worries that first time members of the team may have had. The one point that can never be overemphasized that was made is this: our first and foremost purpose is to fulfill the Great Commission. Even though a wonderful human care ministry takes place in these clinics by which we can demonstrate the love of Christ, we must never lose sight of reaching lost souls with the Good News. We had a wonderful speaker in the morning, Emmanuel Agook from Sudan, who in a two hour presentation described the main tenets of Islam in great detail and gave us many practical pointers on how to witness to the people of this faith that we will undoubtedly encounter. The question and answer session was particularly valuable, as members of previous mission teams were able to also share what had worked for them and were able to ask Emmanuel for his suggestions for ways in which we can be even more effective.
Once again, our team will have a core group of veterans being led by Pastor Kevin Westergren. They include Howard and Martha Faske, myself, Ralph and Louise Genz, Dan Zieschang and Dr. Robert and Diana Zoch. One newcomer from Redeemer, David Hanson, will man the autorefractor station, while the Zoch's son, Jonathan, who is a DCE in the Houston area, will help with the dental clinic. Three first time travelers from Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Cedar Park will be Pastor Richard and Patricia Goodwill, and Rick Masselink, who is involved with outreach and missions. Our twelfth and final team member will be Dr. Terry Councill, a dentist from Houston who is a veteran of many dental missions to Honduras and Kenya.
There are two major pretrip tasks that remain. After the orientation, we gathered up the thousands of pills that will be prescribed during the clinic to bring them back to Austin. We are able to get great prices on these antibiotics, pain killers and other medications because we buy them in bulk and they are for charitable purposes. The practical downside of this is that we have to count and package the medications into standard sized doses. An example is the 6,000 acetaminophen tablets that need to be broken down into small Zip-Loc bags in groups of 30 and then labeled, with the required expiration date (or we may have trouble with customs) and the doctor's recommended usage notes. We are planning on having BBQ one night very soon at the Genz residence, and instead of playing cards or 42, we will be having a pill counting party! We will have a small team of volunteers return to Tomball on October 23rd to pack up all of the dental tools, supplies and medicines into the dozen footlockers according to a very detailed manifest. We can't just throw a hodgepodge into any old trunk, since we have a weight restriction of 50lbs per footlocker. We are very grateful that Dr. Councill has gladly agreed to be there with us to supervise and identify what each item is as we pack it. While we do have a good list to work from, our volunteers that weekend will not include any other dental professionals and we might as well be monkees packing transmission parts were it not for Terry!
Please keep an eye on this blog, as the postings will be more frequent as the final stages of preparation for the trip unfold. Once we are on the ground in Africa, I will try once again to make daily postings, along with pictures, to keep you informed of our comings and goings. As always, please keep final planning as well as our safety and effectiveness in spreading the Gospel in your prayers.
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