A blessed Tuesday in Kiambu

We were joined both Monday and Tuesday by several of our veteran volunteers from the church in Kawangware, Barrack, Tobias and James. It really helped us to get up and running quickly. We have become good friends with all three of them over the years and it reminds us of how much we treasure our relationship with the Kawangware congregation. We started out a little slow, just like Monday, but by noon we had seen about 85 patients.  Barrack went out around 10:30 with a bullhorn, driven in a pop up van by our wonderful driver Allan. The results were evident by the end of the day. We finished with 221 patients, another woman  pledging to join the church and several more cataract referrals.
The Nuru team is going to show the Jesus Film tonight, which I think will add greatly to the clinics success the rest of the week. Also, today was a market day, which may have held our numbers down a bit. So, I wouldn't be surprised if we see pretty large numbers of people, even on the order of 500 or more. While statistics are a good thing, the ones that really matter relate to how many lost and broken people meet Jesus for the first time and come to a saving relationship with Him. We are planting seeds here and may never see how far the ripples reach from our actions this week.
We have a situation with a seven year old boy name Alex that we would like for you to keep in your prayers. He was brought to us by a woman that said he had been abandoned by his parents. The local church doesn't have the resources to handle this and we are exploring options with the diocese and other churches. She will be back for an answer today. Pray that the Lord's will be done in His grace and mercy and that he use us to help find a solution.

A new clinic in Kiambu is born!

Breakfast was at 6:30am and we arrived at Kiambu around 7:30 after a 15 minute van ride.  We had secured the clinic footlockers and supplies on the 3rd floor of a building next door to the church. All of that needed to be moved into the sanctuary and sorted out. Tents were being erected and tables were arriving via truck. Another vision clinic was being born.
The congregation's president, Michael, opened our morning devotion with a prayer, then Geoffery, our evangelist from Nuru ( the Lutheran Hour), showed the evangelism cube to us and explained how he worked with the people sharing the Gospel with it. I said a few words of first day encouragement and then Larry led us all in a praise song. What a great way to start the day! I talked with Michael several times throughout the day and he was incredibly appreciative that we had brought a clinic to his church. As we stood outside, everyone who passed by called out to him "Hello Pastor Michael!" He confided to me that he was not really a pastor, but had been serving the church in Kiambu since 1989. His parents had raised him in the Lutheran Church and were distressed when their old church was failing. A wealthy friend gave some of the money as part of his inheritance to help Michael buy the land the church now stands on. Our friend Pastor Carlos Winterle was involved with the diocese in constructing the church in its present condition. They have a foundation already in place that will allow them to double the size of the building when it becomes necessary.

For a first day, the clinic went well and we shook some bugs out of the process and the physical layout that we were trying. It is a real blessing to have a mix of veteran and new team members, The new ones give us energy and enthusiasm while the old hands can train and look for glitches that need addressing. We ended up seeing 147 patients, got referrals for 2 cataract surgeries and 1 person is coming to church next Sunday. All in all a good first day. Thanks be to God.

Sunday and worship in Kiambu

We breakfasted, got our stuff together and staged to load up the vans and trucks that would take our two teams to Kiambu and Kitengela. We had a brief team meeting and prayed over each other before getting a group picture of the two Redeemer teams.  We departed Rosa Mystica and headed for the church in Kiambu. We arrived to the beautiful sound of a responsive Swahili praise song with superb African harmonies. Although I had my sermon prepared, I didn't get to use it since one of the ELCK evangelists that we had worked with in Kibera last spring named Francis was there. The worship was very lively and included all tbe liturgical elements as.well as traditional Lutheran hymns from a hymnal and a capella Swahili songs.  Catherine gave a brief history of the Vision Kenya Project and I introduced the members of our team to the congregation.
We had lunch after church at a nice restaurant called Java Cafe and then checked in at Africa Heart, our lodging for the rest of the trip. It is a very nice facility with spacious rooms, in room shower and commode and pretty good wifi access.  There was a power failure in the neighborhood, so we all took a much needed nap while waiting for dinner. The food was scrumptious and we met members of Bayside Church there. It's a 20,000 member mega church in the San Francisco area and these men are on a month long mission doing mostly construction projects. A very cool bunch of people. Some of the crew played 42 while others of us conversed with our new found friends. We then retired to our rooms to prepare for the first day of the clinic.

Saturday happenings

Our lodging at Rosa Mystica has turned out to be very nice.  It's priced a bit cheaper than our regular abode of Scripture House, and each team member has their own room with a shower and commode. Breakfast was good after a short night's sleep. We headed out to Lake Naivasha for a safari with 3 vans, stopping at a Great Rift Valley scenic overlook for pictures and souvenirs. We had a very adventurous boat ride as it took many attempts to fight our way through thick weeds in the river as we made our way out to Crescent Island.  We tried to help an injured bald eagle sitting on the surface of the weeds, saw hippos and many interesting birds including pelicans along the way.
On the island we saw zebras, water bucks, wildebeests and other animals.  We got off the water in time to avoid a rain shower. A nice lunch followed with chicken sandwiches and real Cokes made with sugar cane as the featured drinks.
Upon our return to town, we stopped at the Nakumatt for some shopping, got freshened up and then had an evening service led by Pastor Goodwill. Our friends, The Conquerors came over from Kawangware and supplied incredible music. Also, Double Dave, from past missions in Kawangware, was there with his group called Acoustic Zeze (which means guitar in Swahili). It was great to see all of them.
Catherine informed me after dinner that we would not have a pastor in Kiambu Sunday morning and that I needed to prepare a sermon, so I spent the rest of the night working on that. More to follow as time and Internet access permit.  I hope to post some pictures soon. As always, this blog gets cleaned up once I am back home and several hundred of the best pictures will be available not long after that, so stay tuned!

Arrival in Nairobi

When we landed at Heathrow we were told that there were no open terminals and so we had to disembark via a portable stairway into two buses at a time.  They didn't have enough buses ready so it took about 7 buses and way too much time to clear our fully loaded 777.  We didn't have a lot of extra time to make it through immigration and the security check before we had to board our flight to Nairobi. Some of us were pretty well torn apart, but we all made it onto the plane in time. We are looking forward to meeting up with our last team member, Elizabeth, at the Nairobi airport.
We are about 25 minutes from landing in Nairobi and this trip has been pretty smooth for the most part.  I am hopeful that we get through immigration and security in a timely manner and have a quick drive across town to our lodgings.
Nairobi touch down was right on time at 9:20pm.  Getting our visa took a little while longer than usual and by the time I came down to change the team's money, most of the footlockers were already on the ground, ready to be arranged and counted. We ended up several short due to circumstances we discovered later. They are en route to the correct destinations as of this writing. Arrival at Rosa Mystica, our lodging for the weekend for the group of 60, was at midnight and I was showered and in bed by 1:15am after calling Adrienne to let her know we made it OK.  She passed the word on to Pastor Kevin. Thanks be to God for another safe journey.

Travel notes

November 8, 2012
The morning started out with a phone call a little before 7:30 from Pastor Kevin letting me know that he had been ill all night and would see if he felt well enough to join us in Houston in time for our flight to London.  I immediately headed for his place, where Tammy was waiting with the leader's packets for both Redeemer teams.  I went to the church a block away and retrieved the autorefractors for my team and the petty cash we would need for our on the ground expenses at Kitengela and Kiambu.  Allison from Wichita Falls arrived first, followed by Kay, Beth, Chris and finally Cecilia. We drove my truck and Beth's car to Brenham where we met the rest of our group for our traditional Blue Bell ice cream.
We caravanned to Bush International Airport in Houston and broke bread together, having one last American meal at the Hot Biscuit. After parking at Fast Park, we made our way to Terminal D and waited for the Vision Kenya Project's 60 footlockers to arrive by truck from Tomball. Check-in and our journey through airport security went very smoothly, with the only problem I was aware of being Beth and Chris needing to be reticketed because their full names were not on their boarding passes, thus not matching their passports.  We had just gotten done with security when Pastor Dave called saying that Kevin was definitely not going to make it.  A little later, even though he was still not feeling too well, Kevin graciously called and wished us many blessings on the mission. I feel bad for him, knowing how much behind the scenes planning and work goes into fielding a mission team halfway around the world twice a year.  From just about the time we return from one trip, we are already taking inventory of the remaining supplies, guestimating what to order to replenish our kits, recruiting new as well as experienced missionaries for our next adventure and the list goes on and on. We are very blessed at Redeemer to have a core group of committed people who are constantly volunteering to help with every detail and are always looking for ways to improve our processes to make us more effective witnesses for Christ. Everyone on both of our teams and all who know him from the other churches are praying for a speedy recovery and are hopeful Pastor Kevin might still find a way to get to Africa.
As I write this, we are at 37,000 feet and traveling at about 550mph. We are approaching Boston and will be over the Atlantic Ocean soon. There is some turbulence due to the northeaster that is hitting the East coast and the Fasten Seat Belt lights are on. Veterans of these missions know that it works for the best if you get some good sleep on the flight to London and then try to remain awake for much of the London to Nairobi leg of the trip. This usually results in a little less serious jet lag. It's almost 8pm at home, so I'll be off to Never Neverland fairly soon now.
It's now about midnight back in Texas and 6am London time as we've just been served a light breakfast and are about an hour from Heathrow. I did get some sleep as planned and am getting ready to stow my electronics, including this Android tablet I'm writing this post with. After the choppy air off the eastern U. S., the rest of the flight was very smooth.

Commissioning Sunday brought many blessings

We were sent off by the congregation at all three services Sunday morning.  Each service was led by the high school youth of the church and it was very well done.  Not your grandfather's church service, but full of praise, worship and energy.  During the past week, we lost one team member to a medical issue and put out a call at each service for anyone that would like to go on the trip for a reduced price that would cover their on the ground expenses, since the airfare was non-refundable.  I had texted several members of previous teams the day before, knowing that whoever might be able to go at this late date would not only need to make arrangements with work, school, etc. very quickly, but would also need to already have all of the necessary inoculations for travel to Africa. Dan Zieschang was one of these folks.  He had really wanted to come this time, but just couldn't swing it for a number of reasons.  Our mutual friend Cecilia, a nurse working here in Austin, came to church and Dan immediately began working on her.  He had been with her at his son's high school football game Friday night with Cecilia.  She had him text me to ask where we would be serving when she heard that it was no longer going to be Kawangware.  When I replied that it was Kiambu, she couldn't believe it, that's where she's from!  In fact, she had been in Nairobi for a month recently and just got back about three weeks ago.  He asked her to come to Redeemer on Sunday to tell the group about what to expect there.  When she arrived, he told her she had to go, it was meant to be and that we would find a way to make it happen, both financially and in helping to handle the last minute details quickly.  She worshipped at 8am services, saw our commissioning and plea for a volunteer there and then went to an adult Sunday School with Dan during the second service.  By the time Pastor Kevin was praying a blessing over the team during the third service, she was with us as part of the team, holding hands during prayer.  The Sunday School class had helped raise the money needed to send her.  What a blessing!  She's already a good friend, she knows the area and the dialect where we will be holding our clinic and is a nurse with a big heart for the Lord and for people's needs.

Before every mission trip, I always pray that the Lord will once again surprise us with some totally unexpected experience or will bring a special person or circumstance into our path. This time, it happened before we ever left Austin!

Click on the link below to see pictures of our orientation last month and the commissioning.

https://picasaweb.google.com/103425019225851329391/KenyaFall2012?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCMGJ8Jf9rru_mgE&feat=directlink