Monday at the clinic

We had an early breakfast at 6:30 at Rosa Mystica, loaded up the van and were at the church by 8 am. As usual, there was already a tent full of people waiting to use the clinic.  The preparation we made Sunday after church made setting up the clinic much easier.  All we really had to do was hang eye charts and station numbers on the walls and get each station ready for business.  We were overjoyed to see our old friend John Karanja, who is our evangelist for this mission.  He led us in prayer to start the clinic and we opened for business.

It was also good to see many of our old friends from the church, like Jane and Elizabeth, Frank, Mosa, Barrack and Immanuel, the evangelist at the church.  And of course, Pastor James.  Our longtime Kenyan eye doctors were a joy to greet, as Milliam, Lillian, Chris and Gideon arrived to examine our patient's eyes, dispense drugs and refer those in need of cataract surgeries.  For Pastor Kevin and I, we felt right at home again and I'm sure our newer team members felt the love as well.

It was a pretty steady day until we had threats of rain and a few sprinkles late in the afternoon.  By the time we were done for the day, we had seen 293 people, which is a decent number, since from this initial group word of mouth will begin to spread.

We came directly back to Rosa Mystica from the clinic, arriving around 5:30 pm.  Dinner is served there at 7 pm every night, so we had an hour and a half to shower and relax before meeting for a buffet dinner.  We discussed how the day had gone, a few areas that could use improvement and our overall satisfaction with a first day's effort.  We were all dog tired and ready for an early night.

I went back to my room and finished tallying the registration cards and entering clinic stats into a spreadsheet before I began writing this.  There is a heavy rain continuing to pour outside, the lights flickered several times during dinner as there was thunder and lightning.  I figured I would dash off something quick for the blog in case we do lose power and Internet soon.  There is a very high chance of rain every day for the rest of the week and if the slum turns into mud, it may seriously impact our clinic.  My attitude is we will serve whomever God sends us.  It's really all we can do anyway.

Pastor Kevin and I have the high honor of being invited to the home of our East Africa LCMS Missionary Shauen Trump and his wife Krista for dinner tomorrow night.  We are looking forward to an evening of good food and fellowship as we share stories of our different ministries.  The rest of the team will either eat at Rosa Mystica or grab a bite at the Junction.  More to follow as time, electricity, Internet access and my energy permit.  Blessings everybody!

Sunday happenings

It is midnight in Nairobi as I write this.  My body is telling me it is still 3 pm in Austin.  I went to bed around 9 pm and did sleep soundly, but am wide awake for the moment, so I thought I'd catch you up on our Sunday.

I got up about 6:30 and went down to breakfast with Sandra, the Zochs and the other teams and shared our travelogue with them.  Lots of poking fun at me and honest commiserating by those who had their own war stories over the years.  We all have a great determination to do this human care ministry, so we just buckle down when the Devil throws us a curve ball or two.  And we just keep smiling, he hates that!  Pastor Kevin wandered in and shared his perspective on our adventure as well.

We loaded up a truck with our footlockers and larger luggage and our van for the week with our personal items and headed for Rosa Mystica, a familiar place to most of us.  It is also a Catholic convent with lodging for missionaries and other Christian workers.  It is right next to a nice upscale mall called the Junction, where we can eat and get any supplies during the week that we may need at the Nakumat, a store similar to a Super Wal-Mart that anchors one end of the mall.

Our next stop was the church in Kawangware where we will be serving this week.  We saw Pastor James and many old friends including Thomas, Barrack, Elizabeth, Joyce and many others.  The worship service was awesome as usual, with traditional Lutheran liturgy and hymns, and choir and congregational music that ran the gamut of styles.  One young girl did a solo song that was very complex with no notes or music, it was very well received by all.  The children were sent out to their SundaySchool and Sandra went with them and was asked to lead the class which she did.  She had a blast and commented on how well behaved the 75 little ones were.  Out of deference to us, Pastor James had Thomas translate his sermon as he spoke about Matthew 18 and tied it into the forgiveness found in the parable of the Prodigal Son. He was on fire.  Church lasted about the usual 3 hours and then Pastor James had the men of the congregation help us to get the sanctuary organized for the clinic, which was a huge help.

We went to the Junction and had lunch around 2:30 at the Java House, which is like a Starbucks with a good restaurant.  We ate outdoors, at a table under an umbrella.  From there, we exchanged some of dollars for Kenyan shillings.  The rate is about 100 Ksh per dollar right now, so our usually 1000 shilling notes are almost exactly $10.  On previous trips, this was worth as much as maybe $13. We finished by buying snacks and incidentals for the clinic at Nakumat.

Upon our return to Rosa Mystica, we gathered for a devotion I like to do before each clinic from Oswald Chambers and each shared our reasons for coming on this trip and what we expected the upcoming week to bring.  It's fun to compare these thoughts at the end of the week.

Since we had such a late lunch, we all did personal things for the rest of the evening.  Some calling home on our team phone, me catching up on the blog and others getting an early night's sleep.  All is well and we are ready to begin our work tomorrow.  Please keep us in ou prayers for a joyful, safe and effective mission.  Time to try to get back to sleep...

Arrival in Nairobi

Our KLM 747 touched down at precisely 8 pm Nairobi time.  We took a while to taxi to near the terminal and two doors were opened so that we could deplane, walk down some steps and then take a bus to the immigration and baggage handling area.  The new arrivals terminal is not ready yet, they have only recently bulldozed the original one that burned down some time ago.  As we walked into the receiving area, they were scanning everybody on the walkway for fever, still taking precautions against ebola and other infectious diseases that could destroy their tourism business.

I headed for the line that was handling people who already had their evisa in hand.  Pastor Kevin went to a regular line, expecting to pay $50 to manually get a visa.  But when he showed his receipt for the evisa system, he was told to proceed to a different line and he returned shortly, whereupon they issued his visa promptly at no charge.  Meanwhile, one person after another went right through the manual process, while those who had the evisa, like me, took much more time to get through the system.  When it was finally my turn, the lady at the counter looked through my passport to find a place to stamp it and kept thumbing one page after another, most of which proudly stated Kenya.  She finally looked at me and said "Just who are you?"  I said, "Someone who loves Kenya, maybe I can become a citizen." She said, "To do that, you need to marry a Kenyan."  She was playing along, so I asked if she were available for marriage.  She sadly told me no, she was already taken.  We got a good laugh out of it and I joined Kevin in the baggage claim area.  Three of our four footlockers were already there, but it took about 40 minutes for the last one to finally show up.  We only could find one cart, so we precariously stacked all the footlockers on it and headed for the final customs inspection.  We had to open and explain every item we had, but we got through OK after we mentioned that we worked through the Ministry of Health.  Those apparently are the magic words, I'll try to remember them for our next trip.

After we got outside, there were about 100 drivers with signs with the names of the passengers they were to pick up.  I had looked through about 20 of them when I heard someone call out "Dave!"  It was Henry, a driver we had worked with several times before.  We had to roll the top heavy cart through a bunch of pedestrians, across a busy street, load up the vehicle and then fight a traffic jam to get to our lodgings across town.

We arrived at the Little Daughters of St.Joseph compound where the other teams were already staying, unloaded our footlockers, checked into our rooms and I was heading for the only thing I wanted, a hot shower at 11:30 pm.  It was not to be.  All the hot water was gone and, ulnike the other places we stay, they have a central hot water system, not the individual electric heaters on each shower head like Europe has. I got a cold shower, but at least it was wet.  I got about 6 hours of good sleep, a rarity for the first night, but Kevin and I were completely exhausted after our travel extravaganza.  This marks the end of the travel reporting.

Travel from Amsterdam to Nairobi

We left Schiphol a little late due to a very full flight and how long it took to get everyone boarded.  A 747 holds a LOT of people.  The Captain assured us he would make up any lost time if he could.  It looks like our choice for lunch will be between some kind of chicken dish and a vegetarian pasta and rice.  I’m sure either will be good.  Our only other hurdle that I can foresee right now is getting Kevin into Kenya based on his receipt from the online system.  We’re hoping the worst scenario is that he gets stuck for cash for an entry visa as we go through immigration.  Our plan right now is for him to go through first, so I’ll know what his status is before I get out to the baggage claim area.  If he has problems, I’ll get his baggage claim tickets in the unlikely event one of the footlockers he checked doesn’t make it today. 

Once lunch is over, I have a strong hunch I’ll get a little more shuteye.  It will be good to get to whatever lodging we have tonight and be able to lay down on a bed.  Sleeping sitting up on a plane is not the most restful slumber you’ll ever get, but it does help some.

I was right, I got a little more rest and have now had a cup of black coffee and really need to stay awake from here on in if I am going to stand a chance of sleeping tonight in Kenya.  We’re about 4 hours from touchdown in Nairobi.  I’ve gotten to the point that I can usually get acclimated to the 9 hour time difference by about the 2^nd or 3^rd night of a trip, with all of the craziness this time, it might be Monday or Tuesday night before I settle in to the new routine.  I’ve always found it easier to battle jet lag when you are going on vacation or a mission trip because you have to do what you came to do.  When you go back to your everyday life, it’s a little harder to find the motivation to do whatever it takes.  I guess it’s just human nature.

It’s finally beginning to sink in that we’re really going to get to our destination and see our old friends once again, working side by side as we provide eye care to the community around the Lutheran Church in the slum of Kawangware.  We’ve always been able to give blessings by what we do and the blessings we receive each time are pretty amazing.  I know there will be some great moments for each of us, the anticipation of just what they might be this time is always fun.  We’ll be surprised, that’s for sure.

With about 3 hours to go, the crew served us real Belgian ice cream and it rivaled Blue Bell.  Very good, a swirl of vanilla with chocolate sauce marbled right into it.  And it was very hard.  Of course, with an outside air temperature of -56 F they probably have a super duper freezer somewhere on our 747!  With about 2 hours to go, we had our final meal of pizza, a side with alternative slices of tomato and some kind of white, soft cheese and tiramisu.  Eat your heart out British Air!  It’s getting near the time I need to put the laptop up, plus I’m down to only about 15% of a battery charge.  There’s only one thing carriers with newer fleets have that KLM doesn’t yet, and that’s power taps under the seats and USB in the seats to keep laptops, phones and tablets charged up.  Oh, and no wifi on these flights this time.  No big deal, I write the blog in Word and copy and paste into the blog online as I can.  Anyway, given the choice, I’ll go for the better food!  More to follow in the days ahead.  Stay tuned…

Dave and Kevin's Excellent Adventure

Practice makes perfect.  We drove down to Houston once again Friday morning for another attempt at getting to Nairobi. We had to drive separately, since Pastor Kevin has a wedding and is returning to Austin starting next Thursday night.  Since we were unsure of whether Kevin would be allowed to fly on KLM without an issued Kenyan evisa (he did have a receipt), we had arranged the 4 footlockers such that if I was going by myself, I would be taking 2 footlockers with the most critical supplies like frames for distance glasses and Gospel tracts for clinic patients.  What a difference a day can make.  I felt like we were in the movie Groundhog Day, as we repeated the process from Thursday.  The same personnel were at the counter and were just as friendly, since KLM and Air France are partner airlines.  They recognized us and were sorry for our delay.  They had even given me a 50% off voucher for a hotel if I had wanted to stay in Houston Thursday night attempting to procure my visa.  We had both decided to go back to Austin instead, since there was no guarantee the buggy visa system would work any better at a hotel.  They commiserated with us about the wasted round trip we had made.  It proved to have been a good move, since I was able to use my Photoshop skills at my home office to fine tune the photos required for the visa application and mine had finally gone through at 3am Friday.

Another similarity to Thursday was that Kevin and I had the same clothes as before.  No, we weren’t beginning to smell funny.  We had each done laundry the night before.  I have a new lucky red shirt I am trying out on this trip and figured the bad Karma of Thursday couldn’t last.  I retired my old lucky red shirt after it let me down and we wound up in Istanbul on my 13^th trip last June.  It lived a good long life, but it was time for it to be put out to pasture.

Anyway, we sailed through check-in, without even being asked about the evisas.  This made it very plain to me that Air France just didn’t have a grasp of the options available in Nairobi and didn’t care to go the extra mile to find out.  Rules are rule, zero tolerance means you don’t have to think.  New day, new airline, same personnel, different rules.  We left the check-in counter with everybody on both sides of it smiling.  I can say that while we were upset by the circumstances Thursday, we didn’t throw a tantrum or play the “Don’t you know who I am?” card so common these days but handled it in a loving Christian way.  The staff encouraged us both days in doing the human care mission work they knew we were on our way to do.

We also got through security without a hitch and I had just enough time to grab a sandwich and some waters for each of us before boarding our KLM flight.  Dinner was a choice between vegetarian pasta with rice and cheese or Korean beef with rice and candied carrots.  I got the beef, it was very good.  I watched the movie Minions, I love how creative this series is, and it’s as much for adults as kids.  Sandra Bullock’s voice acting as the evil Scarlet was superb.  I got some good sleep and am writing this as we are about 2 hours from Amsterdam and about to eat once again.  They have already brought hot towels for our hands and faces, a nice touch.

Breakfast was also good, a cheese omelet with sausage, a biscuit and mixed fruit salad.  We often fly the partnership of British Air and American on these missions.  They don’t know anything about food compared to KLM and Air France! 

I got a fair amount of sleep on this first leg of our journey, which is exactly what we try to do.  It helps in adjusting to the 9 hour difference when we get to Nairobi.  We have about 3 hours between flights in Amsterdam, I expect about an hour of that will be deplaning, getting through security and boarding of the next flight, so I should have time to post this if I can get onto the wifi at the airport.  If all goes well, we will arrive in Nairobi around 8:15pm local time and it usually takes about an hour to get through customs and immigration.  Please pray that Pastor Kevin doesn’t hit any visa snags.  We’re not sure where we’ll be staying, but we will worship with the rest of our team at the church in Kawangware where we will be serving this week.  That’s always a great experience, more to follow about that when it occurs.

We did talk to Dr. Zoch while we were going through check-in in Houston.  The team was already on their way to their lodgings at a convent we have used in the past, The Little Daughters of St. Joseph.  All were well and their trip was without incident.  I guess Kevin and I got all the drama this time!

We arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam a little after 7am and were pleasantly surprised that we didn’t have to go through any additional security checks like in London or Paris.  Sweet!  Looks like we get most of our 3 hour layover to spend in one of coolest airports in the world.  I’m drinking a medium black coffee that was 3.45 euros, not sure of the exchange rate but I’m guessing it’s a 5 dollar cup of coffee.  It’s good, but not THAT good!  I’m going to spend the time after posting this blog doing my 365 Day Photo Challenge picture for today on Facebook and letting friends and relatives that may not be following the blog that so far, everything is good.  Stay tuned! 

The trials and tribulations of International travel

Pastor Kevin's favorite word at the end of a mission trip is "uneventful".  He won't be using it this time!  I drove down to Houston with Alison Beck a little early because she was flying out with the Salem teams.  That way, I was there when the rest of the team arrived and could help with footlockers and luggage while the others parked in long-term garages.  The other teams went right through check-in.  We found out later it was because they all had gotten evisas through a new system that was just implemented September 1st in Kenya.  We had received notice that the system had so many challenges that the Kenyan government had decided around September 15th to continue to allow for the manual purchase of tourist visas at the airport.  Air France never got the memo and would not let 3 of us board.  Sandra was able to apply for, pay for and get an evisa issued on her phone.  My phone and laptop would not connect to the Internet, but Dr. Zoch gave it the college try for me on his iPhone.  The application can take up to an hour on a computer, you can imagine how painful it is on a phone.  We needed to take selfies, pictures of our passports, upload our itineraries, etc and they all had to be just right.  We worked from 12,:30 until 3 pm on it, never having lunch.  I get pretty snippy when I don't get lunch, so it was not the best afternoon of my life, but I was surrounded by good friends and we had a few laughs at gallows humor type jokes.  We finally got to the point where we had to send the team without any leaders, a new first.  We had alerted the leadership of the Salem team and no matter what, our team members would be safe and serve somewhere in Kenya, whether Kevin and I made it or not.  Kevin and I tried until 4pm, since Air France said they could rush us through security, but no bueno.  We called the long-term parking about a shuttle and were informed that they only drop off at the departure terminal, we had to make our way with all of our stuff through a series of elevators and tunnels to a passenger pickup area.  At least our pre-paid parking will be good when we return today.

I stopped for dinner in Hempstead at a McDonald's after battling Houston rush hour and eating a candy bar and a granola bar to tide me over.  I thought I could try the evisa again on their wi-fi, but it was pitiful, so I gave up until I got back to Austin.  I got a hot shower around 8pm and went to work.  The visa system kept crashing.  I gave up at 10:30 and went to bed, figuring I would try anytime I woke up in the night.  I tried at 1 am with no luck, but got it to work at 3 am by taking a fresh scan of my passport and a selfie with my phone and making them nice in Adobe Lightroom.  I usually don't do photo editing in the middle of the night, but I have to say, I made myself look GOOD!  And it worked.  Woohoo.

I'm writing this about an hour before heading to Houston once more.  I'm good to go, Pastor Kevin has a receipt for his application, but it hasn't been issued yet.  We hope KLM is not as strict as Air France and we do have copies of emails showing that we could get a visa in Kenya and also Catherine, our friend and liaison there has suggested we have them call the Nairobi aiport to verify it, since we couldn't make contact with the Kenyan Consul in Houston yesterday.

We did get word back from our team that they made it to Paris and should be in Nairobi by around noon today, Austin time.  Thank you, Jesus!

I'm ready for another round, wish us luck and keep the prayers coming!

Getting ready to saddle up once more, travel begins today!

We leave today for our Fall trip to the Nairobi slum of Kawangware to do a vision clinic.  The 5 of us are all excited to be working with our friends and veteran volunteers there at the Lutheran Church.  The team was commissioned last Sunday.  In the picture below, from left to right are myself, Sandra Dorn, Diana Zoch, Dr. Robert Zoch and of course, Pastor Kevin, who will be joining us this time.

Pastor Kevin describes our trip to the congregation before praying over the team for a safe and effective mssion

We typically have flown out of Austin for between $1200 and $1500 on British Air and gotten to Nairobi by way of London.  This time, we jumped on a deal with Air France and it was on;y $768 round trip, but we do need to fly out of Houston and our stop in Europe is in Paris.  Even with long term parking, this price made the drive to Houston worth it.  I will be reporting back as often as possible, our layover in Paris is only 2 hours, so it may be hard to get work out that we are safe until sometime Saturday morning Austin time.  We will be 9 hours ahead, so noon in Austin is 9pm in Nairobi.  We all have a strategic plan to sleep on the first flight as much as possible and then try to stay awake from Paris to Nairobi, to help make the 9 hour adjustment.  Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we hope to reach several thousand people with care for their eyes and the Good News that is the reason we do what we do!