Sunday August 18, 2013 Nairobi Kenya:
The work begins:
After 22 hours of flying our team arrived at the Nairobi airport. As you may have heard, last week, there was a major fire at the airport , which destroyed the international arrival section of the airport. We had heard that the international arrivals was now using the domestic arrivals for arriving passengers, but when we arrived we were bussed to tents that were put up on the tarmac at the extreme end of the airport. At 9 pm 400 people were herded into a tent, which could hold 200 people and we began the long weary wait for a handful of customs officials to process our visas. Following that, we arrived at the makeshift baggage area; another tent. The bags for 400 passengers were piled in the middle of the floor and the passengers made a run for them. Oh how fun it was! “Well it really was kinda fun!” After 30 minutes we finally rounded up all our bags and made a run for the exits. It was now 12:15 am. We arrived at our hotel shortly after 1am and hit the bed at 2am.
Today we were up at 7am for a quick breakfast and it was off to the Kayole church for two services. I’ve done this before so I thought I could skate through it. As I began to try to speak in the first service I was almost incoherent for the first 10 minutes, trying unsuccessfully to read my notes. Finally I took a step of faith, put away my notes just trusted the Lord and “Wow” did He come through. I myself was totally touched by my own sermon. Thank you Lord. The second service was great.
I can see that our team is going to be a great team. Only 3 of us are real medics, but we have other gifts that will really benefit the medical camps.
We are going to be working with two churches: The Kayole PEFA Church on the extreme East border of Nairobi and the South B church, which is located on the extreme South border of Nairobi. All of us could see that both of these churches are going to make very good partners for WorldCOMP. A huge number of people from both churches have turned out to work with us in these camps and they really have a genuine love for the poor and the sick and a passion to see people come to Christ. The orientation meetings we had at both churches today were very well attended; way beyond our expectations. Dr. Milnes and I were talking today about how incredibly far we come in just a few short years in our organization and in the level of participation by our Kenyan counterparts. I thank the Lord so much that we are moving so rapidly in the right direction. I think that within a few years a number of our partner churches will be ready to sponsor medical camps without the need for support from outside groups. This is a goal that we had from the beginning in our work with churches.
We are about to hit our beds. Several of us were falling asleep at dinner. Please pray that we can get a very good rest. “The scripture says; “He gives his beloved sleep”.
God bless you dear friends. Thank you for your prayer support and your financial support in this wonderful work. We made a few changes in our schedule so that we could visit Lenana School and also have a 1 day camp at the Kakamega Church. I’ll send you the complete details tomorrow.
More tomorrow….