Visitors from Romania

I was so blessed last month to have two of my dear friends from Romania - Jen Schroeder (an American living in Romania) and Cornelia Fieraru (a Romanian I have known since 1999) - visit me for 2 weeks. It was so much fun! I hadn't seen either one of them for so long and it was so great to be with them as they experienced Africa for the first time.

While here, they spent most of their time on Children's Ward, which was wonderful. Both of them have a gift with children, and it was a blessing for the many children in the hospital who spend day after day with nothing to do. One mother thanked them for making her son happy for the first time in weeks.

Jen with David, one of her favorite patients

They also came and watched me do my work. I think they enjoyed seeing the C-sections the most!

Jen is ready to assist!

Corney loved the newborn babies

We also had the opportunity to have dinner at Mikal's house, our "wazungu hostess" here on station and my Kenyan mom. At the end of the night, she said that she now has 2 Romanian daughters :)

From L to R: Rhiannon and Emma (2 medical students from London), William and Mikal, Corney, Jen and Me

The end of their week here in Kapsowar brought a memorable memento of Kenya for Jen. While playing basketball with some of the kids here on station, she put out her hand to stop herself and broke her wrist. So, 2 days before we left for safari, Bill, our surgeon, had to reduce her fracture and put her in a cast. She was a trooper, though, and we had many laughs about it.




Probably the neatest thing for me was seeing Corny's reactions to things. Cornelia grew up in an orphanage in Romania, which is where I first met her. Many of you who have followed my work overseas since then will remember me talking about her the year I lived in Romania. She came to our Bible studies and became a great friend, but never became a Christian while I was there. A few years ago, Corny became a Christian and now works as a missionary with Heart to Heart. It was amazing to me to see the life change God has done in her. While she's still herself, the hard edge that was always there with her is gone. It was great to see her see, for the first time, a place that was more poor than Romania and see how she responded to that. I was nearly moved to tears as I listened to her talk about how she was affected by the children at the orphanage here. I know that God changed her life while she was here.

A True Blessing

The third week of July, I was extremely blessed to be able to head to a much needed retreat at Brackenhurst Retreat Center, just outside of Nairobi. This 4 days of rest, relaxation, pampering, and spiritual encouragement was provided by a wonderful organization called Christian Hospitality Network and CFC church in TN. CHN was started to provide R&R for missionaries around the world. They have it down to an art! When we arrived, we were greeted with true southern hospitality and given goody bags prepared especially for each one of us by the person who had paid for us to be there. Then we were told about all the free things we could take advantage of - medical care, a chiropracter, massages, haircuts and various excursions we could choose from. My favorite part of the week was when I returned to my room one night to find an envelope full of cards and letters from friends and family back home. I'm still not exactly sure how they arranged that, but it was the sweetest surprise and such an encouragement. Thank you to all of you who sent them!

One of my fellow post-residents, John Cropsey, enjoying a free hand massage

The excursion I chose was a visit to a tea plantation. This was the main house - very British colonial

The beautiful lawn where we had a wonderful 4-course lunch

The tea fields were so pretty. Each worker gets 6 shillings (less than 10 cents) for each kilo of leaves they pick. Their daily goal is 100 kilos!

Amelia and Meredith Friess, daughters of another fellow post-resident, playing hide and seek in the tea fields

Me, Vanessa and one of the wonderful hair stylists

Me, Megan Shirley, and Vanessa enjoying gelato during our girls' day in Nairobi

Thank you CHN and CFC church!!

My First Pokot Trip

The second weekend in July, we loaded 17 people into 2 (yes 2) vehicles and headed to our neighboring district - Pokot. The Pokot people are nomadic herders. They tend to be fairly uneducated. The girls are usually married by age 12 and start having babies about age 14-15. We are their closest hospital, and my experience with them has been that by the time they get to me, their babies are dead and they are near death. So, I was looking forward to going to Pokot and seeing just why they are all in such bad shape when I see them.
We left early in the morning and I was definitely not prepared for the "road" there, although I had been warned. Had I not been gripping the handle inside the car with a death grip, I would have taken some pictures. Let's just say it's about 1 1/2 hours of driving on the side of a mountain over boulders with a huge drop-off on the side and no guardrails! After that, there still is no real road - just paths. Overall, it took us about 3 hours to get there.
Once we got there, I met Pastor Stephen, a Kenyan missionary to the Pokot people. He and his family have lived there for 4 years, in some very tough conditions. It is dry, hot, dusty, thorny and a stretch even for them. He has started a church that is growing and hungry for teaching. He and his family were such an inspiration to me.
We then set up our clinic and got started. The people were very excited to have us there!

Pastor Charles, one of our hospital chaplains, giving a small talk before the clinic started

We set up a tent so that the Jones' kids would have a place to get out of the heat during the day. They later slept in this same tent!

Our clinic - no worries, the dogs were cleared out before we started seeing patients :)

Our clinic full of patients. We saw over 100 patients in a few hours. Ann (in the red on the left) is giving immunizations - the biggest hit of the clinic. Some children were 2 years old and had never had any.

The very busy pharmacy/cashier table. It kept Mark and Manakhe (visiting medical students) and even Vanessa and Hudson Jones busy all day.

Mikal (left), one of our patient attendants at the hospital and also a dear friend, served as my translator. This is her with one of the patients we saw. The beaded necklaces are traditional wear for the Pokot.

This was one of the best parts of the day. This old Pokot man, who had probably never even used any kind of technology, was fascinated by Mark's phone and loved playing games on it. Such a juxtaposition of cultures!

We spent the night at the pastor's house - some of us inside and some outside in tents. Before going to bed, we had a blessed time outside where many from the church gathered and we sang songs and Kyle preached a small sermon. The next day, we went to Sunday school first. It was great to see so many kids there. Afterwards, we got out a parachute and let them have some fun with it (see below). It was so great to see these children, who live such hard lives, just let loose and have some fun.

We then attended the church service and helped lead it, including singing and sharing testimonies. It was wonderful to worship with them and see their thirst for hearing the Word. This is a very unreached people group in Kenya. Below is the church choir sharing a song - included jumping and an animal skin drum!

They were followed by the children's choir, which was just precious!

It was such a blessed weekend and I'm so thankful that this ministry has been started. We hope to go back every 6-8 weeks as the need is just so great. Over and over they told us of their need for a dispensary (small health center) and a school. Their closest health care is about 40km away and there are no vehicles there. So, they must walk that distance for any kind of health care. Nearly all women deliver at home without even a trained birth attendant. I had the opportunity to sit all of the pregnant women I saw down and talk with them about warning signs during pregnancy and labor that would indicate a need to come to the hospital. They desperately need trained nurses there, as hospital deliveries are just not feasible due to lack of transportation.
So, please join me in praying for the Pokot people and that the Lord would give us wisdom on how best to reach and help them. I look forward to sharing with you about many more trips!

Fun with giraffes

A few weeks ago, the Jones family and I decided we needed a little getaway and so we used Isaac's birthday as an excuse to get away to Nairobi for the weekend. We had a great time relaxing and enjoying good food that we didn't have to make.
One of the highlights was visiting the Giraffe Center where you can get up close and personal with the gentle giants. We got to feed them and got completely slimed by their long tongues. I wasn't adventurous enough, though, to let them eat out of my mouth as some others did, but I figured just letting them wrap that long tongue around my hand was enough :)
It was a great time and I'm so thankful for the friendship of the Jones family and what an encouragement they are to me.

The Jones'

Nairobi Eye

I know that I have taken an especially long hiatus from blogging and for that I apologize. So, I'll try to catch you all up on recent happenings.
This is winter in Kenya (it gets down to the 50's at night, which is very cold for here) and time for the heavy rains. The rains have been better than last year, when there was a drought, but haven't been too bad. Along with the rains, though, come a variety of critters. Thankfully not too many have made it into my house. You do, however, have to be very vigilant for one in particular - the Nairobi Eye (or fly, depending on who you talk to). It is very small (see picture below), and it doesn't bite. However, if you hit it while it is on your skin, it releases a very irritating vesicant and causes basically a chemical burn.

About a month ago, one must have crawled onto my arm while I was sleeping. I tend to sleep with my arms curled up and you can see the result below. It is just now fully healing.


Then, this past Sunday, while watching the final World Cup game (I'm not really a soccer fan, but figured since it was such a big deal here, I should watch it), I felt something crawling on my neck and absent-mindedly swatted at it. This is what resulted. I have a matching wound on my neck. And yes, in case you were wondering, it is painful. I have now started doing thorough inspection of my bed and the surrounding walls before settling in at night.

Beware the Nairobi Eye!