Two Teams, One Plane

Happy New Year - with a quarter of the year gone, is it too late to say that, even if it is our first post of 2010?

Well, back when such a greeting would have been a bit more warmly received - such as mid-January - we had the pleasure of receiving two separate teams from the USA, by chance arriving on the exact same airplane.  One was a team of 14 American medical personnel (6 doctors, 6 nurses, 2 pharmacists) coming for a one-week medical outreach to NE Kenya.  The other was a group of
7 new Bethany interns arriving to begin their 16-month internship in the same location in NE Kenya.  Also, along with them was one former intern under us (now a graduate) returning to work as one of the team leaders in the internship program.

After allowing both groups two nights to rest, shop, get oriented, we loaded up vans, a bus, my Nissan X-Trail, our Pastor's Toyota pickup and headed to NE Kenya, along with 14 Kenyans from our home church here in Nairobi.  Thus began a very complicated, but successful, week of running two teams, with very different objectives, simultaneously.

Dr. Kabachia, our pastor, oversaw the medical outreach team, which was in the country for the purpose of one-week of providing medical attention to very needy people.  The Bethany interns were in a one-week orientation to begin their 16-month stay, which was being overseen was Jason and Harrison, our Bethany team leaders in the area.  Myself, together with Jason as well, moved back and forth between both groups being sure that all details in each were running smoothly.  Everything, on both sides, went perfectly throughout the whole week.

On the medical outreach side, the medical team provided medical attention to at least 1,200 people in their 4 days of clinics.  Three of the days the clinics were done right in town.  One day, however, we went to a village 15 miles out into the desert, where Dr. Kabachia had been a government teacher 32 years ago, and was the one who started their school.  This village has been very forgotten, and so we were very well received by the Chief, the Sheikh, and all the other village leaders.  As a result of that outreach, relationships were built for us to continuing finding opportunities to help this village in the future.

The interns successfully went through their orientation, and the day after we left, they began their three-month language learning phase.

It was an exhausting week, but a week that was so successful, we thank God for all that He did in and through us during that time.

Photo 1:  Dr. Kabachia and I with a village member who had been one of Dr. Kabachia's students 32 years ago.
Photo 2 & 3:  Medical personnel treating villagers.