Turkey and dressing (and monkeys!)

Hello everyone,
We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. And yes, for those of you who asked, you can buy turkey in Kenya. Thanksgiving Day itself was rather interesting. First of all, it was not a holiday here and was a regular day of work. Fortunately for me it and the rest of the week were already scheduled off, so I did not have to work Thanksgiving. Sarah unfortunately was sick and rested most of the day. Maggie and I hung out around the house and starting constructing our artificial tree some friends gave us. We did have a visitor join us. His name is Sat (pronounced like cot, but w/ an S). He is a pediatric resident from Walter Reed in Washington, DC. He is spending some time at Kericho and we met him at the HIV meeting there a few weeks ago. We are glad he was able to come and join us. Around lunch time when everyone was napping I was able to pull up the rest of our sweet potatoes from the garden. They were a popular item the last couple of days as everyone was wanting them to cook with. That evening we had a compound wide Thanksgiving dinner which everyone contributed to. All of the traditional food was there, with the inclusion of a great seaweed salad from our Japanese nurse friend Anna. Maggie was a little impatient seeing the food, but having to wait to eat (our table ate last because we came in last in a Thanksgiving trivia game, but that’s another story). After dinner there was singing, a movie for kids, and a football game shown in the auditorium. (The kids movie was our copy of Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving, which we also shown to the locals at Wed AM devotionals to teach them what Thanksgiving is about). We didn’t stay for this as it was getting late. When we got home our neighbor, Ms. Barb, hung out with us and we finally got her a copy of our photos from the nursing school graduation.
Friday morning fortunately Sarah woke feeling much better, so we quickly backed for a weekend trip to Nakuru. This is about a 3 hour drive from us and home of the World Gospel Mission headquarters. We were invited to go there with our friend’s, the Robert’s family. I was happy Sarah was able to see the beautiful teafields along the way. About half way we stopped and had lunch at a little cottage-style hotel called “Ray’s Place”. We ate a picnic lunch on their back porch. It was a beautiful area and quiet little hotel. We then got back on the road. As we entered Nakuru we stopped at the Africa Gospel Church’s Baby Center. This is a baby orphanage and first of it’s kind. It was created with the intension of promoting adoption, but we learned that adoption is not accepted here. Family is very important here and people feel “why would you want to take someone’s baby away from them and put them in your family”. One of the missionary couples at Tenwek are the first and only family to adopt a baby so far. It will take time to change mindsets. Now the baby’s are getting up to near 2 years in age, so the center is making huge expansions planning on having to house 3 and 4 year olds soon. The facility is very nice and has (1 think) about 30 babies now. I was asked to examine about 5 of them, some sick and some new babies who have not been seen. Maggie enjoyed being around a bunch of kids her age.

After this we met with the couple that are the country directors for World Gospel Mission, the Vanderhoofs. They showed us around town for a little while and the Roberts went to their home and we went to Margie’s, the WGM accountant, home (she had MacGyver on DVD!). We unloaded and then all went to the Vanderhoofs. A game of croquet broke out in their back yard which was a lot of fun. We then ate pizza and had leftover Thanksgiving deserts.
Saturday AM we woke up and after running a few quick errands in town went to the Lake Nakura National Park. This would be the site of our second safari in Kenya. When we arrived at the park, which was at the edge of the city (the second largest in Kenya), we immediately saw monkeys at play. We then drove up to the building where Ben and I went to pay for everyone. From past experience I told the girls when we got out to roll up their windows so a monkey wouldn’t get in. They laughed. While we were inside we heard loud screaming. We ran out and saw a monkey running off with a bag. Apparently a large male monkey jumped up onto the passangers side window. They tried to shoo it away, but it snarled, jumped in and grapped a bag of trail mix. Jenny yelled at it in Swahili, but to no avail. The monkey had what it wanted and ran off. I offered to retrieve the food, but they said that was okay because the monkeys had their hands all in it.

After this exciting start we headed out. Unlike our last safari, on this one you drove yourself and could do what you liked. The main animals here were flamingoes (it was a lake), storks, pelicans, water buffalo, zebras, and rhinos. There were other animals as well.


We also got to see some lions. Around lunch time we drove past a waterfall and got out at a picnic area, which was nothing more than a clearing with rest rooms. We ate cautiously looking for animals. When we were about done Ben yelled “baboons”. After the morning incident, we quickly grabbed up everything with kids screaming. Jenny tried to get her youngest in while still strapped in the stroller. Sarah got Maggie and I got the pecan tassies and jumped in. I then got back out and helped Ben. We were able to keep the baboons at bay long enough to gather everything and get out okay. The park rangers even came up and helped us. All in all it was a fun day and a beautiful park. After this we all went to a hotel in town to swim with the kids. The water was very cold. They also had soft-serve ice cream, which is rare here. It was so good, we even sat in the rain to eat it. We then did some shopping and went with the Vanderhoofs to a restaurant for dinner.
The next AM we went to the Vanderhoofs for breakfast and then they drove us to the top of the Nakuru crater. It was huge and apparently the second largest of its type in the world. After this we headed back. We stopped at a place called Taidy’s on the way back and grabbed a snack (strange being in the middle of a teafield at a restaurant showing soccer on a flat screen TV). We also bought some veggies and fruit along the way. We just had to slow up and the car was swarmed with sellers. Very convenient.

When we arrived back at Tenwek later that afternoon we had more fun in store. We gathered with some of our friends for our own Thanksgiving dinner, but called it a Christmas kickoff as their house was decorated and had Christmas music playing. Many people were away, so after this all the families left on the compound came over for dessert and fellowship. We had a special time of prayer over Ms. Barb as she would be leaving on Monday for furlough. When we got home that night Sarah helped her until way past 11 and again the next morning. She will be missed while she is away.
On Monday we were back to work. I had a frustrating morning as I went to the IT department to work on a new hospital form and ,long story short, an editing session took almost 3 hours. That day we did not finish rounding until around 4. When I got home we had fun, however, as we did our Christmas decorating. We were given a tree earlier and have accumulated some accessories, including ones sent to us in the mail, thanks.
I am seeing more and more people now in clinic who are in with me for follow-up visits. It is so neat to see improvement in many of them. I even had a patient ask me to pray with them before they left before I could even ask.
Still tired from our previous excursion, we loaded back up on Wednesday for a trip into Nairobi. It did not bother Maggie as she began to smile when she was able to get back into her car seat. It was a long, dusty ride. The dust was so bad at times we had to come to complete stops to let it clear. Our driver got lost in Nairobi, after telling us he knew where he was going. I then got a phone call from Tenwek saying the meeting we had come in for the next day had just been cancelled. I was very frustrated at first, but decided to look at it as a chance for our family to relax together. We arrived at the SP office and talked with one of the leaders there. We talked with her about doing Operation Christmas Child. It is new here, but she said she would do what she could to let us help get involved next Spring! We came into the guest house and rested. We then went out to eat with more workers here going back into Sudan. One was a lady we met last time who we got to know and were very glad to see her again. We got talking about Operation Christmas Child and learned that she used to be the financial director for OCC. We sat around and talked and shared stories about OCC. We don’t know why all this happened, but we are excited that this may help to open up new doors for us to have increased involvement with this ministry in the future. Please pray for this!
Thursday was now a free day for us, so we went to the giraffe center. This is a place that was founded in the 1970’s as a haven for a nearly extinct breed of giraffe, the Rothschild (there are 3 varieties, Rothschild, reticulated, and Maasi).

It now serves as an educational center to teach Kenyan school children about conservation and the environment. We had so much fun. You can feed the giraffes and they eat right out of your hand. We then went to part of the Karen Blixen estate for lunch. It was set up and felt like you were in British East Africa in the 1910’s. It was nice and relaxing. (Rumor has it that this was where Teddy Roosevelt stayed to come and hunt in Africa.). We then went into downtown to go looking at a particular store. The downtown area has big buildings and is very crowded.
Okay, that is our journey thus far. December is going to be very busy for us. Please pray for our stamina then and for the prison project coming up near Christmas. We will fill you in on the rest of our journeys soon, but wanted to share this with you for now.

Accidents and Acceptance

Last Sunday was a day none of around here are likely to forget anytime soon. As we sat down to lunch I got a phone call that I was needed up at outpatient because there had been a bus wreck. I quick ran off not knowing what to expect. When I walked in it was absolute chaos. Casualty was so full of patients that you could hardly move. We started to move people to the OR recovery area and it quickly became like a scene from a horror move. People were rolling in bloody with all sorts of trauma. The initially chaos began to slow down after about an hour. I helped triage patients for surgery and procedures and then began the slow process of suturing wounds and deciding who to admit and who to discharge. All doctors, nurses and other staff that were around were asked to come up and help. I worked for about 9 hours straight, as did so many others. Not only did medical people pitch in, but so did other volunteers. A surgeon's wife fixed food for everyone to eat that night, the CEO bought everyone sodas, and our neighbor ,Ms Barb, ran around helping however she could, including putting candy in people’s mouths so they would not become hypoglycemic. Sarah helped by watching the kids of a family all day so both parents could be at the hospital. Things wound down around 11PM with some families showing up wanting to go to the make-shift morgue to identify family members. By the end of the day the floor was covered with blood.
Apparently the bus was the African version of a Greyhound and had between 50-60 people on board. Apparently 7 died on the scene and another 7 died that day at the hospital. The bus was traveling down a hill and around a curve and lost control in the rain, going off the road and into a river bed. Apparently several other wrecks have occurred in the past at the same spot.

Waking up Monday morning we quickly realized it was not all a bad dream. The recovery room still held surgical patients from the night before. All the wards were full with surgical and orthopedic patients scattered throughout. During the course of the week another 7-10 people have died, with an ICU full of patients still on vents. Dealing with the wreck has made everyone tired. National media came out Monday for interviews. Over 40 surgeries have been performed. Plus it has made for some tough decisions. Patients code but we have no ventilator to place them on because all the machines are being used. It has been a trying time.
There have been some good things to happen over the past week. It never ceases to amaze me when people accept the Lord’s free gift of salvation. We continue to see suicide attempts come in who have not heard of Christ and upon us speaking to them want to be saved. I cannot know there hearts, but when you see the smile on their faces the next day it says alot. I had a patient in clinic who asked for strength and to grow in his faith as he was saved in clinic 2 months earlier. I had other retired teacher who came through and said he was a student at Tenwek’s high school and then came back their to teach. It was a neat situation.
Tuesday was a day to get away from Tenwek for awhile. Dr. John Spriegel, the medical superintendent, and I, along with a pharmacist, rode to the city of Kericho for a day for an HIV conference. It was sponsored by PEPFAR. This is the main US aid program enacted by President Bush to pay for medications and care for AIDs patients in Africa. It was announced in the state of the union the same year he first talked about the war against terror. It began in 2004 and is in several African countries, with Kenya receiving the most support. Needless to say many locals are afraid of what will happen if the funding stops. The conference itself featured a speaker from the NIH and was very informative.
Kericho was beautiful. It is one of the unofficial tea capitals. The ride up featured rolling mountainside covered with tea fields. Around here tea is grown by locals and sold to buying centers. There large corporations own the fields and hire workers (which I was told is one step above poverty). The conference was in the Kericho Tea Hotel. It seemed like a place that would have been stunning 30 years ago, but was now run down and needed major renovations. Our afternoon was highlighted by a political fanatic who was dressed in a military uniform and had a big homemade banner for his party. He was crazy, but not threatening. He even made it up onto the roof.

I noticed 2 other things about Kenyan culture while at Kericho. One was what I have heard called the “Kenyan Pause”. When a Kenyan speaks English, he or she may stop at any point in the sentence and pause, which takes some getting used to. There is also the issue of photography. We have mentioned this some earlier, but I’ve learned photographers are a staple around here. They will show up at any gathering of people and take photos, regardless of what is going on at the time. Then a little while later they will show up with photos of you which they want you to buy. Then at the end of any gathering it is almost understood that you will all gather for a group photo before leaving. This is something else that is funny to me.
On the way John and I discussed many things, including his vision for the future for Tenwek, including distance education and satellite clinic sites. We also discussed our need to determine who will fill future leadership roles here, especially with all of the medical people leaving on furlough this summer. Pray for us as I will need direction in which roles to take.
We did have an encouraging event this week. You may have read in the last email about a possible ministry opportunity being with the local prison and of the orphanage’s desire to do something as well. I went and spoke with the interim pastor of our church about this and he said that was funny that I asked about this because he had just received an email from a missionary on furlough asking about what was going on with the prison here. He was excited about the opportunity of us going out there. We planned to go out the next AM and speak to the head of the prison face to face, which we did. We also had a lady from the orphanage meet us out there as well. It was quite a visit. When we arrived we went into a waiting area outside of the main prison quarters. It was there that the prisoners were constructing furniture for sale. I learned that several

of the guards were licensed in other areas and taught there skills to the prisoners so they could become certified themselves when they were released. When we entered the prison itself we saw that another group of prisoners were building the new prison barracks. We then met the head of the prison. He was a believer and 3 of the guards were pastors. Our meeting opened with prayer and after much discussion we decided on a fellowship with the prisoners on Sunday Dec 23rd after church. The tentative plans are for us to fix a meal and have it with prisoners and staff, then have a service with preaching and singing and then to give out gifts. It was suggested we do mattresses, blankets, and even maybe spoons, sandals, and person hygiene items. There are about 50 prisoners currently with a max of 150 capacity. There are also about 80 guards. We all felt very encouraged about the possibility of this ministry. Please pray for us as we make plans to do this.
Sarah also had a repeat u/s this week to confirm the gender and now we know that we are having a boy. We are very excited. Sarah is 21 weeks on Nov 18th and doing great now. She is also experimenting more in the kitchen. She had a dream about Krispy Kreme doughnuts, so this week she made homemade donuts, which were great! She also occasionally will drive into and run errands in Bomet.
A few other things from around here. There is no such thing as patient privacy, especially when you are sharing a bed with another patient. It is usually quite funny when neighboring patients will turn around and help give you the history of the patient.
Also, we were glad to see that the first of the televisions were installed in the outpatient department this week showing the Jesus film in Swahili. It seemed that the patients were really focusing on it. We also learned that there may be copies of the film available here in Kipsigis as well.

It’s hard to imagine that Thanksgiving is this week. We’ll tell you all of our adventurous first African Thanksgiving soon! Please do keep all of us in your prayers here as we have been experiencing a rollercoaster of emotion recently. Thank you all for your prayerful support.

Prayers, Play-dough, and Playing

So many things to recount and tell over what has happened and what the Lord has done since we last talked. Last Saturday was the Tenwek nursing school graduation. This was the 20th one, so that tells you the school has been around for awhile. I was honored when our neighbor, Ms. Barb, asked me if I would take pictures at the graduation. She is normally the unofficial photographer around here, but as she is one of the leaders in the school, she was participating in the ceremony and could not do the photography. It started at 10:30AM Saturday morning at Tewnek Africa Gospel Church. It is the first

event I have been to here that started on time, which was told it would. There when it started, the church was only a quarter full. The entire ceremony ended around 12:30. Cars and vans full of people were arriving throughout, with people walking in as the procession out was occurring. By the end the church was standing room only. The cars of people coming in were decorated with flower branches. Vendors were walking around with snacks and drinks to sell afterwards. There were also people selling congratulation medallions made of ribbon and Christmas garland. Family members would walk up front and place these on people throughout the ceremony. The other photographers there were bolder than me, even walking up onto the stage to get pictures. After the ceremony families would just picnic where ever there was a clearing in the church yard. I also walked around with Ms. Barb to take group photos and photos of her with each of the graduates. It was a fun and interesting day.
Last Sunday a new member of the Tenwek family was born. Our neighbors, the Alterman’s, had a baby girl born by repeat c-section. Everyone is doing well. The pediatrician and his wife were with Heidi at the delivery, so Sarah got up early to watch their kids. Sarah also got to check Heidi’s private room on the OB ward, which was nice. It had us thinking about making plans for our delivery. (The halfway point is tomorrow- 20 weeks- praise the Lord!)
Last Sunday was also the first time in weeks that we got to take a quiet walk as a family. It was very nice and a chance to discuss several different things. One of the main things we are were discussing is our reason for being here, especially in regards to ministry outside of the hospital itself. We really desire to get involved with at least one of the 5 orphanages in the area, but every time we try to go something happens so we wonder if that is what we are to do or not. Operation Christmas Child is also a young ministry and it would thrill us tremendously to help coordinate that ministry in this area. We currently trying to talk with leadership in Nairobi about this. We also know that VBS used to be a big ministry here and we’d even like to do that or help bring teams over that would like to do this. There is a prison in Bomet and we’ve even talked about doing some ministry there. God has been faithful to us and we know that he’ll show us what to do, but pray for us to be patient and be shown what it is that we are supposed to do. We are slowing continuing to learn about things, people, places, and the ropes one has to go through to make things happen here.
My schedule has been a little busier lately. There are no medicine volunteers this month and as our internist is the medical superintendent I have been trying to help to rounds and work in the outpatient clinic. I had the opportunity to speak with the med supp, Dr. John Spriegel, for quite a while the other week. We were discussing some medical things, but also long term plans for the hospital, which include another large addition within the next 5 years and even possibly dialysis (we see so many patients that need this, including a 23 year old who died of renal failure this week. The sad thing is he came here, when his home town was actually closer to a hospital that offered dialysis). But with such thing, there will also be the need of more equipment and more doctors. He said there are so many needs and volunteers come and say they want to help, but get home and forget about things here. Therefore keep your eyes out for a email coming soon that will include a Christmas wish list for us involving much of the ministry here.
Another thing that has made things busier is related to politics. The Ministry of Health in Kenya can place workers (i.e. doctors) anywhere they wish. This past week one of our residents had an accident where his infant son was burned in kitchen. His wife is going to stay at home with the child, but she is the only doctor at the nearby government hospital. The MOH felt that we should provide someone to take her place. We technically did not have to do this, but the MOH could take any our Kenyan doctors and move their full time if they wished. We felt it in our best interest, and as a ministry opportunity, to help them with this request, which has made thing a littly busier for the rest of us.
This past Monday was a very “God” day. We try to tell own interns and students that they can talk with patients about spiritual things and do not have to wait for a chaplain to come by. After talking about this we had a young lady on the floor who had tried to kill herself for several reasons, mostly family related. We told her we loved her and asked her about Jesus, who she new nothing about. We shared the gospel with her and she accepted right there. We noticed for the rest of the week she had a much more pleasant expression on her face. This was the second suicide attempt we’ve had to accept Christ during rounds in the last several days. The same afternoon that this young girl came to Christ I had another interesting experience in clinic. Upon finishing up a patient visit I asked a lady if she had any prayer requests. One that the mentioned was that she wanted to “get saved”. I asked her she meant and she said she new it was a good thing to do. We shared the gospel message with her and explained what “being saved” meant. She prayed then to receive Christ! A reminder that we never know how or when the Spirit is moving!
A funny moment occurred this week in clinic. I noticed one of the nurses hanging a 2008 poster-style calendar. The post was promoting a political party. The bad thing is the national elections, including for president, will occur on Dec 27th. The date of the election was only decided on about 1-2 weeks ago. I told the nurse she’d be fired back in the states for doing that, but she said that people liked that party here and things would be okay. But I also learned not to wear orange into Nairobi because it was the color for that party (which is another long story which if you’d like to ask me about I’ll tell you later!)
One of our missionary friends who was a nurse in the states finally got her Kenyan RN this past week- after 15 months of paper work and orientation. A surprise party was held for her. At the party we met a visit orthopedist who is from North Carolina and actually did training with some orthopedists we knew in Greenwood, one of which goes to our home church. Another small world moment.
We had our first official dinner with visiting guests this week. It was fun to finally do that. One of our guests was a visiting surgeon from Samaritan’s Purse who we met earlier in Boone. The funny thing was that the next night we all decided to get together again at someone else’s house.
Today we did get our first trip to an orphanage. We were so excited to go! We went with another missionary family from here, the Bemm’s, who is in charge of the orphanage ministry. On the way we stopped in Bomet to buy 2 oranges for each of the kids. The drive was to the town of Sotik and was only about 30 minutes away. When we arrived the kids were

eating sugar cane, a Saturday treat. There were 60 boys and girls there from preschool age to teenagers. We were concerned how Maggie would do, but she liked the kids and they liked her. Sarah led a few games with the younger kids, but had a hard time with communication. Maggie liked playing bean bag toss. I helped to organize a soccer game with some of the older kids. It was very humbling. We did all this out in a big field with uneven terrain, bushes, thorns and holes, but it

didn’t slow them down. After about an hour or so of play, we brought everyone up for a devotional and then gave them oranges. The kids were well mannered and appreciative. The orphanage leader fixed us chai and mendazi as a treat (they usually fix lunch, but we informed them earlier that we would not be able to stay long). We then came back through Bomet for a few more things and headed home.
One of those “God things” happened there as well. We mentioned at a meeting a few weeks back about doing a prison Christmas ministry, but nothing more was said. I was thinking about it the other day and coming through Bomet Chuck Bemm mentioned it as well. Then when we arrived at the orphanage the leader there, Elijah, told us he and some of the “mommas” there wanted to a meal and gifts for the prisoners! It seems as though God is orchestrating something. Pray for us in wisdom in what to do and as I try to speak with the pastor here this week about organizing something.
The rest of Saturday afternoon was relaxing. After lunch with the Bemms we took Maggie down to the trampoline. She showed us how she can flip, but is still learning to jump. One of the head surgeons, Russ White, walked by and we talked for a little while. He asked me if it was okay if he placed in the CMDA (Christian Medical and Dental Association) journal our need for more FP doctors. I said please. We then discussed the overwhelming need for more doctors because as of May to June most will be on furlough and I will be the only staff doctor for the outpatient department and for the medical and pediatric wards. Plus we will have lost our intern coordinator, schedule makes, and medical superintendent. We know God will provide, but please help us in praying that these gaps are filled.
A few other fun things. Sarah and Maggie made play-dough this week. Maggie loves playing with it. She also is quite


the dancer now. It is rather entertaining to put some music on and watch her go. She also can now say “Barb”, the name of our neighbor and will yell it at her even from across campus if she sees her.
The other day Sarah heard a faucet running in the house and didn’t know where it was from. It was our ceiling! Apparently some of the gutters were clogged on our roof and during a heavy rain water came through an about 3 foot piece of wall in our bedroom. Fortunately nothing was damaged. The industrial dept cleared the gutters and said it would help with this problem. They will work on the roof and ceiling itself this next week.
As we close, let me leave you with a verse to think about- Ecclesiastes 9:10 “Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all of your might”. This was read at the nursing school graduation and I haven’t quit thinking about it. Let us all remember, we don’t know how much time here we have, but with time we do have and in whatever we do, let’s do it the best we can and to God’s glory!