The week started out with a blockade to overcome but the team learned a lot on the way...

SERVE’s Kenya Project Highlights, July 7-23, 2011

• We faced challenging delays on the outward bound trip, giving us opportunities to build relationships and bond as a working team under pressure. By the time we arrived in Nairobi, we were ready to hit the ground running (well, maybe jogging!) in order to catch up with our schedule. Each of us had left our home cities sometime on Thursday, met up in the Philadelphia airport and intended to arrive on Friday night for orientation and gathering with our Kenyan partners. We actually touched down in Nairobi early Sunday morning and went out immediately to lead and/or participate in two local churches. Outward bound challenges and blessings:
  • 1) Three hours of delays in Philadelphia caused cancellation of our connecting tickets in Brussels as we pulled into the gate there. Dozens of passengers were stranded at the US Airways Counter, some for several days, including Kenyan citizens who could not leave the airport. We were blessed to find accommodations at a nearby hotel - great buffet, perfect opportunity to become better acquainted.
  • 2) It took several of us - and some of you - using every resource we could muster for an entire day to secure onward tickets for the team, only to find arriving at the airport early the next morning that those seats had been cancelled and we were stranded once again. We were blessed that one of our team members is a frequent business traveler to Belgium and was able to recruit the Brussels Air business class check in crew as part of the SERVE Kenya team. They dramatically squeezed us onto a flight to Rome with seconds to spare, cheering and congratulating everyone.
  • 3) Arriving in Rome we went to the Kenyan Airlines gate for Nairobi to find that the sole aircraft on that route had not flown in from Nairobi: another 12 hour delay. We were blessed that the airline provided a lovely lounge and vouchers for free food - more time to bond, rest, pray, meet fellow travelers and make good connections.
  • 4) Once in Nairobi we had just enough time to get to the Guest House, eat something and head out to the churches for the rest of the day.
  • 5) Our Nairobi partner, Elder Loise Mereka, had heard from the pastor in Lemek one week before our arrival that the time was not right for us to come there. We were blessed to find an invitation had opened up in the village of Olkoroi in the Maasai Mara, close to the game reserve and the Tanzanian border. Olkoroi provided a setting which could not have been more welcoming or more perfect for the week to come. We departed the following morning (Monday, July 11).

• Olkoroi - not a village as we would imagine it. Accessible by jeep tracks across gullied streambeds if you are a skillful, intrepid driver. Most people coming or going travel on foot for many kilometers. The small sapling and dung homes and cattle enclosures of the Maasai residents are scattered among the surrounding hills and valleys. The village center is a field bounded by cattle tracks and footpaths. It is a center of services for many neighboring villages. There is a small government clinic, a primary/secondary school and a small church whose pastor, Cosmas Yenko Letoo, has been a teacher and leader in the community for many years since his conversion to Christ and call to missionary ministry. American mission workers have built a house and a guest house there, are in residence two months a year translating Christian literature into the Maasai language, and were just leaving for the US the day we arrived so that we were able to stay in the house. Our Nairobi team lodged at the guest house. We bring a roomful of vegetables and a Kikuyu cook from Nairobi.

• Day 1 Gathering of the three teams - Maasai pastors, teachers and helpers from Olkoroi and surrounding villages; Nairobian (mostly Kikuyu) University and Bible college students and medical professionals who work with Loise in missions, six Americans from SERVE. We worship together, become acquainted, divide the work and transform the church building into a medical clinic, with curtained examining "rooms", pharmacy (the pastor's office), and several stations for prayer ministry under the big tree that was once both the school and the church.

• Day 2 First clinic day: 5 Stations: registration/triage, examination/treatment, pharmacy, spiritual sharing/counsel/prayer (I was in a group with Pastor Cosmas and a Nairobi Bible student), distribution of maize flour in 5 kilo bags. At each station, SERVE teammates from from the US, Nairobi and Maasai are working together. 121 patients treated.

• Day 3 Second clinic day: 250 patients treated - twice what we'd expected, including some serious cases. The spiritual responses are deep and moving. We are all learning a lot and planning a lot about follow up, medically and spiritually. (At my station we're joined by a man who prayed to accept Christ the day before, and is now wholeheartedly praying for others!) Word is getting around, people are coming from farther away, and we are running out of medications and maize. A trip to Narok for more maize, and we are able to negotiate purchase of needed medicines from the government clinic'.
  
  

• Day 4 Third clinic day: 350 patients treated, coming from further away, some by hired motorcycles but mostly on foot. Some say they started walking two days ago. Maasai from Tanzania begin to walk into camp - as a whole more well fed, a bit more rowdy. Two men treated for lion bites who are healing nicely. Other, more heart-rending situations. Lots of waiting, improvisation. Sunset is at 6:30pm and those walking long distances will have to face wild animals in the bush. Every Maasai warrior carries a club, a stick and a spear or bow and arrows wherever he goes for just this reason, but the women are carrying their children. We speed it up and manage to finish all by 5:00pm.  Every day begins and ends with worship. Tomorrow the community will kill a goat and we will celebrate together.

• Day 5 We are invited to the school, where we hold a worship assembly, treat the student body for ringworm, and variously give a "body talk" seminar to the adolescent girls covering everything from sexual development and personal hygiene (our topics) to ritual genital mutilation and polygamous marriage to older warriors (their topics), have a hilarious craft, singing and bubble-blowing time with the younger children, and present a "sheet talk" seminar of Gospel and discipleship basics to interested adults (Rick wrote out the Campus Crusade outlines on an extra long bed-sheet, which he wrapped around the pastor as a gift). Afternoon soccer match: Paul of the SERVE team brought 5 soccer balls, eagerly anticipated by the Kenyans all week long. Unbelievable excitement! Later while waiting for the goat BBQ, our young warrior/pastor friends took us on a walk to the river. We ended the day with a feast as the Nairobi team prepared to depart early the next morning.

• Day 6 Sunday worship at the church, seeing many new worshipers there from among those treated during the week. As always, we were given the privilege of leading, preaching and giving prayer ministry alongside the pastor and local worship leaders. We left two balls and a pump with the school, one with Pastor Cosmas for the church's team, one with Pastor James from the village across the valley and over the hill for his youth group, and one with the kids of Olkoroi.

In summary, a truly blessed, unforgettable week for all of us, wonderful unity in the Lord, many brothers and sisters added to the tribe of the Lion of Judah, and completed with all hope a lasting impact. The doctor at the clinic here is hopeful that the local citizens will be less wary of coming to him after the positive camp experience. The schoolmaster has given us a complete report for future partnership, and the pastor is energized for discipleship and new ministry initiatives. The week to come for SERVE was a new adventure of itself, with much more in store including ministry with migrant tea and coffee pickers and the perfect Life-Straw connection.

Thank you so much for your prayers. We knew we were in a God-thing from the beginning, and we couldn't have done it without you.

Love in Christ Jesus,

Christie Bruce