HAPPY BIRTHDAY VALERIE
First of all let’s all wish my darling wife Valerie a happy birthday. I can’t tell you how many times in the last 15 years she has celebrated her Birthday in Kenya. Happy Birthday my love! Be well, be healthy, be happy and be-loved!
SHINYALU
I am writing from the village of Shinyalu located 15 miles from the city of Kakamega. This will be our 3rd annual medical camp in this place. We chose it because it is a desperately poor. There is a clinic here, but they have no medicine and only random visits from government health care workers; no matter, because most of the people here cannot afford medicine or visits to the doctor.
By 9 in the morning we had about 500 people on the grounds. Most of them were elderly because a vast number of young people have left this place to find work and opportunities elsewhere. The plight of widows and the elderly in rural Kenya is heartbreaking. They struggle through their old age with little or no help or medical attention. Our Worldcomp staff here in Kenya makes all the decisions about where to hold our camps and invariable they look for places where there is the greatest need and this is one of them. By the end of the day today we will probably examine and treat 1000 people and give them the medicine they need to help them heal.
One of the great needs here is reading glasses and we brought a big suitcase with 700 pairs; praise God for the Dollar Store. Phyllis Newton is really in her element. She came with all the tools of the trade and was looking forward to using her nursing skills. She is like a kid in a candy store. Roberta Goodson also has a nursing background so she is at the vitals station, taking blood pressure, temperature and pulse before people see a doctor. The rest of us are sorting pills in the pharmacy, helping with set up, praying for people, distributing water and food and picking up trash. Valerie, because of her immune system, doesn’t come to the medical camps. Today she is with Mary Beth Genet at the Children’s home sorting out clothing, books, gifts and other stuff.
There are more than 75 Kenyan volunteers here, doctors, nurses, optometrists, dentist, lab techs, pastors, children’s workers, drivers, prayer warriors and a host others who do registration and crowd management. I am ever grateful the Lord for the hundreds of people all over Kenya who are totally committed to the work we are doing and jump at the chance to serve the poor and needy of their own country. I am the first to testify that those who make sacrifices to serve others are doubly blessed in return. “Give and it shall be given to you, pressed down, shaken together and running over”.
Again I ask you, please, please pray for us. As of this moment we are all doing well, but we want to keep it that way.