Our final workday

This has been a long day. It's 11:30 pm in Nakuru as I write this blog. We were up at the same time as other days but got to the All Nations Springs of Life Church earlier than normal, since we changed plans yesterday when we saw how great the need was for vision services in that area. We were scheduled to go back to Gituamba today to finish work on the school desks and chairs and ceiling panels. But when we got finished our vision clinic yesterday at nearly 6 o'clock in the evening, we still had a line of 60 people wanting to get in to see the doctor. So we abruptly change plans and decided to do another vision clinic today. We realized that there are others who can do the construction work after us, but there's only one team that has a doctor and can do the eye evaluations that only a professional can perform. So we gave those 60 people pre-registration to come again today and we went back to the same location. We had left our equipment there yesterday, so our set up today was much easier. We saw not only those 60 but more than 45 additional patients who showed up today, and there were still people lined up when we had to pull the plug on our vision clinics. We recognize that there is a great need for vision services throughout the entire Nakuru area, and we hope next year to be able to encourage additional eyecare professionals to come with us to join our team and hopefully be able to treat an even greater number of people. In total in our four days of vision clinics, we were able to see over 530 patients. Among those, we had 17 patients who need medical care over and above what we are able to provide in our clinics. We are blessed as a team to have excess resources that have been donated to send our team here, and we are able to use those funds to arrange surgeries and medical care that we as a team are able to pay for for 17 patients. They run the gamut of issues and ages, from a four year-old up to an 87 year-old. Several of the older patients need corneal surgery and cataract removal, while even some of the young patients between 10 and 12 need corneal transplants and have congenital cataracts. Fortunately, medical treatment and surgeries are significantly less expensive here than in the states, and we are able to send patients to a clinic that operates in conjunction with Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia and can offer good care and potential outcomes. So those of you who are donors and sponsors of members of our team can be assured that your funds are being put to good use and are changing lives. That is one of the motives that drives me to come back year after year. There's very little that we can do back in the states to change someone's life, other than sharing the Lord with them. But here, we get the chance every day to make an impact on the future lives of Kenyans. That can be in the form of giving them access to safe drinking water, sponsoring a student to allow them to get an education and get ahead, and giving access to improved vision. All of these result in changed lives. And in doing so, our lives are changed as well. It is a gift to be able to come here and serve here after year. I pray that the Lord continues to give us the opportunity to do this. This will be my last post from Kenya. Our work was finished today, and we wrapped up with our team meeting tonight. We get to sleep in a little bit tomorrow morning and we will make one stop on our ride back to Nairobi. We will get an opportunity to visit Jane's Safe house in Gilgil, where we have visited many times in the past. She runs an orphanage which is serving "the least of these". She takes in AIDS orphans and others that society has discarded and gives them a safe place to stay and access to education and a changed future. We will be taking a lot of bulk food that should keep her orphanage running for a month. This is another area where we use excess funds to be able to provide a truckload of food to donate to a worthy cost. I will try and post some pictures without a whole lot of commentary tomorrow night perhaps while we are waiting at the airport for our flight at 11:35 PM. Thanks for your interest and for following these posts.