Successful Trip, Safely Home

Donald is home! Here are a few of the awesome things that happened...(all were prayer requests in an earlier post).

• Travel: The team made all of their flights; including running from one terminal to the next at Dulles Int'l...the plane waited on them!
• Luggage: Everything arrived in one piece (and even made it on the plane when they had to run across the airport, although Donald witnessed the luggage guy cussing up a storm on how heavy their bags were...funny!).
• Health: Everyone remained healthy on the trip, and continues to be okay (if you don't count jet lag...D fell asleep in mid-sentence last night at about 9pm). Praise God for their health!! This was a huge answer to prayer.
• Safety: The team is safely home! The only outbreak of violence they heard about was an hour away from where they were. Apparently the village they were in is considered a "safe haven."
• Energy: The team survived four very long days of seeing people at the clinic. Even a team member who didn't get much sleep on the first half of the trip was able to pull through and work until the work was finished each day. He was a very huge asset to the team.
• Impact: 1200 people were seen at the medical clinic, hundreds of teeth were pulled, 30 people made the decision to follow Christ. A very cool thing is that there were pastors there from the local communities who will be able to come along side these people in the upcoming months. This is awesome! So much better than a team coming in and then vanishing...
• Baby: She's still in there! Hallelujah.
• Me: I was very well taken care of over the last 11 days. Molly came and visited the first weekend...we had a great time! Bailey stayed with me for 4 days...it was nice to have our old roommate back, and it was so awesome of her to leave her husband for several nights to come babysit the big ole pregnant lady. My parents came this past weekend... I am so grateful for their company and their help with projects around the house.

Soon I will post about 1000 (yes, that's three zeros) on our web site, but here is a sampling...

The landscape in Kenya was gorgeous...

This is beautiful tea field that they passed on their journey to the clinic site.

A group of people waiting to enter the clinic.

This is the tent where Donald talked to the people waiting to be seen.
When's the last time you had your teeth worked on while sitting in a lawn chair on a dirt floor?

This brave little boy was one of many people who had a tooth pulled.
Yep! D was really there.
This is a refugee camp that houses some of the 500,000 displaced people within the country.
Here are some pictures from their "safari."
This is one of the many beautiful flowers from the area... Donald took lots of flower shots for me!

This is the church that Grace is partnered with in Kenya. The clinic was held about 2 hours north of here. It was the pastors from this church who helped organize and staff the clinic with nurses and other pastors.

There are many stories Donald would like to share with you, but I'll leave you with just one. This morning he was telling me more about how the people at the clinic thought it was so bizarre how he looked like them but did not speak Swahili--he was often introduced as "Jerogi" (a local name that just meant "man"), and so the people would say, "How is his name Jerogi even though he can't speak Swahili?!" They would laugh about this. The people were also amazed that the "Christians" came and provided a free clinic. Apparently, some groups had come in previously and charged for medical services and/or left earlier than planned after running out of medicine. One of the pastors overheard a woman down the street talking to her friend... "Christians are here and they are providing a clinic -- and they aren't even charging anything! And they'll be here four days!" The pastor told Donald that this clinic will affect generations... that the 80 year-olds who were at the clinic had never experienced something like this and that the little children who where there will tell people about this over and over again until they are 80... about the Christians who stuck to their word and the black Jerogi who came with them. Donald said this morning how awesome it is that Christ will be glorified for years and years to come after what little they did in those days at the clinic. Praise God!