Mfangano, etc.

We leave bright and early tomorrow to journey to Mfangano Island in Lake Victoria. We're expecting to drive 4-5 hours west of here and then take a boat to the island. Our team includes 8 people from Tenwek including interns, attendings, other health care professionals and a pastor and we'll be meeting up with people from two different U.S. churches on the island. The entire team will be ~50 people and will be involved in construction, VBS, orphanage work, as well as daily medical clinics.

Mfangano Island has a population of ~16,000 people, primarily fishermen and subsistence farmers, who are significantly underserved from a medical as well as a spiritual standpoint. Tenwek joins Calvary (Charlotte, NC) and Lakewood (Houston, TX) churches each year for this medical outreach. We've been busy the last several weeks preparing the medications and supplies to bring with us:



Please pray with us for travel safety for all the teams, for unity as we merge together from different backgrounds for a common purpose, for the gospel to be proclaimed in word and deed to the people of Mfangano Island as well as to ourselves, for encouragement and growth of the three interns coming from Tenwek as this will be a new experience for them, for strength when we are tired and weak, and for all the logistics to be completed smoothly and with patience.

Here's some other recent pics from Tenwek:

Paediatric team with patient B (blogged about here) on the day he went home after completing his meningitis treatment. We are so thankful to God for His miraculous healing of this little boy.

End of the school year picnic celebration

Baby Abraham is an orphan at the Baby Center in Nakuru and was recently admitted to the Tenwek nursery for the second time with bronchiolitis. After he no longer needed oxygen, he spent a couple days being cared for by the Faders before heading back to Nakuru. Abi and I helped feed him after church on Sunday - a special treat as I rarely have time to just feed or hold babies.

Medical student Alliance from Hope Africa University in Burundi visited us for an overnight a couple weeks ago. He and his family fled to Nairobi during the war in Burundi and his parents are still in Kenya, so he came over to Tenwek on a recent visit home. We enjoyed hearing more of his story and his experience at HAU as well as his perspective on the differences between Kenya and Burundi. We're so excited to work with these medical students in the future.

4th of July celebration

Patriotic, even from the other side of the world

Recent house guests - 4 nursing students from the U.S. I really enjoyed their enthusiasm as they experienced clinical medicine for the first time. And we enjoyed good conversation during meals together as well as some fun games of Dutch Blitz!