AUGUST NEWS

August has been a dry month as it should be around Arsim area. However the Arsim River has been flowing continuously and rains have begun to fall around Maralal and other areas of Kenya. We praise God for this as after long droughts in previous years we do not take rain for granted. We are busy getting ready at Arsim for the visit of the auditors in September. We are mostly ready but am sure there are last minute things to do. We are anticipating a new gravel road being built from Laisamis to Lake Turkana which goes right through Illaut. They need 600,000 litres of water per day to build this road so when they are in our area they will be buying water from the Arsim community which means they may also fix our Arsim driveway and maybe airstrip while they are around. This will really open up our Northern area to all kinds of development. They are putting in a big wind farm by Lake Turkana to generate electricity for Kenya. So they need a bigger road to haul up all the tower parts and equipment from Nairobi. I believe this is a Belgian project. The new Sedai Lutheran Church is ready to build a permanent meeting place and so they are having a fund raiser in the near future to get the funds for the church building. Pray for God to bless these efforts. Yesterday was a big and exciting day in Kenya as they promulgated the new constitution which was passed by a public referendum on August 4. It was a peaceful and happy day in spite of huge crowds in Nairobi to attend the ceremonies at Uhuru Park. I stay at Kathleen's place in Nairobi when I come to Nairobi so we stayed home and watched it all on TV. People are optimistic that this new constitution will help them move out of many of their problems into a brighter future for Kenya. We pray with them that there will be political, public and personal resolve to live out the good things written in this new constitution. I will take a short vacation trip to Masai Mara in a few days with Rut and Chirsten, some missionary girl friends. I look forward to this rest.

CATCHING UP ON THE NEWS

It has been a long time since I have updated this blog so let me catch you up on some news. In May our rains stopped but the Arsim River continued to flow and still is flowing up to now. This is good as the heavy rains did badly damage the intake in the gravity feed water system up in the mountains at the source of Arsim River. So we have been without any water in the system for 3 months which makes it more difficult for people to access water. So many have reverted to going to the river to draw water where many bathe and wash clothes as well. We have a shallow well on the mission compound we use for water when the gravity system is down so we who live on the mission station have not noted much difference in water quality, only the quantity is less. I expect that to go dry any time soon as the dry season has come upon us. Then we have another backup of a borehole in town. I think I will start buying water containers in anticipation of having to draw water at the borehole! In end of may all the nurses and other health professionals in North Samburu District had to go to a training in Baragoi to prepare for the mass distribution of Zithromax to all the people to prevent trachoma. Just before my vehicle left Arsim to go to the training we got a critical patient with severe abdominal pain and a paralytic ileus. He was a case for referral to the hospital and since all us nurses were leaving our stations for a day of training I took him along and put him in Baragoi Hospital overnight. After the training the next day it was determined he needed a bigger hospital for treatment so we decided to drive him to Maralal that evening. About 45 minutes out of Baragoi just at sunset, our vehicle was shot by bandits, but thanks be to God no one was hurt and we were not robbed. We did not even see any of the culprits, only 2 red flashes in the bushes by the road as we heard the gunshots. I initially thought that I had burst a tire as that section of road was very rocky and steep going up a hill. So I had stopped and shut off the headlights and the engine in anticipation of getting out to see what was wrong with the car that it made such a loud noise. Then I realized that the noise was gunshots and I wondered what to do as the bandits were just ahead in the bushes about 20 feet away on the right side. Someone in the back of the pickup, Christine Lekuyie, shouted "go back!" I couldn't think of a better option so I started the engine and started to go back down slowly using by brake lights to see behind me so I wouldn't drive off the edge of the cliff. Something inside told me not to turn on the headlights. After about a minute or so of backing down, someone shouted "here" which I figured meant the road was wide enough to turn around, which I did, and then put on the headlights and drove back to Baragoi as fast as I could. About half way there I calmed down enough to think I should stop and see if anyone was injured in the back, which no one was. At the police station in Baragoi I discovered the vehicle had been hit by the 2 bullets in the area of the right front fender (cosmetic damage only). The police said I used wonderful military tactics in dealing with my enemy, when the truth is I really didn't know what I was doing and why I did what I did to escape. We thank God for his protection and covet your prayers always as we travel! This kind of event always takes some enthusiasm out of the work and makes it harder to trust people. I have had some post-trauma counseling again with a professional Christian counselor, which is helpful. Pray for complete emotional healing from this event for me and all the passengers. I did get the patient to Maralal the next day under armed police escort and he has recovered nicely and has now gone home completely normal. We are thinking about our routes for travel more and how to keep them secret! One option I would like to do more is to fly from Arsim. However our airstrip is badly damaged from heavy floods and rain earlier in April and is not usable unless it is repaired again. Pray for funds to see this important project to get done. In June I kept busy with audit preparations and meetings with a big donor from Australia. That all went fairly well. Then in early July we finally did the mass distribution of Zithromax to all our people. I helped our new nurse Rophina with some of the mobile stations we had to visit to get to all the people living out in the countryside. Then immediately after that we had a tough visit from an Australian donor who has not liked the price quotes we have been getting on our water projects. He is pretty OK about the rest of our work but we have to try to get cheaper prices or replan all the kinds of water projects we do. Pray with us about this issue as it is dragging us and the work down to some degree. Now I am in Nairobi getting the ambulance repaired as one of our new drivers hit a big rock at high speed and damaged the differential, front and back, at least on the outside. If the inside is also damaged it will really be a big repair. This is a matter for prayer as well. We still have to get the dispensary audit done soon, and then I need some vacation! One more prayer item- pray for conflict resolution in the Samburu ELCK Parish. I do not want to go into detail, but there have been offences committed by some and people offended and it is hurting the work of the church until matters are resolved. Here is a news flash. Our government counsellor at Arsim resigned last year to take a job with the National Health Insurance Fund in Maralal. That is an elected position and so last week Arsim Location had a special byelection to vote for a new counsellor. 2 Lutherans and another fellow from Ngurunit ran for the position and Christine Hadijah Lekuyie (formerly Lekadaa, Mary's daughter, as she is now married to one of our dispensary drivers), won the election. Yes, she is the one in the back of the pickup who told me to "go back"! She is the first woman in our area elected to a government position and one of the few Samburu women ever elected to any position! The women at Arsim are feeling pretty good right now! Pray for her to be wise and effective in her position.

NEW FACES AROUND ARSIM

We have some new people here at Arsim which is an answer to prayer. ELCK Pastor Godana and his wife and children moved to Arsim about 3 weeks ago from Marsabit. He has been a pastor for about 10 years so comes to us with good experience. Pray for them as they adjust to this new culture and language situation. Pastor comes from a Gabbra background and his wife comes from a Rendille background near Kargi. They have 4 children; the oldest in high school in Marsabit, 2 in primary school and a 4 year old girl who has not yet gone to school. They are praying for the 2 in primary school to get into the TIRIM school in Korr which is geared toward Rendille students and has a good academic and Christian reputation. May God bless their adjustments and provide for their salary and needs through our local offerings. (This is a good challenge for the Arsim congregation). Another new face has not yet arrived, but is expected in a few days. She is a new registered nurse seconded to us from the government. I know nothing about her yet, even her name, except she come from the Luo area of Kenya and has worked at the Tabaka Catholic Hospital near Kisii in the past. Arsim will be a cultural shock and challenge for her, so I am sure she will need your prayers. Another big need we have is housing for these new people. Pastor and family are living where the nurse should be as the pastor's house is occupied by our single male staff. That is because our other eye nurse is living where the single men should be because her house on the mission station has had heavy termite damage in the rafters and is no longer safe to live in. So we totally lack resources to fix the eye nurse's house which is causing the housing shortage and mix up for everyone else! Pray with us about this issue and for patience from everyone as we wait for what is needed. In the meantime I will have to put the new nurse in the guest house for a temporary time until we can find another solution. We are busy at the dispensary office preparing for the yearly audit to start sometime this month. We appreciate your prayers as we prepare.

TRAVELING ALL OVER THE PLACE

I have been very busy behind the steering wheel in March which accounts for why so few blogs. I have been in the office seldom. The rains continue in Samburu and much of Kenya so the roads are really getting to be a mess. I have been at Arsim 3 days now after my last travel and my body still aches from all the bumps. Pray for my left knee as it is still sore from clutching every 30 to 60 seconds for hours at a time, as my left leg is used for clutching and the right for brakes or accelerating. I made 3 trips to Maralal in 8 days for several meetings and picking up staff who have been out. We are chasing after some government funding (HSSF) in Maralal and Marsabit to help our health work. Pray for these efforts to succeed. Praise the Lord for a couple of people who donated to our Maternity Ward needs. So far I have gotten a table and 2 chairs for the nurse's office there, as well as some required buckets for various waste. We also have painted the windows in the delivery room as the doctor in charge of Samburu District asked us to do. He said curtains were not adequate for privacy! Now when I go to Nairobi for Easter I will buy a few other things we were needing to get to stock the ward. Pray for the promised government CDF (Constituency Development Funds) in Maralal to be released soon to help us install the solar system and water pipes and system in the Maternity Ward. It has been challenging to deliver babies without lights or water close by. Another trip took me to Korr to look for signatures of people. I also needed some signatures in Namarei and Ngurunit. I tried to take the shortcut from Korr to Namarei and found the river crossing impossibly deep with muddy sand. A lorry had gotten stuck there the day before and left a hole the size of my whole vehicle in the middle of the crossing. I sent someone on foot to try to cross and he sunk up to his ankles there and at other sites we used to cross at. So I had to turn back to Korr and then to Illaut and then over to Ngurunit and then to Namarei. Then back to Ngurunit, Illaut and finally home to Arsim. So a 4 hour trip took us 10 hours instead, due to one river we could not cross! I never got stuck anyplace, but you can see the challenges we face in travel in rainy season by this one example even if we don't get stuck in the mud. We are grateful to God for the green life all these rains have brought inspite of the challenges. The mass distribution of Zithromax in Samburu was cancelled until May due to the rainy conditions.

THANKS FOR PRAYING FOR RAIN

I went back to Arsim for a few days and it began raining out of season. It has continued to rain since in many parts of Northern Kenya. On March 2 I headed back to Nairobi with the second vehicle we are selling and also with Yolanda who had a plane to catch on the 3rd at night. We got to Maralal in mid afternoon and after lunch and a few errands we decided to start towards Nairobi planning to get to Nyahururu for the night. It is normally a 4 hour drive from Maralal but it turned into a 7 hour drive! Although the road was muddy and damaged by the heavy lorries bringing food relief, we managed well up past Suguta Marmar when we got into more mud and big trucks getting stuck. One very big one had mechanical trouble and another truck was towing it through the mud and then stopped and left it in the middle of the road on an earthen bridge with very little space on either side and 10 foot drop to the ditch on both sides. I was told this was intentional so he would block the road so he would not have to be the only vehicle to sleep alone on this lonely place where there is a history of vehicle robberies at gunpoint in the last few years. Also the hyenas were howling outside nearby looking for supper undoubtedly. As I looked at the narrow space on both sides of the truck with the steep drop off to the ditch, I prayed and chose the side less muddy and less tilted and crept by the truck with 2 inches to spare on both sides of my vehicle. We were on our way to Nyahururu again and it was tough going the next hour or two when we met another challenge. The road was flooded for about a length of 800 feet, no road was showing, only water and the bushes on the sides. There were headlights at the other end of this lake, obviously vehicles wondering, like me, if it was safe to go through or not. I sent a couple of the guys in the car out to walk a bit in the water to see how deep it was. It was only up to his knees for 100 feet so I decided to proceed. About half way it got deeper and then very deep until the headlights were under water! I just kept going and thankfully made it through without any problems. One of the drivers on the other end asked me after coming out of the water if I thought he could make it also. I said, "I did so you should be able to as well!" He replied, "But I can see you are used to driving up here in these conditions!" He was a driver in an AMREF vehicle from Nairobi bringing supplies up to Samburu for the upcoming Mass Distribution of Zithromax in March in Samburu. I wonder if he made it through alright and if he ended up sleeping on the the road with the hyenas and the stalled truck! We got to Nyahururu by midnight and the next day to Nairobi. I accompanied Yolanda to the airport that night. I am sure she is sharing lots of exciting stories with her family this week end. Since being in Nairobi we have heard that the alternative route I was planning to take home has been blocked at Archer's Post where the old bridge over the Waso Nyiro River has been swept away by raging floods. I also heard that part of Samburu Lodge in the game park there where we were for staff retreat has been swept away by the river. I called Arsim on our sat. phone and they say it is still raining. I had come to Nairobi to buy supplies for a lorry from our area to bring to Arsim for our project work, and the fuel for the Zithromax distribution in our North Samburu District area. The lorry always uses the Archer's Post road so I wonder what will happen now. Pray for the government to open up one road that is passable to the northern part of Kenya. Pray too for the final details of the vehicle sales to go well and quickly. It looks like the old pick-up will get a good price.

BACK IN NAIROBI FOR A WEEK

I got the vehicle safely to Nairobi after the staff retreat at Archer's Post. It was a good week there together and we had a special surprise of getting into Samburu National Reserve 3 times for free as a group. Some of our staff have distant relatives in charge at the park! They were thrilled to see so much wildlife, especially elephants, giraffe and lions. Some even saw some animals they had never seen in their lives like wild dogs and water buck. The spiritual talks centered on having a personal spiritual retreat and how to have assurance of salvation. The in service speaker focused on financial management. Yolanda gave a talk to the nurses on how to come to a diagnosis with patients presenting with abdominal pain and the staff had a meeting to plan March activities. I went away this last weekend with Kathleen Lutz to Lake Naivasha area to Crater Lake Lodge. It was a beautiful get away and very peaceful. Enjoyed watching Kathleen see her first African animals on our game drive. Now I am busy getting shopping done in Nairobi for the dispensary and getting our newer pickup through the inspection process. I am staying at Cedar Road again for 3 nights with the Samburu family who live there now and are renting it from the ELCK. It is kind of fun to be there again. Of course they have oodles of relatives living with them and I am not really sure where they all slept at night as they gave me the bedroom at the top of the stairs on the left to myself. This is a family I know from Ngurunit - Joseph Learamo and his wife and 3 young children (plus all the others). Joseph worked with our dispensary for over a year and he now has a nice new government job with the African Union and heads up the disability program for several East African countries. His office is just in Westlands and his wife works for NHIF in Westlands as well so the location is perfect for them. They have chosen to attend Parklands Baptist Church just near Cedar Road and one of their sons is in Grade 1 at their new school there. Once he gets fully into his new job he hopes to bring help for the disabled in Samburu North District. I should be in Arsim over the weekend and then travel back to Nairobi to bring Yolanda out to return home the first part of March.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY

Wish you all a nice Valentines Day. Thanks for your prayers for the staff retreat preparation. We have all funds available in hand and we have all speakers booked so we are leaving tomorrow for Archer's Post. Pray for a good week to gel as a team and grow in Christ and in our work together as well. After the retreat I go to Nairobi to prepare to sell our old vehicle "Naidurra" and one of our motorcycles. Pray for a smooth process there as well and for good prices and minimal taxes to pay. Reuben's Mom does have cancer and needs chemotherapy at Kenyatta Hospital, since the surgery may not have gotten it all. So he will miss the retreat and go to Nairobi to help her get set up for that routine. Your prayers for her are appreciated. Yolanda is doing well here. She and Felix, our nurse, are team medics for first aid for the retreat. Yesterday we had a surprise supervisory visit from our new doctor who is head of Samburu District. He was mostly happy with our work and brought us a new vaccine refrigerator. Also he said he would like to give us a clinical officer from the government later this year. He did recommend some improvements in the maternity ward and said we have 3 weeks to do those improvements. This is a matter for prayer as we have no resources to do what he wants us to do. We got a surprise shower of rain yesterday, so pray for more of the same!

PREPARING FOR STAFF RETREAT

Our staff are getting excited about a planned staff retreat near Samburu Game Park in a small town called Archer's Post. We have about 40 people going and it will be a time for some inservice training (job related), spiritual teaching, planning our program activities and having some fun together. We have booked all the hotel beds in that small town! We plan to leave on Feb. 15 and return on the 19th. Pray for us during that time and all the final details that need to happen before we travel. One of the issues is that part of the funds for this trip have not yet arrived from our major donor. The funds were sent by electronic transfer last week but as of Monday had not yet arrived in the bank. So I am going to Maralal again today to go look for those funds at the bank. I also was called to a meeting there tomorrow (Thursday) to begin planning for the mass distribution of Azythromicin again this year to prevent trachoma. Also we have not yet confirmed one speaker for the inservice training. Pray I can contact him in Maralal and can confirm that important part of our program. I appreciate prayers for travel saftey too.

BACK TO ARSIM

Yolanda and I got back to Arsim Monday night (or Tuesday AM) at 3 am. Had a lot of dispensary business to do en route as usual. Still very busy in the office at Arsim getting ready for the 2009 audit. Reuben's Mom came through surgery fine and I hope he will be back to work next week. She still needs prayer for her follow up treatment. I had my tooth (back lower molar) pulled out while I was in Nairobi. It seems to be healing well inspite of the initial infection which caused the need to remove it. I do miss it for chewing although I suppose I will get used to it. Tomorrow Yolanda goes out on her first mobile clinic with Felix our nurse. Pray for the day they spend out at Soito Nanyukuo (a Rendille community).

NEWS FROM NAIROBI

We made it to Nairobi safely after stopping at Samburu Game Park. We got to see about 40 elephant altogether and several giraffe and lots of gazelle of various kinds and even one new bird I had never seen before called the red-headed malimbe - a type of weaver bird. Stopped at Trout Tree Restaurant on the way to Nairobi for some good trout in a tree. On Monday the 25th I went to the airport to pick up Yolanda. On Tuesday I had an all day meeting at cbm office so sent the 4 girls in a taxi to do some sight seeing at tourist places. Got to see Rev. Bob and Jeanne Ward at cbm office again also. I had more meetings at cbm today and so the girls did more things like the Maasai market. We went out to eat at Pepper's Restaurant for supper and then took the 3 on the CLBI to the airport and Yolanda and I are now back to Hampton House where we are now staying until we go back to Arsim this weekend. It seems very quiet without the 3 girls laughter! Our accountant Reuben, seconded to us from cbm, requests prayer for his mother who undergoes major surgery tomorrow the 28th at Kijabe Hospital. Pray for us to complete all the reports and meetings at cbm even in his absence for these few days as he attends to his mother.

TRIP TO MARSABIT

I went to Marsabit yesterday to do some dispensary business and dispensary shopping. It is
about 160 km. one way and usually takes about 5 hours one way. The road was worse than usual - all dried out, but full of ruts and sand traps here and there. So it was more like a 6 and 1/2 hour drive due to slower driving and a diversion which was a bit longer. Also today the food relief truck finally made it to Arsim. That will mean less people asking me for food help. I plan a trip to Nairobi at the end of the week to attend a meeting and other business including saying good bye to the CLBI team and receiving another short term volunteer, Yolanda, a medical student. We will travel via Samburu Game Park and hopefully see some large amount of animals on the way.

RAINS HAVE COME TO ARSIM AREA

We have seen answered prayer in our area receiving Christmas and New Year rains. These rains have made the land green again and a bit of water is flowing in Arsim River. The rain was a bit damaging to the roads making transport a challenge. Food supplies are just beginning to get to our area again, which is good as people had run completely out of food in our area for a time. I am enjoying some help from a short term mission team from Canadian Lutheran Bible Institute, consisting of 3 young girls. Pray for our time together the next 2 weeks.