Since I had nothing to compare it to, I asked Miriam how this year's trip fared with others for the amount of glitches, plans not working, flexibility required, etc. She said this was one of the worst. Oh.
However, in retrospect, each opportunity that we thought on face value appeared lost (and there were a lot of them) another opportunity was found...
The bunk beds that weren't built? A disappointment for sure, but just when we were ready to release funds to the carpenter, it became clear he was a shady character and the money would have been lost. Miriam believes we were saved out of that situation. There will be another time with a different carpenter.
Our medical teams faced incredible obstacles in two different places and lost two full days of providing care. The first was at Haruma, when it became clear the local director was expecting some kind of bribe or monetary compensation for our team being there. They left and were going to set up the clinic at the Haruma church, but then the minister of health himself showed up to profusely apologize and so the team had the next two days at the clinic.
Here is Kelly getting her hair braided on the last day at the Haruma clinic.
The other time was at Eldoret, when the team showed up at a clinic to work and were essentially turned away due to our contact (acquaintance of Miriam's) not communicating our arrival to the director, who had not heard of our coming. After talking over an hour to Miriam, and finding out about the ministry, he was thrilled by our presence and we had two full days of administering free health care to some very needy people.
As it turns out this man is the pastor of the church next door, and had personally raised the funds to build the clinic to meet the needs of his community, but had been unable to staff it with doctors, and had been praying for God to provide some. Needless to say, we now have a solid partner for future medical ministry in Eldoret.
And this is how it went practically every day. What we thought was lost (our plans, our expectations, our ides of how things should go) were redeemed by God's plans which turned out way better than what we had anticipated.
Hans' theme for his message at the New Dawn dedication was "Unless
God builds the house, the laborers work in vain." Dr. Bob had also been reflecting on this very verse independently of Hans. It seemed to be our theme. Lost and found...not just loosing things and then finding them, (there was a lot of that,) but losing what we thought were opportunities only to find God at work turning our disappointments into even better opportunities. It really felt like the soil in Kenya was being re- tilled, to prepare the way for stronger and more fruitful ministry in the future.
Personally I was finding my own new opportunities. We had no idea what to expect at the Kangundo school, especially since Miriam's initial contact had taken another job and both the current principal and the special needs teacher were new and had only been there about a month. My conversations with both went very well, and they would like ongoing connection and partnership with Kizimani in the future. Kangundo is also where we will be building the new medical clinic (our medical team worked out of an ancient stone church annex.)
The teachers at Jamii had many more topics they would welcome staff development on, so there is now more opportunity there. The goal for Jamii is to complete the purchase of land for a new school that will utilize used shipping containers, much like New Dawn. There is already a contact lined up for the containers if we can raise the needed funds for the land. Maybe by next year??
Wouldn't that be great to see these children housed in larger classrooms with actual floors to keep the mud at bay...and speaking of mud...we actually didn't have much this trip because it hadn't rained much. Teacher Alex said they had all been praying for the rain to hold off during our trip. How 'bout that!
Here is the land for the future Jamii school.. It is now their field for games. They walk about 20 minutes to get there.
Sanna, Nate, and I with Basilus and Esther, the founders of Jamii school. Truly amazing people who pour their hearts and souls into the students and teachers of Jamii.
