KenyaMissionTeam's Xanga

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:30:46 GMT

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:27:56 GMT

To see pictures from our entire trip, please visit www.photobucket.com/kenyamissionteam . Be aware that there are 6 albums of pictures, located on the left of the site.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:14:23 GMT

Hi all,

We're back in Oregon, safe and sound. The internet at the farm ended up being non existent (someone had stolen the cable to connect the internet) so we weren't able to post. We did receive your messages, however. We arrived today at about noon and are all exhausted, but doing well.

Welcome to the 2008 Kenya Mission Team Blog!

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:30:30 GMT

BLOG UPDATED ON FRIDAY, JULY 4TH

We will be doing our best to update this blog as often as possible while in Kenya. Phone and internet services are extremely limited in the areas we will visit, but we will have access to this site throughout our time in country. We encourage you to leave us comments and messages on this site. We will not be able to respond to your comments individually, but a member of our team will be sure to deliver your messages.

How do I send a message to the team?

I'm glad you asked. Here are some basic instructions on how to leave a comment on the site (feel free to practice on this entry...your practice comment can easily be deleted by our webmaster).

To post a comment:

Go to the end of the entry to you want to leave a comment on.
Click on "Add Comment" or "1 Comment" or "2 Comments" (and so on and so forth...the number will change with each new comment added)
Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will see a white text box.
Click the "Anonymous" bubble.

Type in your name (this is how we know who sent the message) and email (you will not receive Spam from Xanga)
Type your message into the white text box. (Be sure to identify who you are and if you have a specific message for a member of the team, be sure to address that person by using their first name)
Click "Submit" below the white text box.
You're done!

This posting will always be found as the top, or first entry, on the site to help aid you in posting comments to the team members. Remember, the team members read each and every comment and they appreciate all of them so feel free to send as many as you like!

Peace!

Friday July 4, 2008

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:28:35 GMT

Hi all,

This will be our last post from Maua. We leave tomorrow morning at 9:00am for Meru. Meru is located about 2 hours south of Maua, just below the equator. Tomorrow, on our way, we'll stop at the equator to see the water demonstration and take some pictures.

Speaking of pictures, we will not be able to upload anymore images from our travels until we return to the states. John, at the farm, only has a text based email connection, but no internet services, so we will be posting to the site with the help of Bonnie's mom. We will post via email to Bonnie's mom and then she will send the messages on the site to Bonnie via John's email account. We have done this in the past, so don't worry...it will work! We will still receive your messages, so please, keep them coming! We had quite a few laughs about the messages last night, and yes, Mom, I do have my own clothes. The orange shirt that you may have seen us wearing in the pictures is from BUZZKILL (see www.nothingbutnets.net ) - an organization that helps provide mosquito nets to people in African countries to help prevent Malaria.

This morning, our team will be attending a lunch with the hospital administration and then will be heading out to the COMPLETED AIDS orphan home to dedicate it to the family. (Colleen and Ted - Charles actually asked us about you! He sends greetings from him and his team). Some team members are currently making prayer rounds and will be blessing the mortuary before the lunch.

After dedicating the house, we will head back to the hotel, have dinner, and begin packing up our things. We will leave at 9:00am on Saturday morning for Meru and will arrive at the farm in time for lunch. We are all very excited to see what projects John and Janet will have for us. We will also be donating the school supplies donated by the students at Errol Hassell Elementary in Aloha, OR to the local primary school in Meru.

Please check out the Maua Methodist Hospital website at www.xanga.com/MauaMethodistHospital . Stanley has been updating the site while our team has been here and will continue to do so for years to come (oh, and just between you and me...he loves to see the counter on the bottom of the page go up, so please visit his site often! Everytime I see him, he tells me how many visitors have come to support his website. ). You can also see an article that Stanley asked me to write about the Free Clinic we provided in Ndoleli the other day.

Nina, we hear that you're mass emailing everyone with our updates. Thanks for doing that, we really appreciate it! This week alone, we have had 546 visitors to check out what we're doing, so that's great!

Again, thank you for all the comments. We really appreciate them!

Bonnie, Sue, Jim, Jasmine, Bill, Maury, Kate, Ann, Wally, Kathleen, and Paul

Thursday July 3, 2008

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:22:13 GMT

Yesterday, our team was given the opportunity to host a free medical clinic in a village about 40 minutes outside of Maua. The village, Ndoleli (pronounced “DOH-LAY-LEE”), has a clinic that is run and maintained by the Maua Methodist Hospital. This clinic provides medical care for thousands of patients in the area. The clinic is open Monday through Friday, day and night, and charges a small fee for its services. The clinic is located on a 65 acre farm owned by the Methodist church of Kenya. It has been a place where people are allowed to camp, grow additional food, and store grain after harvest. When we pulled up to the main work area, a man was beating dried ears of maize on a table with slats to remove the individual kernels from the cobs. We helped him for approximately 5 minutes, which was all our arms would take. He does this work for 8-9 hours per day. This farm is in a major crisis because the well has run dry. A new well was paid for and the new contractor from outside Kenya started to drill the new well (cost approx. $20,000 - 1,240,000 ksh) but the bore collapsed behind the drill and he left with the money and the project uncompleted. The church is working to recover its losses and re-establish the farm as being a safe place in the community. Other parts of the grounds include a common granary, goat pens, a primary school, and storage for farmers to store their food during the off season.

In America, $2000 barely covers an emergency room visit, and in Kenya, your generosity has provided hundreds of people the equivalent of an emergency room visit. Because of clinics like this, groups like ours, and giving like yours, people who are living with diseases that once proved fatal are living long and productive lives.

Because of the contributions from supporters of this mission, our team was able to provide the services of the clinic to several hundred patients, free of charge. This free clinic provides people an opportunity to be seen by a doctor or medical officer (our version of a nurse practitioner), have medications prescribed, and have prescriptions filled…all in one place. The majority of the patients seen were children (three schools brought their students) and almost all of them needed deworming. The 2 other major diagnoses of patients were malaria, which is running rampant, and infections (open wounds).

In order to advertise the clinic, we put up a banner and when we got to town, we drove through, waving to the community members. Apparently, by sweeping the town, “parade style”, worked wonders for advertising. Within 15 minutes, there was a school of at least 75 children coming up the road to the clinic.

Over the course of the day, we treated 426 patients, and would have treated at least another 100 if we had not run out of supplies. Our crew took turns registering people, photographing new insurance members (patients can purchase insurance for their own family for $30 a year – this insurance covers medical costs for their entire family for one year), filling prescriptions, visiting with patients, and making signs.

(Bonnie packing medications into individualized packets for later dispensing)

(Kate "being a pharmacist". She is packing medications into small plastic packages)

(Sue, Jasmine and Maury helping pack medications in the children's pharmacy)

(The prescription window, ready to go. After patients were seen by the doctors in small rooms, they went to the back of the building to hand their prescription - written on a piece of paper - to members of our team and to nurses to fill)

(After about 15 minutes, the number of patients increased exponentially! Here is Paul helping to register some of the patients)

(Some of the children, holding up their prescriptions to take to the pharmacy around back)

(As the children waited to be registered, Reagan kept them busy singing and dancing.)

(One of the three schools getting registered.)

(Paul, Jim, and Sue help to register the patients.)

(Wally visits with patients while Bill documents their stories)

(Ann and Bill Savuto dispensing prescriptions at the adult pharmacy window)

This clinic was not only beneficial to the community of Ndoleli, but to the members of the Oregon Mission Team as well. The hospitality and generosity of the hospital staff, as well as the patients seeking treatment, was awe-inspiring, and very much appreciated.

Another integral part of the treatment of these patients is prayer. Three members of our team made hospital rounds with the hospital chaplain this morning. It is profound how much prayer affects people.

Over the next 2 days, we will finish and dedicate the house, paint several covered walkways, and continue making rounds with the chaplains. Speaking of covered walkways, the rains have settled back in. After a week of mostly sunshine, we woke up this morning to the aftermath of a downpour. The covered walkways at the hospital are a relatively new, but important, addition. Several years ago, the hospital staff was asked what their number one priority for work teams would be, and they said covered walkways. This hospital consists of a series of separate buildings so these covered walkways enable the transport of patients from the surgical theatres to the different wards around the hospital. These covered walkways are such a small thing that makes such a big difference.

Thank you for all of your words of encouragement. All messages will be delivered to the team this evening, so please, keep them coming.

I will leave you today with a photograph of a little boy that I took that I feel truly encompasses what our work here in Kenya is all about. Peace.

Bonnie, Sue, Jim, Jasmine, Bill, Maury, Kate, Ann, Wally, Kathleen, and Paul

Amsterdam, Maua Methodist Hospital

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:21:51 GMT

Hi all,

We are now in Maua, working at the Maua Methodist Hospital.
Here we are at the airport in Portland, getting ready to board the first leg of our flight. (Little did we know that we would meet up with Janice McLain on our second leg - she was flying back to the Congo after a short visit home).

We arrived in Amsterdam at about 11:00am their time and spent the day touring the city.

We visited the Anne Frank House (shown below) during our visit to the city.

Here is the team in the courtyard at the Maua Basin Hotel, our home for the next week.

Once arriving in Maua, we attended Sunday School with a few hundred youth. The children were so enthusiastic and sang and danced with such enthusiasm. (Bonnie was able to play the blue drum below during music time with the children).

Here is Bill Savuto (a missionary at the hospital) giving us a tour.

We then arrived at the Maua Methodist Hospital where we are working on various projects. On Monday, several members of the team traveled out to a village to begin work on the AIDS orphan home. The "road" reminds us of a dried up river bed. It is approximately a 40 minute drive from town (we're told 7-8 kilometers) and the road is bumpy, at best. Below is the best picture taken of the road while the car was moving.

Here is the team hiking toward the location of the house after our 40 minute drive.

Below are pictures of the current home that the family is living in.

Here is the team, hard at work on the house.

Jasmine and Maury

Paul

Kathleen

Kate

Jim

Kate

Jasmine

Bonnie

Here we are just arriving at the site. Here is the house at the beginning of the day...

And at the end of the 1st day...

We had the opportunity to visit the home that we built 2 years ago.

The owner of the 2 year old home came to greet us.

We also were able to observe some children fishing in a pond.

We are working very hard and will be continuing our work through the end of the week. Today, 4 members of our team are out at a program called Giving Hope. They are visiting with teenage orphans who are the head of household because of the loss of their parents. The hospital has created a support group for these teenagers to help them deal with the responsibilities of becoming an adult at an early age.

Tomorrow, we will be attending a bush clinic (or Free Medical Camp) out near the Meru National Forest. Stanley, head of the CHD at the hospital, is very excited to have us attend with him and has already started the publicity for the event.

Wally has been working hard making rounds with the doctors and visiting the Machungulu Clinic. The hospital is very excited to have a doctor on our team.

Today, we were given the opportunity to present baby blankets and clothes to the pediatric and infant departments at the hospital.

One of the infants wearing a hand made baby blanket that was donated by a friend of Ann.

Thank you for all of your words of encouragement. All messages will be delivered to the team this evening, so please, keep them coming.

We will attempt to post more on Thursday of this week (Wednesday night/early morning - Oregon time). As I post this entry, it is 2:00pm Kenya time, 4:00am Oregon time.

(Stanley just came in and took a picture of me working on the blog - notice his new laptop! The internet is still sparse, but we are thankful for it just the same.)

Bonnie, Sue, Jim, Jasmine, Bill, Maury, Kate, Ann, Wally, Kathleen, and Paul

Saturday June 28 - We're here!

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:22:33 GMT

We are standing in the airport waiting for our visas. Everything is good. It is very humid here. We got in to Nairobi alright and will post later on when we get to Maua.

Our Bags Are Packed, We're Ready To Go...

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 05:00:01 GMT

The team gathered tonight to pack all the donations from the community: school supplies, medical supplies, clothing, food, etc. After 5 hours, we packed all 13 duffel bags! Now, we just have our personal bags to pack and then we're off!

We are leaving at 4:00pm on Thursday and will arrive in Maua, Kenya a meer 30 hours later. We plan to be completely exhausted when we arrive, but it will all be worth it.

Please send us messages through this site. One member of our team will be updating and retrieving messages daily to share with the team each night. It really helps us out to hear from our supporters back home! See the first entry for instructions on how to leave us a note.

Here is a picture of all the supplies donated before they were packed.

The next time you hear from us, we will be in Kenya!

The 2008 Kenya Mission Team
(Bonnie, Jasmine, Kathleen, Paul, Jim, Sue, Ann, Wally, Maury, Kate, and Bill)

Salem Fundraiser

Sun, 04 May 2008 16:00:24 GMT

The fundraiser at Salem First UMC was another success! The team raised more money, was able to share the ins and outs of the trip with others, and provided a wonderful meal for approximately 100 people. Two Kenyan women were invited to this gathering to speak about their country and both did wonderful jobs.

The wide array of food set out for our guests.

Wally and Ann heading up the pie table.

Some of our wonderful volunteers working away in the kitchen.

Ann and Bill moving pies around.

Ten Thousand Villages in Salem was represented at our gathering with several artifacts from Kenya.

Our visitors looking through merchandise.

Our two guests of honor.

Sue speaking with our visitors.

Glenda taking a well deserved break!

Ann talking about T Shirt and Pie Sales.

Jim helping to clean up at the end of the fundraiser.

Bill, Kathleen, and Bonnie getting ready for our team meeting.