Sunday Morning in Kipkaren

Sunday morning started with a first, slightly late, attempt to catch a Kenyan sunrise. Then there was French press Kenyan coffee and a bird-watching, photo shoot on the Kipkaren river.

“Sundays in Kipkarin are spent in church,” David the director of the entire ELI Kipkaren development explained. “Here we do not understand the concept of weekends or holidays. But on Sundays, we thank God for all that he has given us and we pray to God, because he is our Father and we should tell him how we are doing.”

At 10:00, the team joined the community at church in the ELI compound. We sat in the back of this cafeteria/classroom/church, just soaking it all in. We watched two boys that couldn’t be more than four walk in, one with his nose running and crusty. They walked up to two girls—one of the girls was one of the assistant parents at the orphanage. The girls immediately scooped the boys up onto their laps and cleaned up the runny nose of the one. About a half-an-hour later, the girl was taking the long-sleeved shirt off of the boy with the runny nose. Sharon turns to Michele and says, “I think this little boy might be sick.”

“I know,” replied Michele quickly, she had obviously been thinking the same thing, “I brought 25 digital thermometers with me. I can’t wait to see him tomorrow!”

Then David addressed the congregation. “You do not appreciate your eyes until they are infected,” he began. Then he told the story of Jesus curing the blind man. After the story, he said, “This week Jesus is passing the community in the form of these eye doctors and he wants to visit with the people that are having trouble with sight.”

He then told a personal story. “One year ago, I was visiting at my sister’s house. We were talking and suddenly we heard her daughter, my niece, cry out like a baby in a great amount of pain. When we ran to where the child was, we found that she had dumped hot water all over herself.” David described how he scooped up his niece and took her to one doctor’s house, but the doctor was unable to see her. So he and his sister carried the girl to a nurse’s house, but she would not help the girl, because she was in the middle of fixing dinner for her parents. As David continued walking with his niece in his arms, it began to rain. Her skin turned to blisters and the blisters were rubbed and broken from the journey.

In that moment, David decided, through God’s guidance, to create a more compelling future for himself, his family and his community “ You can’t control the events of your life but you can control what they mean to you.” Ultimately, it is the internal struggle we will all face many times, that David faced that night—to be a victim of experience or to be empowered through experience. To find a higher purpose—a compelling vision.

David said that night that he stood in the middle of the mud roads, in the rain, and asked God for a clinic that he could take his niece to. He would be empowered to make his world a better place. One year later, on this day, they were opening the addition to the clinic that would serve as a general medicine and optometry wing. Proof again that a single idea, a single action, can move the world.

“Now we are going to open the clinic,” he told his group. “I want the choir to pick a song, a lively song. I want the people to sing and dance and show God how much we thank him for answering our prayers. Now everyone, let’s go to the clinic.”A few minutes later, you could see a line of people in bright colored clothes winding their way across the river, around the corn field, through the banana trees, and up the hill, headed toward the new clinic, singing and dancing as they walked.

“Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men”—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe