DAY 3:

Today we got a full tour of the hospital.  It was way bigger than we expected.  I guess it would have to be... it is the largest mission hospital in the world.  We got up close looks at the operating rooms, the eye clinic, the pediatric ward, and of course Kim's favorite, the nursery.  Kim did get to hold a baby today and loved it, but there were none that needed feeding today so she was a little bummed.  We are going to try again later this week.  We are also going to go color and play with the older kids in the pediatric ward.

The wards where the patients stay were unbelievable.  They have about 20 people all in one room, really no privacy at all.  In the baby ward, the women come right into the nursery to feed... they pull up a stool and sit right by the incubator.  All 30-40 babies getting breast fed in one room at one time.  In the ward where women are waiting to deliver, it is so busy that two women are in the same bed.  In the large waiting room in the ER, there are benches all lined up and the people slowly make there way up to the front.  There was probably 100 people in there this morning at 10 am.  They probably will sit there for hours to get in.  And they have probably walked for 2 days to get here.  We get upset if we have to wait more than 20-30 minutes in a waiting room.  All in all, it is a great place.

In the afternoon, we took a walk to see the waterfall that generates all of the electricity for the facility and housing.  In Jan. to April, the river is usually very low and lots of times they lose power.  This year was especially bad Heather and Jason said.

Please pray for us tomorrow.  Kim and I are going by ourselves (Heather has graciously agreed to watch the girls) on a health outreach in a surrounding village or tribe.  We are going with the Tenwek Community Health Center and will be gone from 9 am to 3 pm or so.  We will be helping with vaccinations, weighing babies, and recording all the info for the Health Center where they keep all of the records. It should be a really neat day.

We had an interesting thing happen the other day.  We had some girls looking in our window.  One of them looked at me, pointed to the floor below at Kalli's sandals, and said "you give me shoes?"  I so wanted to hand them to her, but we were told not to.  If you give one of them something like that, we will have a whole crowd of them back at our window the next day.  That is something we will have to wait to do until the last day.  The kids just love the girls though.  They always come up to them and want to hold their hands and walk with us.

Thanks for your prayers.  We are having an amazing time.

Andy and Kim