Alene's ministry takes shape; C-Arm malfunction; True faith in your spouse!

June 1, 2010

(Please also note the photos on the weblink)

Alene's Ministry Takes Shape!

Wow! After spending several months exploring potential opportunities for service and ministry here at Tenwek, Alene's ministry has very rapidly taken shape in May. She is now serving as one of the instructors for the Tenwek Chaplaincy School. This certainly fits in with her background of prior service as a prison chaplain in Colorado, but she admits that when she offered to teach 4 hours on "Criminology" she did not realize that she had actually volunteered to teach 4 hours on the subject EACH WEEK for 12 weeks! [She's excited about her new role, but is busy enough right now that she's letting me do this blog entry! - Steve] This past week was exciting for the chaplaincy students, Alene, and some pastors at Tenwek who are interested in prison ministry: Kelvin and Ben from Philemon Prison Ministries in Nairobi [http://philemonafrica.org] came and spent three full days teaching the chaplain students and coordinating a visit to the nearby Bomet Men's Prison. This very practical experience helped to encourage these students, who are preparing to minister to others as chaplains, whether at prisons, hospitals, school campuses, military bases, or wherever the Lord opens an opportunity.

Alene also spends time encouraging the nine chaplain students throughout the week and we have had the students over for chats and social time on three occasions. Today is a holiday in Kenya (celebrating when Kenya became a republic) and the students will come over to our home for a movie-showing using a borrowed projector. These students have become part of our "family" here and we look forward to visiting some of their homes in coming weeks.

Alene's message (with Pastor Wesley acting as an interpreter) to the Bomet prisoners and officers on "Stress and Stress Management" on May 14th was well-received. She is also helping to facilitate our Tenwek campus church's monthly visits to the Bomet Prison.

In addition, each Wednesday afternoon Alene has been leading a Bible study in the village of Mugango on the book of Colossians. We give thanks for answered prayers as the Lord directs Alene's ministry.

C-Arm Update

We shared an urgent request on May 23rd for prayers and assistance for repairs for our 20-year-old C-arm unit here at Tenwek Hospital. (A C-arm is a large, mobile device that allows "real-time" motion pictures of x-ray images, which is critical for orthopedic surgery and other procedures, including the bile and pancreas duct exams that I perform: ERCP's.) We here at Tenwek have been amazed by the prompt and very helpful response of so many and we know that prayers are being answered. A replacement hard-drive (formatted to match the 1991 specs) and a new power supply were quickly identified and were sent within a couple of days with a visitor coming to Tenwek and were delivered this past weekend. We give great thanks, but unfortunately installation of these parts did not eliminate the error message previously noted. The concern now is that the CPU that controls the hard-drive may be blown. Dr. Dan Galat, Orthopedic Surgeon, is returning to the USA this week and will take along the hard-drive and two circuit-motherboard CPU's that communicate with the hard-drive. This will permit further "diagnostic" efforts and "treatment" plans.

Please join us as we continue to pray that the current C-arm can be repaired promptly, for wisdom in providing care without C-arm services, (especially for the many orthopedic patients) and for provision of a second, back-up C-arm, which is clearly needed.

True Faith in Your Spouse!

I've always had faith in Alene, but I think it is an amazing sign of faith that Alene let me cut her hair recently! I admit that she closely supervised each cut, but I was most thankful for the late-night "hair-cutting clinic" led by Emily and others during our SPLICE training in Colorado in September!