The journey to Marsabit begins

Why Marsabit? Why go? Our prayer is that our team can equip the pastors in Marsabit to help their people with the enormous, crippling problem of jiggers. If you want to understand what the pastors in Marsabit struggle with go to goggle and search for jiggers. Look at the pictures, see the feet of the children infected so much with jiggers they can't walk. Our pastor contact in Marsabit tell us they know of 400 people infected with jiggers. I spoke with him on Sunday as he was leaving an IDP camp (where people are still living in tents after 2 1/2 years from the post-election violence) and ALL the people are infected with jiggers. I once read that HIV/AIDS was the greatest opportunity to spread the gospel. The dying need to be saved, the world watches the Christians to see how we help the orphans and widows caused from HIV/AIDS and following God's plan eliminates the disease. I believe jiggers give us the same opportunity. If I was a child infected with jiggers and I heard there were people who loved me as Christ loved them I would wonder where are they? We go only to bring the resources to the pastors on the ground to enable them to help their people. They need basins - lots of them and we will buy them in Marsabit for them. They need detrol or hydrogen peroxide as the feet need to be soaked for two weeks to kill the jiggers. We will give them what they need. And, the people need shoes. We will explore how shoes can be made in Marsabit for the children and adults. The shoes will help prevent the people from becoming infected with jiggers again. I read in When Helping Hurts that we have dominion over the animals - I think this includes the jiggers. We have a special gift for the people of Marsabit. When we were there last time we saw the dirty water people drink. And, we understood why much of the world's health problems are caused by dirty water. We are bringing a state-of-the art water filter! We have a partnership with FirstWater. We will explain later how the funds are being raised for this water filter. It would not be on this plane without the grace of many - the TSA who allowed me to bring it through security after checking it for bomb residue. The flight attendant who put it in the first class closet and Delta who let me bring it as carry on luggage! It weights 75 pounds! We are looking at leaving it with Christian doctors at the Marsabit hospital. We will send an update about how the water filter will be used in Marsabit. Traveling with me on this team is a doctor, nurse, their son and a photographer from Michigan. We will be joined in Kenya by another nurse from Michigan who traveled earlier and a young man from Atlanta. The Michigan group found us through the blog and has been following our work. They asked to join us on this long journey to Marsabit to serve the children God loves,

Connie
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