First Week

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This photo is a typical view of the Kenyan landscape.  I love walking down the dirt road with the cows next to me.  Young children laughing and playing with sticks in the nearby grass.  The gentle breeze cooling us from the African heat.  Such a simple quiet life.






It has been a different kind of trip so far this October.  With our clinical officer Peter gone I have had to struggle through clinic without all the language assistance that is so needed.  Fortunately, my general surgeon resident has been full of energy and although he does not know the local tribal language he is able to converse with most using Swahili.  There has been a parade of patients again now that the word has gotten out that I am here.  Because Peter was not here to line up surgery for me I have seen many more patients in clinic than in the operating theater.


This is Paul who is a 16 year old child referred for cleft palate repair.  he had his lip repaired when he was younger but never had the palate repair.  He comes from a family of 6 children.  He is sponsored by Compassion International to help support his family.  He attends school but does not communicate because of his unprepared cleft palate.  He underwent repair of his palate.  Please pray for him as repair this late often does not improve speech.  We are praying for a miracle that his palate will heal well and he will have improvement in his speech.  Pray that he would be BLESSED, not cursed.



This newborn infant was born with a large tongue mass.  She did well for several days but then began to develop breathing issues.  We were hoping she would have a tongue cyst which could be easily managed and reduce the size of the tongue and therefore improve breathing.  Unfortunately, biopsy revealed a large solid mass originating from tongue muscle. We are concerned for a malignancy.  Pathology is a real problem here.  It takes 6 weeks to get results back from Nairobi.  We just returned again to the OR today to again work with her breathing passage.  This is going to be a long wait and we are praying she survives.



Please continue to pray that the Lord would bring His people in and that He would give me wisdom and healing hands to treat.  There have been difficult working circumstances and I have not completely relaxed into the rhythm of this place yet.  Jimmy has arrived safely this weekend and I am thankful he is here.

Blessings,
Chase

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