All in a day...

“For we are God’s masterpiece,. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus; so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” (Eph 2:10)

This verse was very evident today. A few days ago Juli received a phone call from another hospice in Kisumu that they were closing and had beds, hospital chairs, and other supplies that they wanted to donate to the Living Room; but we had to come today to pick them up. Fortunately, Juli had the four guys in the team that could go without taking staff away from the important work they had to do at the hospice.

So Gene, Cassidy, Ken, and Greg joined Juli, Meshach, and Sawe to go to Kisumu to pick up the donated supplies. It was a real adventure driving across the Kenyan country side in the Living Room ambulance, with people, bikes, motorcycles, carts lining the sides of the road. Everyone moving along at their pace, loaded down with literally everything from sacks of maize to wheelbarrows and even couches (two to be exact) loaded on their bikes. It was a wild ride as we wove in and out of the slower traffic at the side of the road, narrowly avoiding the oncoming traffic of cars, trucks and busses coming in the opposite direction.

We arrived at mid day and found a huge stack of boxes filled with supplies, along with seven hospital beds, five hospital chairs, a gurney, hospital tray tables, and other equipment.

When the truck, or lorry as they call it, pulled up no one could imagine how we would ever get the amount of stuff we had to carry onto that truck. But we were inspired by the Kenyan example of carrying what you have with the vehicle you have, like two couches loaded on the back of a bicycle. We also considered that if Christ could feed five thousand with a couple loaves of bread and a few fish, he could do the opposite and fit all these supplies into the truck we had available to us.

So Juli and Sister Mary prayed and the team applied a little western ingenuity, and everything was loaded into the truck. It was fun to see God at work and to be instruments in the process. We also realized that this day had been appointed by God. Today we accomplished the good works he had prepared in advance for us to do.

As we travelled back to the hospice, we found out that Samuel, one of the hospice patients that we had prayed for the previous day, had passed away and would have to be transported to Eldoret in the ambulance as soon as we arrived back. We arrived at the Living Room and put Samuel in the ambulance and sent him on his final earthly journey. Shortly thereafter, we welcomed the lorry that was following us with all of the newly acquired supplies. No one could imagine that they would be receiving a truck literally overflowing with supplies and they were all amazed at God’s blessing of the Living Room with the arrival of about $100,000 worth of medical equipment and supplies.

The best part of this though, was that no one took this for granted though and the whole group began to sing and dance and praise God for the supplies he had blessed the Living Room with. The celebration continued even as we unloaded the truck and brought the supplies into the hospice.

Today we celebrated God’s grace in the mercy of receiving home one of his children, who the world had forgotten, but the Living Room had found. And we celebrated God’s grace in the power to supply the needs of the Living Room in ways more abundant and more marvelous than anyone could imagine.

Praise the Lord! 

Here's a link to some more photos: Team Photos