Whew. What a whirlwind of activity in the past several days. We just completed a 3 day medical camp in Kipkaren just outside of Eldoret, Kenya. We concluded the camp on the final day by treating 1227 people - by far the most people that Open Arms has ever treated on one day at one of their medical camps. The most previously might have been somewhere around 700 people.

We felt it at the end of the day, tearing down the tents, loading up, and driving the doctors and ourselves into town to eat at Mamma Mias - I just about fell asleep in my mashed potatoes, or in my pizza in this case.

We saw a total of 2300 people in the 3 day medical camp, plus 700 children at the school that were given de-worming pills and toothbrushes. It was an interesting camp, and sometimes, especially on the last day, it felt like the lines of people would never end. We did get to the end of the line though, and I got the last of the people through the prayer tent at about 4:20. Although there were still about 200 people in the medical camp at that point, about 60 people waiting to go into the Triage tent, about 80 people waiting to see the doctor, and about 60 more waiting at the pharmacy. We finally got the last of the people through the pharmacy about 5:30, tore down the tents, and loaded up the truck, shortly before dark. Perhaps the hardest part of the day were the 3 or 4 dozen people at the end of the day who arrived late while we were packing up the truck, who wanted us to see them as well. Unfortunately, we had to say no to them, with the limits of daylight and exhaustion reached, but we did pray with some of them who were willing to receive prayer.

The best part of the day, were the dozens of people who said thank you as they left the tent, some with tears of gratitude; the 58 people who received Christ on the last day including the 57 people who received Christ on the first two days, and the dozens of people who were miraculously healed in the prayer tent. In addition, it was interesting how many Muslim people came to the medical camp, more than I had ever seen at any time in Eldoret. While some of them declined to be prayed for in the prayer tent, we still treated them medically, and I trust that our Christian witness was demonstrated by our actions in those cases. Nevertheless, about half of the Muslims who came to the medical camp gratefully received and appreciated our prayers for them as they went through the prayer tent.

On Sunday, we had a wonderful, relaxing day, as we slept in. However, it wasn't quite as relaxing for me as I was invited to preach that morning. I think the service went really well and my message was well received by everyone. It was a wonderful, sunny afternoon, as we, and the older children at the village, went on a hike down to the waterfall next to the village. We concluded the day with some wonderful dinner at the lodge as we prepared for another busy day on Monday.

As I post this blog on Monday night, we had another phenomenal day although not quite as busy as the medical camp days. We had a nice surpise this morning as two large, beautiful tucan birds (think of Tucan Sam), greeted us outside of our bedroom window this morning. We tried to get a photo but they flew off too soon. We got breakfast ready and then I went for a run, feeling like the pied piper as several children from Open Arms Academy followed me while I was running down the road.

Later in the morning we went to the Tumaini Drop-In Center. It was great to see the director of the center, after spending some time with him when we went with him to see the chief of police. After the drop in center, we had lunch at the Chinese Siam Restaurant (delicious!!) and said hi to Mr. Yu. The afternoon was phenomenal with 170 children allowing us to sing with them, perform a skit for them (I got to be Goliath with one of the kids on my shoulders), and at the end, 30 to 40 children received Christ. The team worked together so well as we did this presentation at the Remand Center (kind of like our Juvenile Hall). It was really good, but there was a conversation I had with two boys, one named Josie, and the other Paul, that really kind of haunts me, as they were begging me to get them out of the Remand Center.

It is getting late now, I am getting tired, and fading fast, but I hope to give you more interesting glimpses into our life here in my next posting.

Tuanane Kesho (See you tomorrow)

Matt and Cheryl Tallman

We have already had several busy days on site at Open Arms Village. We have a team of 13 Westerners here, mostly from Oregon, but a few from Texas. We went to the feeding program on Tuesday, and we were amazed at how large and developed the program has become, feeding 150 children 4 days a week, and meeting with 40 mothers weekly for mentoring and training programs.

On Wednesday we set up for the medical camp on some school grounds in an area called Kipkaren. Kipkaren is a slum area between Open Arms Village and the city of Eldoret. I have visited this area many times when Cheryl and I lived here, but this was the very first medical camp we have done here. It was interesting looking at the area, realizing that there were no shambas (farms) in the community on which people could do subsistence farming. This meant that most, if not everyone living in this community was living in extreme poverty, most of them not able to find jobs, and most of them not able to provide adequate nutrition for their families since they didn't have any farms nearby. Although many people did have chickens and a few people had some pretty fat pigs which we almost ran over with our bus.
We had a great turnout at medical camp for the first day. We saw about 500 people, mostly students at the Kipkaren Elementary School (not Open Arms Academy). It was definitely a worthwhile and busy first day and a wild burst of rain at the very end of the camp flooded the pharmacy tent - no damage, but a wet mucky tent and tomorrow morning we get to move the tent about 10 feet further North so we are not dispensing drugs at Lake Med. The prayer tent also got quite a bit of rain and especially mud.
We also were able to give out anti-worming pills and toothbrushes to about 700 other students at the Kipkaren School. Something tells me tomorrow we will be swamped, and I'm not just referring to the rain.

The first wave of Kenya team 2 just arrived in Kenya a few hours ago. Hopefully the rest of the team is through customs at the airport. We had a record fast trip going through customs (no wait at all) and we were able to disembark from our plane and arrive at the ACK Guest House in Nairobi in an hour (it usually takes that long just to get through customs). We are looking forward to God doing great things at our medical camps in Kipkaren. We will be doing some evangelistic crusades preceding the medical camp, but I think we are going to have a significant demad for our clinic since this is the first time we have been in this area. More to come soon.

Mungu Awabariki (God bless all of you),

Matt and Cheryl Tallman