Some of you may have heard about our troubles with the anesthesia machine here in operating room 5. We have an urgent request for you to pray for that equipment and the doctors that will be using it. Something inconsistent has been happening and children are getting hurt because of complications with the machine. Our friend Ruth, who is a pediatric surgeon, is feeling extremely stressed about the situation. She is a wonderful person. She is a single lady who has given up a lot of things to serve God here in Africa taking care of His kids. Please pray for strength, faith and a feeling of peace for her as she starts operating again on Monday.
Well, we have started the Mother Child Health (MCH) building with the new bricks this past week. There are many unknowns in this process. Thankfully, we have a structural engineer working for the hospital now and he has been a big help. Pressures are heavy, the timeline is short, materials are scarce - Hey, it sounds like we are back in the Naval Nuclear world!
These are all pictures of our start. It goes slow in the beginning because the first course has to be pretty perfect. We have a fundi (expert) here consulting for us and he seems fairly competent. One of our issues is how to tie in the interior walls to the supporting outside walls. We built columns and will have a ring beam that will actually support the structure, but we need a way to stabilize the interior wall and tie them to the ring beam. We have some ideas and the fundi has some too, but, this is a place where we have no experience with the finished product. The CT scanner is coming in Jan, so we are all working hard to get this building up and make it a good one. Please pray for wisdom and diligence as we go forward with this one!
The kids are on mid term break from yesterday (Friday) till Wed of this week. Jim and the boys are going to go camping in the Aberdares for a few days. Hopefully, we will have some nice pictures next week end. Jim really needs the break and Timothy is just giddy about the prospect of sleeping out for 2 nights, not showering and seeing some cool animals! Sallie and I are going to try and go riding. There are some places in Karen (town on the south side of Nairobi) that have riding facilities. She is so excited to go. She really misses having the horses around. She has decided she wants a white pony when we get home - we'll see how that turns out! Our car has been in the shop for the week having the power steering fixed. We are grateful to have a car, but the conditions here are such that it needs to be repaired often. If you picture what it is like to go four wheeling out in the country, that is what 60% of our driving is like. It is very hard on the vehicles. So, if we have a car (it should be done today) Sallie and I will make a trip to try and ride. If we don't have a car, I guess we will sit around here and stare at each other! I will let you know next week which one it was.
Take Care,
In His Hands,
Jullie T.
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