THE
CORNER ON MERCY - Trinity Lutheran Church & School
Edited
by Dr. Charles W. Webb February
2008
NOTE: THIS IS AN ARTICLE BY KIM KRULL OF LCMS WORLD RELIEF AND HUMAN CARE.
IT WILL APPEAR (WITH PHOTOS) IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF Reporter.
Mercy Medical Team on Kenya crisis: ‘It’s just
heartbreaking’
It was just last fall that a joyful Sally Henrickson helped
open the newly remodeled Luther Health Centre to care for the poor and sick in
the infamous Kibera slums of Kenya, Africa. But the LCMS World Relief and
Human Care staff member’s happiness turned to sad disbelief when she learned
that the clinic was burned during deadly political riots that followed the
country’s disputed December 27 presidential election.
“I saw the pictures and sat and cried because I knew
everything was gone,” said Henrickson, an R.N. and medical material goods
resource coordinator with the Synod’s mercy arm. “Life was tough enough already
in Kenya, with people living day to day, meal to meal,” she said. “It’s just
heartbreaking to think how these riots have created so many more problems.” In
October, Henrickson and other LCMS medical professionals treated more than 800
Kenyans as part of a Mercy Medical Team coordinated by LCMS World Relief and
Human Care. American Lutherans cared for Africans suffering with health problems
ranging from skin infections and intestinal disorders to HIV/AIDS and malaria —
all challenges, Henrickson says, stemming from the country’s extreme poverty and
lack of basic health care.
Team members rejoiced as they
opened the remodeled health center, located in Springs of Life Lutheran Church
in Kibera, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya (ELCK), an
LCMS partner church. The trip was the third by Mercy Medical Team volunteers to
Africa’s largest slum, home to some one million people within the city of
Nairobi. The clinic’s renovations were made possible by a $40,000 grant from
LCMS World Relief and Human Care, from donations by St. John Lutheran Church,
Oxnard, Calif., and Concordia Lutheran Ministries, Cabot, Pa. “You couldn’t ask
for a better way to serve Christ, show love for people in need, and spread the
Gospel,” said Dr. Chuck Webb, a retired emergency room doctor and veteran of two
Mercy Medical Team trips. An assistant pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church,
Traverse City, Mich., Webb said he cried when he learned that rioters destroyed
the clinic, along with the church and a nursery school on the church campus.
“It’s very
upsetting to think that people would burn something that actually was helping
them,” Webb said of the violence that claimed hundreds of lives and displaced a
fluctuating number of people, to as many as 500,000. “But I think what
happened was more of a herd mentality — that people were stampeding, in a sense,
because they were unhappy about the election,” Webb continued. “I don’t think
they stopped to think about what they were doing.” A least one published
story said disgruntled Kenyan politicians helped fuel the riots. Citing an
investigation by the Kenyan Human Rights Commission, The Associated Press
reported that politicians paid gangs who were responsible for some of the
country’s worse violence.
Since the riots, Mercy Medical
Team member Kim Bonnett has fielded questions in her hometown of San Jose,
Calif., about why Kenyans would destroy a clinic in a country with so
desperately short of medical facilities. “It is hard to understand, but I tell
them (friends and colleagues) that we in the United States don’t know what it’s
like to be so poor, to have no basic necessities, and to have no one to turn to
for help,” said Bonnett, an intensive care unit nurse at Stanford Hospital,
Stanford, and a member of First Immanuel Lutheran Church, San Jose.
Other Mercy
Medical Team members included: Sarah Angers, Mary Ann Hansen, Marilyn Metiva,
Bob Shepherd, Charlotte King, and Lois Nienhouse, all from Traverse City; and
Sandy Frandsen and Marilyn Gregory, members of St. John Lutheran Church, Oxnard,
Calif. Mercy Medical Team members cover their own expenses, which were $3,000
for the African trek. Volunteers dug into their own pockets and/or did their own
fund raising. Instead of dwelling on the recent violence, Bonnett prefers to
focus on the Kenyans she met and “fell in love with” last fall. She tells how
ELCK Bishop Rev. Walter Obare and Project Coordinator Rev. David Chuchu visited
the clinic to personally thank Mercy Medical Team volunteers. “They were so
happy and grateful for us to be there. There was no sense of entitlement, only
of appreciation,” Bonnett said.
She calls Rev. Dennis Meeker,
pastor at Springs of Life Lutheran Church, and his wife, Deaconess Lorna Meeker,
“two of the most selfless, compassionate people I’ve ever met.” And the Kenyan
children touched her heart, Bonnett says, especially the many orphans the team
members treated for malnutrition and infections that pose comparatively few
problems in the United States. Her voice grows soft when she talks of Stella,
who traveled in a van with 46 other children from a Lutheran orphanage in
Kawangware to get vitamins, medicines, and check-ups at the clinic. Stella, age
5, was so severely malnourished that she looked more like an 18-month-old
toddler. “She wanted to hold my hand, sit on my lap, and rest her head on my
shoulder,” said Bonnett, who now provides financial support for Stella and three
siblings to attend school through an ELCK/LCMS World Relief and Human Care
project. Before the political unrest in Kenya, the Synod’s mercy arm had
planned more Mercy Medical Team trips to Kenya for this year. “If the government
stabilizes, we hope to go forward with those plans,” Henrickson said. Both
Bonnett and Webb say they want to return to the east African country. “Whatever
help I gave the Kenyans, I got back so much more in return,” Bonnett said. “I
wish I could be there right now, helping out.” To learn more about how you can
support or participate in Mercy Medical Team opportunities, contact Henrickson
at
Sally.Henrickson@lcms.org or call 1-800-248-1930, Ext. 1380.
UPDATE - BURNING OF CHURCH AT KIBERA
Pastor Carlos
Winterle, pastor of Uhuru Highway Lutheran Church in Nairobi has published blog
on the problems in Kibera and the burning of the church. He also notes how the
church is rebounding. Go to the following for the summary:
http://pastorwinterle.blogspot.com/. If anyone want to make a donation to
the church, make out the check to "LCMS World Relief/Human Care with a memo
"for Kibera", and pass it along to Dr. Webb and he will get it to Pastor Meeker
in Kenya.
Pastor Dennis
Meeker's email is: d_meek44@hotmail.com
He is the pastor of Springs of Life Lutheran Church at Kibera in Nairobi, the
burned-out church.
Note:
For the rest of this issue, I have referred you to a number of sites that I
think are useful in understanding Synods’ outreach in mercy. Each link is
self-explanatory.
1. Link to LCMS summary of missionaries, their Roles
and the number we have around the world:
synod’s
http://www.lcms.org/pages/internal.asp?NavID=4239
2.
GLOBAL LINKS - February 2008 Short excerpts,
thoughts, and anecdotes from missionaries. www.lcmsworldmission.org/globallinks
www.lcms.org?2447
3. Mercy Notes. Who owns your genes? This issue of Mercy Notes digs
into the ethical dilemma of patenting human genes. Is the goal to improve
research or profits? We also look
into problems with the popular, new compact flourescent light bulbs --
they save energy, but ‘ where does the mercury go when they burn out? Go here
to see the current issue:
http://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/WRHC/MercyNotes%20V-1.pdf
4. LCMS World Relief and Human Care is the group that sponsored Dr. Webb’s
medical mission trips in 2007. They will continue to support us in the
future. Go to this link to
see the mercy and human care work that they support:
http://worldrelief.lcms.org
