This picture is one taken on my recent trip to Kenya. I am looking at a plant with very long thorns and talking to my son, Jeffrey, about a very vivid and painful time he remembers in early years of our time in Tharaka, Kenya.
At this time there was no clinic building and we stayed in multiple tents while preparing to build and gathering materials. Then we would go back into town in the Landrover where we rented a place and would gather more building materials. For some reason, we had used up all the fuel in the Landrover. Perhaps we had been bringing pieces of timber to cook with from the local area. My husband expected the usual vendor to come in about a week with a container of petrol he could buy. There was no other option at that time.
Jeffrey came to me complaining of a painful hand that was double the size of the other and very red and inflamed. More alarming was the red line of inflammation that went up his arm. He said that earlier that week he remembered sticking a huge thorn in the knuckle of his hand. I know also that he regularly swam in the river and that could have been the source of his infection.
We knew that we could not go to town and even if we could the clinics rarely had antibiotics. We prayed over his hand. I remembered a little shoebox of meds a visiting intern had given me. He also had given me a spiral notebook listing some medical needs we might have. I found something on his list that I thought might apply. I gave him that antibiotic for several days. After about a week of concern and more prayer, his hand began to decrease. We were so grateful for the intern’s gift and the Lord’s watch care.
