Count your blessings

I feel like I experience a glimpse of heaven every time that I go to the church in Kijabe. They always have lots of singing, dancing, and clapping. It is so fun to see all the school and church choirs perform during the service because they get so into the music. They aren’t afraid of what people in the crowd think about them so they let themselves really get into the music.  It is evident while surveying the church crowd that the Kenyans really love to praise the Lord with their whole hearts, souls, and minds.  Often I have found myself asking the question, “How can these people sing and talk about gratitude for hours when they have so little?” There’s a lot I think that we can and should learn from them in this.

A really neat thing about working with the physio department here is that every morning before we start treating patients we take ~30 mins to sing a hymn or two and then read some scripture. Someone different leads the hymn and devotion every day and it is really interesting to hear what scripture they share and what they have to say about it. Some get really into the “sermon” and they start talking so fast that I don’t even know what they’re saying even though they’re speaking English! The hymns can be pretty humorous to sing together because they sing very loud and they pronounce words very different then we do so a lot of times my voice is very easy to pick out!

I’ve gotten to lead the hymns and scripture sharing often since being here and it’s been neat to get to share that time together and start our days in that way. One day I got to choose the hymn and we sang “Count your blessings” and I shared with them how it is a very special song because my wonderful extended family sings it every Thanksgiving. I shared with the physio staff how I admire how they count their blessings and thank the Lord for all of their earthly and eternal blessings. For example, my  friend in the physio dept, Rose, has been working at the hospital for 30 years and she had planned on retiring by this time in her life. Unfortunately, 5 years ago her house (along with many other hospital employees’ houses) burned down and she lost everything that she had ever owned. Of course there is no insurance here or anything so she now lives in a tin house about the size of my ½ of my bedroom back home. Despite the situation she is very thankful for her house and she is very proud of it. To my surprise the other day she was able to fit all 7 of us physios in there to serve us cake and porridge for a social gathering after work! (it was a veryyy tight squeeze ; ) )

In addition to our morning physio staff devotions, on Wednesdays the whole hospital staff has chapel where there are several songs and a message shared by one of the hospital’s chaplains. This has been neat to be a part of and to see that the hospitals main focus is “compassionate based healthcare for God.” Even though the hospital has such limited funding and see’s so much illness, disease, and death it is incredibly powerful to see the entire hospital staff continue to come before the Lord, praising him with thankful hearts.

Daily here I am humbly reminded of how I want to live like them in this way.  I have been trying to put the “thankful heart” into action since arriving but it is tested on a minute by minute basis. It is tested in little ways like when the electricity, water and internet don’t work. It has been tested over the past week with being really sick. But it has also been tested in big ways. It has been very difficult to be thankful when I am extremely overwhelmed with the patients that come in and how little we can do for them because their injuries/diseases are at such a late stage and the resources are so limited. One of them is a 2 year old who had meningitis and now has cystic fibrosis. She has spasticity in all four limbs and she was abandoned by her mother so now her grandmother cares for her but is in poor health and has no funds to provide medical care. Another example is a ~30 year old man who had a hip fracture over one year ago and he has walked with crutches since then and he is not able to complete a straight leg raise, a clamshell, or prone leg extension because he has never regained any strength in that leg. He was either never told to do his exercises or he never came back to physiotherapy to get instructions for them…either way it’s really sad to think about how preventable this man’s last year hobbling around on crutches, not able to work or provide for his family, could have been if he would have been properly educated and treated. There is story after story like this and it can become very discouraging. And last one, a 25 year old who had a traumatic brain injury a year ago in a motor vehicle accident. He was “treated” by lying in bed for the whole past year and his family has not had any instruction on how to prevent contractures or bed wounds. I could seriously go on and on with these stories. But I need to constantly remind myself that these Kenyans I work and live with have millions of things that they could complain about but they don’t. Instead they are thankful.

Today, I am thankful to be here even though it was honestly a really bad day at the hospital. I also am thankful that I am learning how to have a thankful heart here even though it has not been easy and I fail at it all the time. Even today after I write this blog I have to be truthful and admit that I spent almost the entire day in the hospital being frustrated and wanting to complain about so many different things. I definitely failed to have a thankful heart the majority of my day. But I’m going to keep trying. Please keep me accountable in this mission and also I encourage you to try it yourself ; )

Let’s go count our blessings and live with thankful hearts!

1 Thessalonians 5:18 “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”