Healing Bodies, Healing Souls

A First Time for Everything

Posted Feb. 24, 2010

NYANZA PROVINCE, Kenya – Atlanta. Amsterdam. Nairobi. The bush. After about 18 hours of air travel spanning three continents and seven hours on bumpy roads, Tammy Keyes finally arrived in Openda, Kenya, to serve on her first mission trip.

A wife and mother of three from Dadeville, Ala., Keyes set out on an adventure of a lifetime that would include camping, ministering to impoverished people and being challenged more than she thought she could handle.

“This is my first time on the mission field and it’s been quite an experience with airplane sickness and sleeping in a tent,” Keyes said at the beginning of the week. “But I think it will be enjoyable by the time it is over with, and I hope to serve the Lord in whatever He would have me do here.”

Keyes served with a medical mission team from First Baptist Church of Alexander City, Ala., in Openda, a village in the Nyanza Province of western Kenya.

“This is the first time I have ever been out of the United States and ever been to a poverty-stricken area where there is no electricity or water or what we call basic essentials,” Keyes said. “It’s difficult to acclimate to that climate and I don’t see how they survive.”

Keyes assisted two eye doctors with free eye exams and the distribution of more than 300 pairs of glasses in Openda, a village consisting mostly of people from the Kisii people group.

Despite the emotional and physical challenges of the first day, Keyes was blessed to be part of the work in Openda.

“It was very tiring but it’s also been very exciting,” she said. “Every time we put glasses on somebody you could tell immediately they could see because they would start smiling.”

Throughout the three-day medical clinic Keyes visited with hundreds of patients, but it was the many children in the village who touched her the most.

“The most emotional thing to see this week was how the children live,” Keyes said. “Just being in the U.S., even the poorest person would be considered so wealthy compared to what we saw where we went to do the mission work.”

As a result of the work, Keyes said she believes she has become a more compassionate person, especially after a mother of twin, three-year-old girls came through the clinic. The lady and one of her young daughters were both HIV-positive.

At one point, while the girls were navigating the rocky terrain between the exam room and the area Keyes was distributing eyeglasses, one of the girls stumbled and fell to the ground.

“When she fell one of the missionaries helped the little girl up and didn’t hesitate to touch her and tell her she was okay,” Keyes said, fighting back tears. “I do feel like I have been changed, to be more compassionate than before and just acknowledge somebody by that touch or smile.”

Even though the week was tough for her, Keyes encourages anyone considering serving as a volunteer missionary to follow her example and not let a lack of experience or sacrificing of home comforts keep one from serving the Lord overseas.

“I would tell them to go on a mission trip would be the most rewarding experience of their life but it would not be easy by any means,” she said. “But as you go into all the earth, preaching the Gospel, how it would change somebody’s life forever.”

Jacob Alexander is a writer for IMB’s Global Communications Team. He’s currently a seminary student and plans to be a bachelor until the rapture. His passion is telling the stories of God at work throughout the continent of Africa.