Well, here it is one year later and a group of us are heading back to Kenya. It has been quite a journey to get to where we are now. About 6 months ago Scott Hayward and Chris Herden, the official head's of Oasis, approached me about taking over the medical care for the Oasis children. As I prayed over it and discussed it with Rick we both felt God's hand in my doing this. I am so excited to be in this position and for all of the things that have happened since. 

 

Immediately after accepting this position, I was introduced to another RN, Livia Krzeminski. She is a nurse at Abbott and has been aware of Oasis for some time. We made an instant connection and both had a passion to help. So - we both decided to team up together to take on this role. It has been so fun to work with her! 

 

Our first project became working with the staff to set up some standards of care. As we discussed this we both felt that in order to do this we would need to travel back to Kenya and do some collaborative teaching in order to assess the kids health and address some health needs such as helping a child with a club foot and helping with vision and hearing issues. 

 

So here we are. There are 13 of us traveling to Kenya on February 20. We have 3 nurses, 1 doctor, an audiologist, several teachers, an architect and 4 awesome 11 year old girls! In the mix are two 3 generation travelers. My dad, Dr. Mike Matlak, and my daughter Katie are coming. Jill Hayward's mom, Anita Kaiser, a nurse, is coming along with her and her daughter, Piper. Obviously these will create some special memories.