NDONYO, Kenya -- I awakened Wednesday morning, Aug. 10, with no particular complaints. I showered and I moved my suitcase of soapmaking supplies to its appointed location, a rough, unfinished brick building at one end of the compound.

Soon after that, however, I began to feel ill -- achy, with hot breath on the back of my throat and finally with chills. My teammates put me to bed and administered Tylenol and an electrolyte drink, and I recovered for a while, enough to lead my soapmaking workshop at 11 a.m. But then the Tylenol wore off and I started to feel bad again. I went back to bed, missing the team's door-to-door visitation in the surrounding community.

T-G City Editor John I. Carney poses with several of the orphans from New Life Church in Ndonyo, Kenya, where Carney spent eight days during a short-term mission trip. [Click to enlarge]

The next day, Thursday, I felt much better. I attributed my illness to a virus. Then, on Friday, I complained about my bruise, which had caused me to toss and turn in bed overnight. My teammates noticed that it had grown much larger and wrapped all around my leg, covering a large portion of my calf.

The answer seemed to be that I'd been bitten. We all assumed it was a spider bite, although Pastor Joseph said there were no poisonous spiders in Ndonyo of which he was aware. In any case, it seems likely that the bite was the true cause of my illness on Wednesday as well as the large red blotch.

LEAMIS International Ministries co-founder Gail Drake gave me antihistamine tablets and hydrocortisone cream. Jim and Shirley Upton of Missouri, two of my teammates, gave me charcoal powder to drink and applied a charcoal poultice to the red spot.

I don't know if it was the traditional medicine, the non-traditional medicine, or simply the passage of time, but by the next day my leg had begun to clear up.

On the day when my spider bite was the talk of the team, I got a little annoyed at being the center of so much attention. That afternoon, the team (other than our two leaders, the Rev. Debra Snellen and Gail Drake, who had other business) planned to walk down the steep hill on which the church compound was located to pay a visit to the market in the town below. I was looking forward to the outing, especially since I'd missed the visitation on Wednesday and had not left the church compound all week.

But Helen Keango, Pastor Joseph Keango's wife, began to discourage me from going. She noted how steep and arduous the climb back to the compound would be. Some of my other teammates, on hearing of Helen's concern, discouraged me from making the trip, especially given that I'd been sick two days earlier and that I needed to be fresh because I would be preaching during that night's worship service.

Let me note here that Ndonyo is located at quite a high altitude. Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, is higher than Denver, Colo., and the region where Ndonyo is located is higher still. Suffice it to say, the air is thinner there than here.

Anyway, I stayed behind. I sat on a chair outside the cabin that Guy McDonald and I shared, and I made paper airplanes for the seven orphaned boys who lived in the church compound. They were delighted at this, and it was -- I have to admit -- fun. Up until that point, I hadn't gotten much chance to connect with the orphans. They were being taught some English in school, but not much -- they were much more fluent in Swahili than English, so you couldn't really make conversation with the younger ones. The boys tended to gravitate either to April Klabzuba and Audrey Lindsey -- who led the children's activities during our ministry week -- or to Guy. Now, I had them all to myself. It was fun, but I really wasn't in a mood to appreciate it.

I am, as most of you know, overweight. I am out of shape. I have issues over this; I feel bad about it and it affects my self-image. While the team was gone, and when I saw them happily returning, I bounced back and forth between beating myself up (assuming I couldn't have made the climb) or feeling resentment at my teammates for having talked me out of it (assuming I could have made the climb).

Now, I told myself, I had missed my second, and perhaps only, chance to see outside the compound.

After the team returned, I cornered Debra and bent her ear a little bit talking about my feelings. Debra, one of the most patient, sweet-spirited people it's ever been my privilege to know, let me vent, and I was starting to feel a little better. I really didn't get resolution until a little later, while waiting for dinner. The orphan boys were hanging around on the sidewalk, and they smiled at me in a way they hadn't done earlier in the week.

Across from us, in the sanctuary, some of the visiting pastors and people from other congregations were having a song service. The music was quite loud, and we could hear it just fine from where we were. One of the boys started tapping on the window of the orphans' bedroom, rhythmically, as if he were a drummer setting the beat for the music. I was sitting in a chair, and I chimed in by slapping my thighs as if they were bongo drums. Before long, we were having a sort of percussion jam session. I grinned at him and he grinned at me.

John, I felt God saying, you aren't here to be a tourist. It could be that the paper airplanes you made this afternoon will have more of a long-term impact than anything you've taught this week in your soapmaking workshop.

Newly energized, I prepared to preach my sermon at that evening's worship service.

As I noted in one of my "Countdown to Mission" columns before the trip, this was to be the first time I had preached a sermon written by someone else -- in this case, Debra. I actually would have had Debra's blessing to personalize the sermon a little more than I did; she told me later that she was surprised at how close I stayed to her words. Her warning not to change the content of the sermons had been more directed, not at me, but at some of the less-experienced speakers on the Kisii and Nairobi teams.

The church compound at Ndonyo did not have access to power lines. Even if a power line had run nearby, the church might not have been able to afford a connection; that was the case with Pastor Abel's church in Kegogi. A power line runs across Pastor Abel's church property, but the church can't afford to take advantage of it.

In Ndonyo, a generator provides a limited amount of power for a few hours each night, to run a few lights and to pump water from a nearby spring into the compound's water tank.

I was just a few minutes into my sermon when this generator, for unknown reasons, stopped running, immediately plunging the church into darkness.

I had brought my flashlight with me to church -- I'm not sure I had any conscious reason for doing so, since I usually had no problem walking back to my cabin. When the lights went off, one of the church elders picked it up off my seat and handed it to me. I continued on preaching, using the flashlight to read my sermon, and Evans -- a church member who translated for all of the preaching -- followed right along.

The sermon had to do with our gifts, and at the end there was an altar call. Ten or 15 people came forward for prayer, and I prayed for each one individually. Evans would talk to them and find out what their prayer request was, and then I prayed. The singing was so loud, and given the language differences I doubt any of the people for whom I prayed heard, much less understood, a word of my prayer. But I prayed anyway, and I hope they could tell I meant it. My prayers became more and more fervent, and I joked later that by the time I got through, I felt like I needed a big-haired wife and a Bible college named after me.

Debra, who by that point in the week had the stirrings of a cold and was hoarse from all of her own preaching, saw me outside the church after the service. She grinned and gave me two thumbs up.

TOMORROW: The hitchhiker's guide to Kenya