Tara Lepp, former Linfield athletic trainer, now retired, serving as medical missionary in Kenya

By Starla Pointer

McMinnville News-Register/N-R

Sept 24, 2018 

Some of Tara Lepp’s fellow volunteers at the mission site in Kenya have told her they always dreamed of helping people in Africa.

Lepp hadn’t considered it.

“It was a God thing,” said the longtime Linfield College sports medicine professor and athletic trainer.

“I was in church on Maundy Thursday, and I was blindsided,” she said, describing how, on the Thursday before Easter in 2005, she suddenly realized she needed to use her skills as a medical missionary. “This was all God’s idea.”

That summer, she became a volunteer for Open Arms International, which was started by a Portland couple. She flew to Kenya to spend a couple weeks doing whatever task was needed.

Lepp returned the next year, and the next. She spent more time in Africa each year, occurring her mission work between semesters of teaching.

Each year her duties expanded, especially after Open Arms opened a family-style shelter for orphans and displaced children, then a school. She leads morning devotions, works with the children and offers medical care when kids are injured.

Over the last five years, she’s split her time between McMinnville and Africa, teaching in the Oregon fall, then doing mission work during our spring and summer — fall and winter there. During the short winter term, she sometimes taught a Linfield course at the Open Arms Village, about a 30-minute drive from Eldoret, Kenya.

Last January, 10 Linfield students, eight from the nursing program and two from the exercise science program, spent the winter term with her for a class called Health Care in Kenya. In addition to visiting medical facilities and personnel there, the Linfield students sponsored a four-day free medical clinic for low-income people.

“It was a great experience for the college students,” she said. “They all want to go back.”

When Lepp first answered the call to become a missionary, she wasn’t sure how her sports medicine skills would be useful.

Her skills fit very well in the area Open Arms serves.

Eldoret is located on the equator, but the climate is temperate, because of its 7,000-foot altitude. The high elevation attracts people training for marathons. Local people engage in a lot of running sports, as well, in addition to soccer and other games.

If someone pulls a muscle or falls, Lepp can help. She assists with other injuries, as well, or refers other cases to the mission’s doctor.

She works with both the Open Arms’ children’s homes and its school, which also serves youngsters from the general population.

The homes include several large family units, each run by a married couple, sometimes with children of their own. Seventeen to 20 children call the house parents “mommy” and “daddy,” Lepp said, and refer to each other as siblings. Assistants who help in the homes are called “auntie.”

“It’s great. You can’t tell who’s the biological child and who’s not,” Lepp said.

The children flourish in the homes, Lepp said. They have opportunities to learn and live that they might not have otherwise.

Kenya has an unemployment rate of nearly 70 percent, she said. Some of the children who come to Open Arms were abandoned by parents who couldn’t care for them for economic or other reasons. Some have no families at all.

Many of Open Arms’ 156 children attend its school, although the oldest go to a high school offsite. With community children included, the school has an enrollment of about 250.

Open Arms also features a mentoring and training programs for adults. One trains women to sew and tailor clothing so they can start their own businesses.

Adults and children also learn skills to run a garden and care for cows, goats and chickens. They also help operate the village’s bakery, water treatment plant and fish farm.

“We try to give them marketable skills, and we try to make the village self-sustaining,” she said. “And we do a lot to transform the lives of future leaders.”

Lepp retired from Linfield July 1. Now, although she’s keeping her house in McMinnville, she will spend most of the year in Kenya.

She’s visiting this month to clean out her office at Linfield and take care of a variety of other business. She’s been telling friends about her missionary work and the needs she sees in Africa.

She mentioned that, as her missionary role expands, she will need her own transportation there. Friends are throwing a fundraiser to help her purchase a four-wheel drive vehicle.

Artist John Stromme is hosting the event from 4 to 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, at his studio, located on the second floor of the KAOS building, 645 N.E. Third St., McMinnville.

Stromme has painted a special piece for the fundraiser; it features the image of one of the children from the Open Arms school.

During the event, Lepp will show a video about Open Arms and answer questions. Donations will be accepted to support her work and the mission in general.

There’s also a funding page for Lepp on the Open Arms website, at openarmsinternational.org/lepp.

PHOTOS:Cutline for photo included with article: “Submitted photo -- Retired Linfield College professor Tara Lepp, center, with some of the children she works with in Kenya.” Other photos from Linfield Sports Info, Portland Tribune and Wildcatville.