Travel Day...and...God Shows Up.

Today was supposed to be a travel day.  Our only goal for today was to get from Nairobi to Kisii, where we would meet up with our workers to begin our retreat at the Masai Mara Game Preserve tomorrow.  Along the way, we decided to stop in and look at an IDP camp that one of our workers has adopted.  We recently started giving them a little money for food, and it seemed smart to check in on them.  So when we were least expecting it, God showed up.

It turns out that these people were survivors of some of the worst political violence that Kenya has ever seen.  Back in 2007, there was an election for president, and the results were very close.  When the ruling party decided to not wait for a full accounting of some irregularities in the balloting, violence erupted along tribal lines.

Now the thing is that Kenya’s tribes don’t really have a strong history of antipathy for each other.  But that didn’t stop corrupt politicians from using whatever they could to get their way, so over 1,000 people were killed and tens of thousands were “displaced”.  Most of these people were members of minority tribes that had migrated to other tribes’ traditional homelands.  Having lost members of their families to the violence, many fled away from their adopted homes and into what the U.N. calls Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camps.

These particular people, after living in a U.N. camp for a while, were invited by a concerned Kenyan to camp on his land.  There they could break away from the hopelessness that surrounds these types of camps.  They could farm and work together; things were looking up.  But after a while, this Kenyan sold the land they were on and they had to move on.  They settled near Gilgil, a town in Nyavasha Provence.

Somehow during all this they ran into John Kariuki.  John is a WBS follow-up worker, which means he is a preacher who checks on WBS students, baptizes them, and organizes them into churches.  John knew that God wanted him to minister in some way to these people, so he went there and did what preachers do.  And God showed up.  Now they have a little church that meets under a tree.  

John and some people he knows raised some money and bough them a ½ acre plot of land to settle on.  That’s great, right?  Only problem is there are 155 of them.  On a ½ acre.  With no money. Of the 155, 46 are orphan children, 27 are widows, and 20 are over 65.  The rest are able bodied and John is busy finding them work so they can restart their lives.  These are some of the weakest, most helpless, destitute people on earth.  They live in huts they cobbled together from sticks, shrubs, discarded plastic and mud. 

John Kariuki told this story to our John DeFore and it seemed like God had placed us in their path so that we could help them.  One of those “good works” that the bible says were prepared in advance for us to do.  So we have started sending them a little money for food for these helpless ones, and today, we drove up.

We met Grace.  Grace is one of the widows, and she has a natural love for others, an amazing faith in God and good leadership skills.  She told us that one day she was sitting outside her hut, watching the orphans play, knowing they could all starve soon.  As she had done so many times, she cried out to God in prayer to save them. Later that same day, John came to tell them our help was coming, and she said “God is faithful.” 

John recognized that Grace could be the one who could organize the feeding of all of these people, and she has.  Once again God used the least likely to save the most helpless.  Check out this video I made of Susie's amazing pics.

These people still have incredible needs.  Their latrine is a pile of sticks for privacy around a hole.  They carry water 1km in jerry cans.  Their huts are not suitable for the rainy season that swept down from the rift valley this very day, showering us as we drove away.  They need blankets, shoes, tents, clothes, and most of all, hope.  Isn’t it cool that it’s ours to give?  If you’d like to help, just call our John DeFore.