One year ago Kenya was ablaze...
The hope of a peaceful transfer of leadership, following the presidential elections, collapsed as tribal rivalries and feelings of powerlessness turned into mayhem and mob violence.
In El Doret, 36 people were chased into an Assembly of God Church, where they chose to burn to death rather than face the murderous crowd outside. Stonic and I knelt at the ashes and shards of a woman who died in her wheelchair...in the church.
No community was immune...it was tribe against tribe, Kenyans in the worst divide anyone could imagine.
First Kikuyu slaughter...then Kikuyu retaliation...the cycle seemed endless...
The streets of Nairobi, El Doret, Naivasha, Nakuru and Kisumu were absolute war zones...
If you were out in public you faced the brutal consequences of the street...
Hospitals were filled with the beaten, the burned, the machete-stricken, and the shot...
It doesn't hurt to have Cathy and Doug Fields as your mom and dad...and Cassie and Cody as your sibs...but I've seen lots of kids from GREAT families who just don't ever move from the 'Christian life of my family' to 'my own journey with the Lord'.
Torie is helping me and Chris Wohlers this summer with our PEACE RELIEF Summer Leadership Intitute...that's alot of words to say...'go to Kitale Kenya and do what God tells you to do'. 
Torie's summer has been a mix of teaching and encouraging, fingernail polish and wool blankets, 2 hour conversations with street girls and hugs to homeless moms. 
You can ask her how she perfected the tribal soccer dance called the 'Twanga-Twanga' but I'm sure Delia, Casey, Lyndsey and Caroline have something to do with it.
And in West Pokot she is known as the muzungu who CAN count to 10.
Torrie and Delia have been mentoring and teaching a group of former streetkids, known as the 'Mercy Girls', at Purpose Driven Academy...a Christian primary and secondary school for 450 kids at Deliverance Church. PDA is run by our dear friend Margaret Wanyonyi and is an extension of the ministries of Pastor Moses Wanyonyi and the Deliverance Church team. His church has been one of the great spiritual harbors for our Kenya teams over the past 12 years serving in the Rift Valley. When Torie and Delia and Sammy walk on the campus...pandemonium breaks out.
As bullets rained down around them, Alice's son cried softly, "Are we dead?" and she pulled the 4 year old to her chest and whispered, 'God will deliver us'.
And so, she and her 11 children live in that hut...smaller than your work space...and try their best to work out what Alice, in faith, declared, "God will deliver us."
A group from our summer PEACE Relief team traveled for the day, up Mt. Elgon, to visit Alice today with some hugs and some enouragement. The items we brought: maize, rice, wheat, blankets, lesos, cooking pots, flip flops, water jugs and washing basins...will all, wear out or run out, but we are not her family's Saviour...God is...and only God.
We also had a chance to deliver 2 sheep and a HOLY COW to Alice from the Thorsen small group at Saddleback church. This milk cow is 'in-calf' which means that in a few months there will be a baby cow, to also bless the family. This cow produces 300 liters of milk a month, which provides nutrition for the kids and income for mom to keep her 11 in school. 
Alice and her kids live in the ironic shadow of the Kopsiro Police Station, where they had hoped to find refuge. 
The people of Kapsiro Kenya, atop Mount Elgon, are a proud and beautiful people. They are part of the SABAOT people group and are made up of dozens of clans and sub-clans. Two of these clans have been warring over disputed land rights for years now...the Soys and the Nurobo people, despite their common heritage have been caught up in disastrous fighting, leading to:
Our PEACE RELIEF team partnered with a network of pastors and the local DISTRICT OFFICER...the highest local Kenyan authority....and distributed tons of maize, rice, sugar,wool blankets, feminine products, flip flop shoes, wash basins and BIBLES.
Nearly eight hundred 'heads of family' showed up, representing 5,000 greatly suffering people.
Nick, a BIOLA student from our summer leadership institute, got to deliver a personal word of encouragement, along with this warm blanket, to an elderly Sabaot gentleman. Because these clans live at such a high altitude, nights during this rainy season are miserably cold under their temporary thatched roofs.
Alyssa, who will be attending Azusa Pacific University this fall, dove right into the maize distribution team.
Paige and Anne, our Texan teachers delivered plastic wash basins to moms who were trying to do wash out of muddy potholes.
I had a chance to deliver a message of encouragement from Luke 5 on 
While friends of hers are working at Nordstrom and Old Navy and Taco Bell this summer...she's working at answering the question...'Who exactly IS my neighbor and how do I love them as Jesus said?'
One of the ways Kylee is working out her answer to that challenge is by using her God-given talents and gifts to serve in community and rural clinics. Some day, she dreams of being a doctor and using those healing gifts and compassion skills to work with folks whose health and income preclude them from traditional hospital-based care. She likes 'taking it on the road."
Kylee and her CBU roommate, Ashley Campos, are able to see hundreds of moms and kids a day and are learning skills of triage, assessment, initial care and comfort. I am so proud of their work at the clinics and their interaction with the folks they see and the colleagues they work alongside. 
Kylee first came to Kitale on an AWAKENING trip through our church PEACE plan in 2006. The purpose of these initial teams is to expose our church members to the devastating consequences of poverty, disease, inequitable education, lack of servant-leadership, and broken relations between God and men. Kylee's experiences on that trip led her to begin simple steps toward ADVOCACY in the area of health care for the least served in society. 
They work under the care and instruction of Sister Freda Robinson and her staff of nurses, doctors, and pharmacists. A simple and inexpensive medicine like mebednazol can keep kids worm-free for months...
A word from Kylee...
People who have been run off and burned off and shot off their ancestral land, have gathered and huddled together in these IDP camps for security and survival.
They have no more than a tarp given by the United Nations...and each other...
Our PEACE RELIEF team has been able to deliver:
4 to 6 families live in each of these tiny dwellings.
Everything we do in PEACE RELIEF is done through the local pastor...as wonderful as all the great help agencies and ngo's are... they pack up and go away... but the CHURCH REMAINS.
Sammy from Cal State Fullerton delivers a blanket to an appreciative mom.
Torie from BIOLA University has made a lifelong friend by delivering... of all things...'Stay Free with Wings' (many asked why do they have 'wings'?...I hope to never know the answer) 
Anne, a 4th grade teacher from Providence Christian School, in Dallas, delivered Swahili Bibles to hundreds who have never had their own copy of God's Word.
Ameni's decision that day has changed alot of things...first she led her brother to Christ...he was baptized in the Kigale Assembly of God Church and Changed his Islamic name to Emannuel.
In Feb of '09 I invited Ameni and Emannuel to come by bus to join our Kenya outreach...On that trip, Ameni changed her name to Hannah and I had the privilege of baptizing her in the Kitale Club pool. 
Since then it has been quite a wild ride...here is Hannah after she told the men at ANNEX PRISON about how they could find a new path through the Lord.
Here's Hannah talking with women inmates at Kitale prison about how change is possible.
