WHAT A DIFFERENCE ONE YEAR MAKES

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...

But God intervened...God heard the cries of Kenyan people...God brought back a sense of sanity and public shame...God replaced chaos with order...through the network of local churches and the voice of the spiritual leaders of Kenya...people rose up and declared 'ENOUGH !' 

WHAT A DIFFERENCE a YEAR MAKES...for sure...

Please pray for PEACE in Kenya.

FIELD(s) of DREAMS

Want to know the recipe for a successful summer leadership institute?

Start with a big helping of Torie Fields.

This little dynamo from BIOLA UNIVERSITY is a minister's dream, because she is always seeing things from a shepherd's perspective.

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.

It was on a long-ago AWAKENING trip that God began stirring in Torie's heart about becoming an advocate for:

• reaching out to the lost
• encouraging and modeling servant leadership
• creatively and effectivelyhelping folks rise from poverty
• caring for the suffering sick
• and helping folks find a path to educate themselves

that's PEACE...no matter what anyone tells you...

A Widow...11 Kids...and a HOLY COW

During the Sabaot Tribal Land Clashes of 2007 and 2008,  9500 ft. up Mt. Elgon, Kenya, and a few meters from the Uganda border, Pastor Benson, his wife Alice, and their 10 children faced a terrible dilemma... to stay in their warring mountain community or flee to lower ground and the security of police and government forces.

Then all hell broke loose between the Soys and the Nurobos...

With gunfire and terror surrounding them, Pastor Benson, a graduate of Africa Theological Seminary's first Mt. Elgon Pastor's Institute, decided to gather his family and try to flee through the bush to the Kopsiro Police Station, where they could be escorted by army troops to an IDP camp.

This tree is Pastor Benson's final resting place...just 20 meters from the protection of the reinforced police station, Alice and Benson and their children were fired upon by opposition rebels forces.

  

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'.

The family ran into the darkness of this dung hut, and trembled as they tried to plan how to get the last few feet to security. But then bullets began piercing the hut, and Benson told Alice, "I am shot". Alice, this mother of 10, and expecting another child in a month, would never see her husband alive again.   

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 can't deliver Alice, but we CAN love her as Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor and to care for the widow and the fatherless. We can do that...we can love... 

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. 

Proverbs 3:5 & 6 is either TRUTH and Comfort, or a convenient cliche we spout when we cannot understand the plight of people like Alice.

 I choose to believe that it is the truth...'TRUST in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understandings; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path."

RELIEF in Kapsiro Kenya

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:

• thousands of deaths
• loss of home and security 
• loss of farms and income
• mass fleeing into the forest

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 

• unselfish love
• persistence
• unity and teamwork
• and faith

There were many times during the day when we had to abandon our vans and walk or push our vehicles to get out of the mud or up an incline...those stops often led to moments where our team got to give out swahili Bibles and share God's love with folks along the way.

It was one cool and exhausting day.

Kylee Dobbs and CLINIC WORK

Kylee Dobbs is a pre-med student in her junior year at Cal Baptist University.

She is a team member of our Summer Leadership Institute in Kitale, Kenya and working in community health care and mobile clinics through Sister Freda's Cottage Hospital. Christian university students in our summer servant institute, are wrestling with the challenge Jesus Christ gave us 2000 years ago:

• 'Love God with all your heart' and
• 'Love your neighbor as you love yourself.'

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...

"This little girl that I am holding is named Anna.  She is 7-9 months old, despite her tiny size. She was suffering from tuberculosis and severe malnutrition when Sister Freda brought her to the hospital.  I am so delighted at the great progress that Anna has made in gaining weight, being more alert, and getting rid of her TB.  She is such a happy baby and I love spending time with her.  She has the biggest smile, even though it's is all gums! I can't wait to see the progress that she makes in the next couple of months. Please pray for Anna."