Crisis in Kenya

As I am sure many of you have heard, there is a lot of unrest right now in Kenya. What is interesting to me is that when I lived in the States, all the situations that are going all over the world seemed so far away. They seemed like they did not really affect me. You hear on the news about all of the killing in the Sudan, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, and lots of other places. To hear about the massive amounts of killing would make me feel sad, but then I would just return to live as usual. But now, I live in Africa. All of these things are not so far away now distance wise but still in my mind they seem far away.

One of the men that I work with took his young brother up to Kenya for school and was trapped there without a way home. He said he saw people killing each other in the streets, cars being set a blaze, screaming, crying, and so much more. We have a friend from Canada that works in Kenya staying with us because her village is right in the heart of the violence. One of her co-workers walked out of her home and saw a body chopped into pieces. Can you imagine the horror of seeing that? Can you imagine seeing friends killing friends, attacking women and children? One group sought sanctuary in a church and it was a trap. Women and children were chopped to death with machetes and then burned.

Even though I now hear about this first or secondhand, it still seems so far away. I had planned to go to Nairobi next week and will not go now because of all of the violence. Other than that, my life has not really been affected. The world that most people know is that world that I grew up in. Security, stability, peace, and freedom is what I knew but not most of the world. I think that I thought that I could make more of a difference being over here, but I still feel just as far away.

Today and for the next two days, there will be rallies or protests in Kenya that the current government says are illegal so more violence is expected. Please pray for wisdom and humility for the leaders. Please pray that the violence would not escalate.

To be clear, I am far from all of the violence and completely safe. Thank you for all your prayers and concern.