UPDATE

SATURDAY 12TH APRIL 2008

 

SKY NEWS was interestingly reporting MORE VIOLENCE in Kenya today with the usual disquieting pictures of unemployed youths on the rampage in Nairobi.

This kind of stuff doesn't help Kenya of course - just provides further cause for world depression in regard to world unrest and social disintegration.      One of the most disquieting images on TV is this so called 'Eternal Flame' being taken on a multi million trip round the world in the face of racial antagonism and aggression.    Does it do anything for TIBET?     I think it doubtful.      It does come across as a bit of totally over hyped publicity that virtually makes the TORCH a god to be worshipped.    As such I have never felt very sympathetic about it - even when at best it is explained as a symbol of Peace and International Unity.      Considering the COST of protecting it, carrying it from Country to Country, repairing the damage caused by rioting protestors, and general mayhem one could think of more appropriate ways to symbolize PEACE and international Goodwill.

 

THIS WORLD needs Good News, but has no awareness of the BEST News of all.     In fact turns its face from it AND from Him who proclaims it.

 

ON FRIDAY I FOUND MYSELF SITTING IN ALMOST TOTAL DARKNESS whilst a blazing sun burned the scorched earth outside!         Daryl and I had decided to investigate the home of a 15 year old orphaned boy who had been sent by an African pastor for us to assist.    The boy's name is DAVID, and he is from the north of Kenya.   He is member of the TURKANA tribe.       He had been an inmate of some kind of Orphanage in Nakuru Town (about 160 kilometers away from Eldoret) when it closed down, and he returned to the home of his grandmother.

Daryl was driving and I was just observing.     We drove to the West of Eldoret and out into one of the encircling slums or shanty towns called Kamakunji.     It is a sprawling place, and we wove our way through it via winding earthen lanes littered thickly with every kind of garbage thrown or blown about by the wind from amongst the multitudinous mud huts and dwellings.     They stretched far into the distance on every side in squalid poverty surrounded and embellished by endless children.   SO MANY children; thousands of them, ragged, dirty, unattended.    As they caught sight of the rarity of a motor vehicle in this unvisited area and a white face within, they all ran after us shouting 'How are you?' at the tops of their voices.       It was progressively, as we drove on and on, a devastating vista of human degradation, depressingly overcrowded and seemingly hopeless.     We wound our way amidst it all, avoiding packs of dogs, cows, goats and other livestock that shared the infested earth.       Finally we reached our destination - though I do not think I would recognize it again - it was just a continuation of where we had begun - just further in..... a one room cell made of mud and cow dung, windowless, with a gaping, rotting wooden door.      David went to hunt for his grandmother as curious neighbours, bystanders, both adult and juvenile began to crowd around to see what a mazungu (a white man) wanted in their world.   David re-appeared with a tiny, paper think old lady, wrapped up in rags, and wrinkles.   She did not smile, but ushered me and Steven Stuma who had accompanied us from Testimony, into her house - her one and only room.     She shut the door and suddenly there was NO light.    The air suffocatingly hot from the tin roof.     Slowly I began to make out the interior from little shafts of light let in from the cracks of the door.   Still dark.     Piles of rags around the walls - probably sleeping material.    A timber table piled with pans, dirty pots and pans, and scraps of food half eaten,   Nothing else.  No comfort, nothing to either delight the eye or the senses.     Here this woman lived alone with her two grandchildren - David has a brother a year young than himself.    There mother is the grandmother's daughter.      She and husband ran off and left the two boys then both infants of few years, and has never returned.        The crowd outside increased whilst we talked inside, and on leaving I was followed by a multitude to the car where Daryl was waiting, guarding it from an even greater hoard of children who wanted to touch it, admire it, and just generally let their curiosity run free.   Daryl had an interesting time with them all as he waited for us.       There was laughter and fun in all their faces, and they were glad I think of an unusual event to break up the day.

We drove off..........back to our select neighbourhood in Elgonview Estate far away from this ghetto of perhaps a hundred thousand or more living without water or drainage, perhaps also without food................Our pastor friend's church is reaching out with material aid to 19 families  --------  just a drop in the bucket!     And in Nairobi no one cares.     In Nairobi our Leaders are at ease.

 

David will stay in Tyndale Cottage with Steven and Emily Stuma.     He will attend Testimony School,    Perhaps later we will also take his brother in.      

 

The RAINS have returned again with a vengeance.    Torrents of the stuff .... Cholera has broken out in 16 districts of Kenya.     The world worries about its universal economy.

In the THIRD world things could become very bad very quickly; much worse then they are now even in the worst governed countries.        Governments are not concerned for the suffering masses.    They do not have a well planned or maintained social service policy.          Without charitable and missionary assistance hundreds of thousands of people would be homeless, helpless and without the means to survive.      If the economy of the FIRST world crumbles then the peoples of Africa and other similar places will suffer utter devastation.       People will die.    PEOPLE will DIE.

 

BUT - 'OUR HEART IS FIXED O GOD!  Our heart is fixed!   

I will sing and give praise' - Psalm 57v7

 

Our son MANU will be 24 next Tuesday but since he is home from University for the weekend we are having a party for him tonight.         He was a 'Throw Away baby, but now he is a MAN.    God is Faithful and True.

 

God be with you all as you face a changing world fraught with so many fears and dangers.     We are with you in prayer.     We are all of us in the same boat on the stormy lake - but He Who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps - He is watching over us, and will take care of us.

 

Lovingly

 

John and Esther