September 1st, 2009

Ministry Update

Dear Ministry Partners,

August has come and gone, and still Kenya waits for rain. This is the third year in a row of below normal rainfall and inadequate harvests. People are suffering and a recent report suggests that 10% of Kenya’s population may already be in need of food aid. The local AIC church continues to collect food donations and money (and we continue to contribute to the effort) in order to provide desperately needed food to the most deprived families.

Lack of rain is now causing other spin-off problems. Most of Kenya’s electric power comes from hydroelectric sources. The water table, lakes and rivers have dropped to dangerously low levels and Kenya is no longer able to generate enough power to meet its current needs. Power rationing has been implemented across the country. Here at Kijabe, our power is cut from 8am to 6pm three days a week. The hospital, schools and Bible College rely on expensive diesel-powered generators to produce the electricity needed on those days. We are fortunate to have such a backup system already in place. Other institutions and businesses are not so fortunate. The SIM headquarters in Nairobi just last week completed installation of a backup power system with large industrial-size storage batteries and power inverters wired into each of the offices. They are expecting this to be a long-term problem, and every indication suggests they are right.

Tented camps still house thousands of homeless families displaced from their communities by the inter-tribal violence following the 2007 elections. Below us in the Rift Valley, the tents of one distant camp can be identified as a multitude of tiny white dots. We hear that the residents of the camp have given up any hope of returning to their former homes and are banding together to attempt to buy the land where the camp now sits in order to be able to start building more permanent dwellings. They have decided to establish their own community. Most of the residents are Kikuyu, but one Kisii widow with no other support has appealed to the church for help so she can pay her portion of the community effort. The church is asking for contributions, not wanting her to think that because she’s not Kikuyu she can’t even belong to a community of internal refugees!

Please pray for Kenya. Conditions for most Kenyans are not improving and in fact life appears to be growing steadily more difficult for the majority. Many have lost faith in the seemingly ineffective “grand coalition” government, and fears are mounting that an eventual outbreak of civil violence may be drawing increasingly close. Pray this does not happen. Once violence breaks out there is no telling how long it may take to contain it again.

Meanwhile the hospital remains as busy as ever. Last week Bob enjoyed a change of pace overseeing general medicine patients on the men’s ward instead of remaining in the outpatients department. The hospital needed him to fill the gap between the departure of a short-term visiting doctor and the arrival of a long-term doctor returning from home leave. He enjoyed making daily rounds with the interns and discussing various aspects of patients’ evaluations and care. One of the patients on which a consultation was requested on Saturday ended up being the subject of yesterday’s case presentation. Bob was very proud of the good job done by the presenting intern.

This week Bob is back in the outpatients department, where there continue to be many opportunities for ministry. Today Bob prayed with a middle-aged woman who has been mysteriously losing weight for a year. She has been to many different hospitals and clinics and has now come to Kijabe in the hope of finding some effective help. Pray for wisdom and discernment as Bob oversees her workup and treatment. Pray too that Christ will be glorified in her life as she is brought under the ultimate care of the Great Physician.

Hope continues rounding on patients once per week with the AIDS team, is still analyzing the initial data from her nutritional research project, and just yesterday completed and sent out the daily AIDS prayer guide for the month of September. We hope to be able to begin posting these prayer guides soon here on our web page. Meanwhile we have been informed (just today!) that the international HOPE for AIDS web site will also start posting these monthly prayer guides. After sending out the guide for August, Hope received an enthusiastic email from Canon Gideon Byamugisha of Uganda, founder of ANERELA, the African NEtwork of REligious Leaders infected or affected by AIDS. He called her a “prophetic voice” and strongly encouraged her to continue her work to inform AIDS-focused prayer efforts in Africa. (Last year ANERELA was expanded to INERELA, the "International Network ...")

Sorry this is longer than intended, but as you can read there is much going on, and this has only scratched the surface. The Gospel is wholistic, with not just spiritual but also physical, mental, emotional and social impacts. We work for and pray for total transformation wherever the Gospel is preached and lived. Thank you for joining us in this work through your prayers.