Ministering at the displaced persons camp

We thought carefully about what to wear this past Sunday. We observed the local pastors in suits, ties, and dress shoes earlier, so Jim dressed accordingly. Out of respect for local customs and expectations, I wore a long skirt. Our friends' four-wheel drive vehicle lurched and bumped down the red dirt road. Jim, a wife and her children, three nationals and I held on. The nationals--a young couple expecting their first child and a dedicated young preacher came with us to minister to these desperate people. The further we went, the more obvious the effects of the drought became. Close to the valley, local farmers' crops were failing. A wheat field was hardly recognizable to an Oklahoma girl. The crop was scraggly and hardly knee high.

We turned on to the Mombasa highway and traveled a short distance to the camps. Glen steered his truck on to a scorched plain, past row after row of quonset hut-shaped tents. Each tent bore the blue letters "UNHCR". Habitat for Humanity had begun to build a few small stone huts for these displaced persons, but these incomplete dwellings were in the minority.

We drove up to a weathered acacia tree with bird nests hanging like sad, tattered purses from its branches. The ground was bare save for tiny blades of grass struggling on. Children and a few care worn adults gathered by the tree. Some benches made from slabs of wood four inches wide would serve as our pews.

Jim began to panic a little, for it looked as though his audience would be mainly children. How was he going to convert his message into a Sunday school lesson? No worries, for as soon and the children and youth began singing and playing a drum, the adults came to worship.

My friend and I sat by the cu-cus (shoo shoos), the grandmothers. A little boy sat next to me shivering in a thin gray wool blazer and sweat pants. Both his plastic sandals -- the blue and the pink--were broken. I put my arm about him, but his bony little shoulders shivered still in the chilly, dusty wind. One little girl bore her baby sister tied onto her back with a blanket. My friend said the older sister was probably six years, but I would have guessed four. Kind, pregnant Margaret took the baby and held her the whole service. Strictly segregated, the men sat on one side, the women on the opposite.

The service began and group by group they sang and praised God with abandon -- the little ones, the youth, the men, and the women. Finally Jim spoke with John the Kikuyu pastor interpreting. What could Jim say to the poorest of the poor, the most desperate of all?

He spoke of God shaking the kingdoms -- America and Kenya, and of the Kingdom that can never be shaken. He spoke of our place of refuge in Jesus. Hebrews 12:25-28. Heads nodded as Jim spoke. There is a Kingdom that no one can take away.

How can I explain this camp? Imagine that groups of southerners, disgruntled with our presidential election took out their displeasure on "northerners" in their community. Attacked these outlander neighbors and looted and burned their homes. Imagine that the survivors wound up on parched farmland near your home -- and that no one there is particularly glad to see them.

Pray for this land and these souls. Pray for rain. Physical, spiritual rain.