Bwanabob

2/20/2008

Dear Friends,

I just wanted to drop you all a quick note to let everyone know that we are safe and many Kenyans want to get back to a normal life.  On the other hand  it seems that president Kibaki doesn’t want to make any concessions in the  peace talks.  Please pray that he would make some sort of movement that would accomodate the opposition leaders.  Myself and a few others fear that if he will not make substantive concessions then it will be anyones guess what will become of Kenyan.  Turkanans who I have talked with say that they will not be dominated by Kikuyus.  Other tribes in the rest of Kenya are continuing to move to their tribal homelands for fear of what the future holds for them.  If the talks break down, we’ll most likely look at flying out as quickly as possible.

Please pray for me over the next few days.  I’ll be taking a trip to several of our churches in order to move one of our young preachers from his home area to his sending church for a commissioning service and then on to the village where he plans to plant a new church.  It will be an encouraging time to see    another one of our Bible Institute graduates going to start a church, but it will be a long four days with a lot of hard bush driving.

Ericka and the boys are fine.  Vance is doing very well home schooling and Riley and Edward enjoy going to their local Pre-school.  They’ll be here in Lodwar while I’m out.

God bless you all and thank you for your prayers.

In Christ, Bob Clark

2/11/2008

Dear Friends,

We are still fine in Lodwar, life has been mostly normal here. The only noticable problems these days is the lack of supplies in the grocery store and the price of most everything has gone up. We still have plenty of food to eat and Ericka doesn’t have any trouble buying vegetables, but it seems there is a real problem getting stores and warehouses restocked and the problem goes all the way to Mombasa where the port has a huge backlog of uncleared containers.

The funds that some of you sent to help here in Kenya are making things happen. There were eight pastors who have been involved in our mission around Eldoret for some years. For some of these pastors this latest round of violence was the third or fourth time they had run for their lives. The problem has always been that they were from the Kikuyu tribe living in a majority Kalenjin area. All of these pastors can tell stories of how their Kalenjin church members hid them and helped them escape the violence, but again and again the local politicians and tribal leaders stired things up to chase them out. This was the last time these eight pastors wanted to flee for their lives. We are assisting these pastors with finding new places to live in the traditionally Kikuyu homeland. They have already gone to survey areas where they can move their families and start new churches. We feel sad to loose these pastors from the Eldoret area, but already know that there have been Kalenjin young men trained in the Bible Institute who should be able to step up and take over the churches in Eldoret. We also know that the Lord used the persecution of the church in Jerusalem to spread the Gospel all over the world. We believe that these pastors are some of the best at starting churches and will most likely want to start a Bible Institute in just a few years time. So again something that our adversary meant for evil, God has turned to His good. The funds that some of you sent has gone to feed and shelter these pastors along with many others. Funds are now being used to help them relocate to these new areas to live and plant new churches. These new churches in turn will be able to minister to the many thousands of other Kikuyu who will be moving into the areas as well. Thank you for your generosity and we’ll continue to keep you posted as to how the relocation process goes.

Again, we are fine here in Turkana. It is like in America when there were riots in L. A. or a Hurricane that hit New Orleans. Those areas were severly affected, but the rest of the country was fine. That’s about how we are here in Lodwar. There have been plenty of rumors but so far none have come about.

Please do pray for Kenya, most Kenyans are sick of the violence and would like to get back to what they knew as normal, but have already seen that isn’t possible for years to come. Most I have talked to now realize that if riots and violence continue things will be far worse than they now are. It seems the worst sticking point in negotiating peace is the thick headed leaders and politicians, so pray for them.

Turkana has been very dry lately, so please pray for rain. That would be a very nice change.

God bless you all and keep praying for us.

In Christ, Bob Clark