Gene and Melba Morden (Turkana, Kenya) report that bandits have been raiding farms and murdering innocent people, including children, in surprise attacks along the Kerio River in Turkana over the past several weeks.

The bandits are using cell phones to coordinate their attacks, in which they steal livestock and shoot the farmers. Four people were killed by the bandits this past Friday alone in Kangirisae. Another was killed at his irrigated farm at Nachoto, only six km. south of Nakor, where the Mordens previously lived. This was the fourth attack in two weeks along the Kerio River.

“All the people east of the river had forded to the west, and now everyone on the west, including the kids in the primary school, is reported to have run for their lives,” writes Gene Morden. “Everyone is scared. They are away from the only source of water at the river. We pray they have found the courage to go to the hand pumps further north.”

The police have been slow to get involved, but have finally begun to engage in the situation, he added, and have reportedly caught at least one of the bandits. The government came through the area and disarmed the local populace a short time ago, so they had no guns with which to defend themselves.

“We are praying for a stop to the violence and for peace to return,” writes Gene, “but how do you go back to your farm where your husband, father, brother, friend was shot dead? The Turkana usually desert places where bad things have happened. Pray that people will soon return to their homes, gardens and clean water.”

More than 140 participants, including 68 campers and 72 caregivers, attended a camp for the mentally and physically challenged in Bakchesserye, Ukraine, recently, reports CMF missionary June Johnson, a nurse who served on the medical staff of the camp.

Only about 20 percent of the participants were Christians. The youngest camper was 3 years old and the oldest is in his 50s. Each day’s program began with a “wake up/work out” to words and music that made everyone wiggle and grin. After breakfast, they studied the life of Abraham in small groups, and attended morning and evening worship services with skits, a message, puppets and songs.

Several of June’s colleagues assisted at the camp. Dr.Ludmilla works with June at the Premorski Church clinic and Era is an associate from the Berdanski Church clinic. In addition, a  team from the Ukraine Christian Medical Association traveled five hours south to serve all week. They brought a surgeon/dentist with two assistants who performed some minor procedures and pulled teeth. Another team member fitted reading glasses and another gave massages.

The families of the campers were overwhelmed by the care given to their special needs relatives. When June asked the mother of a 20-year-old autistic man how the camp had met her expectations, the mother responded with tears and amazement in her voice: “The attention . . . these young healthy leaders give so much attention to the children.”

“The Great Gardener, master and owner of His orchard, desired to share Himself with them and He did that by harvesting the fruits of the Spirit from the program team, teenage helpers, local church members, medical staff and kitchen crew,” June writes. “Love gets you out of bed after only five hours of sleep to help a wheelchair-bound 20-year-old get ready for the day. Joy makes you sprint up the hill to help carry a wheelchair-bound 50-year-old man down to the beach. Peace brings a smile when three boys with Down’s syndrome clamor to get your attention at once. Patience understands that her anger is out of fear. Kindness offers to feed him so that his mom can eat her meal. Goodness prompts you to play peek-a-boo with an 18-year-old just because it makes her smile. Self-control calmly answers the same question for the 32^nd time.”

“As believers, we are called to bear spiritual fruit for God’s use,” she adds. “The fruit is our gift back to God for His glory. Once again, it was an honor to serve alongside all of these Ukrainian Christians because they were like a free, you-pick orchard, open 24/7 to everyone. Their fruit wasn’t plastic but real and ripe, sweet and for the taking.”

Four of the top national leaders within the Community Christian Churches (CCC) in Kenya have returned to their studies at Africa International University for a second year with strong grade reports and a continued zeal for their educations, reports CMF missionary Shawn Redford.

James Sinkua, (second from left in photo) a Maasai believer, now lives in Nairobi and is the key overseer for the CCC. Paul Lupempe, (center) a Maasai believer, lives near Kajiado on the eastern side of the Great Rift Valley. Samuel Loibormongi  (second from right) is a youth pastor from an area close to the Maasai Mara game reserve, and Wilson Kutinkala (far right) is a pastor near Narok.

A fifth student, Jackson Erus, (far left in photo) one of the leading church overseers in Turkana, also enrolled this year. This is a remarkable feat, says Shawn, considering that the Turkana area didn’t even have elementary schools until 12 years ago.

Africa International University (AIU) is one of only two Christian universities in Kenya to hold the country’s highest level of accreditation, given to AIU in March of this year. It was previously known as the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST), and offered graduate studies in ministry-related degrees. About four years ago it began offering undergraduate programs and changed its name to AIU, retaining NEGST as the graduate school.

Shawn holds a Ph.D. from Fuller Seminary and currently teaches missiology, specializing in Biblical Theology of Mission at AIU. “One of the very encouraging things about AIU-NEGST is that we have a large faculty of Ph.D. missiologists, and that allows us to stand on par with our Western counterparts such as Fuller, Asbury and Trinity,” he said. “This means that Africans such as these five leaders can train in Africa, while remaining engaged in ministry, and this has a tremendous benefit in terms of university trained Africans serving as missionaries within Africa.”

You might be hearing reports of a pipeline explosion in the slums of Nairobi. The explosion was in the Sinai slum, far from CMF’s work in Mathare. The explosion was in an industrial area south of Nairobi that is built over a fuel pipeline which was leaking. Some people were trying to draw fuel from the point of leakage and the explosion took place. Please keep all those affected in your prayers.

You can read more about it here.

Missions of Hope International (MoHI) is expanding its work into two slums that neighbor the Mathare Valley in Nairobi, Kenya, where Mary and Wallace Kamau first began to establish schools and community centers more than 10 years ago.

Most of MoHI’s work since has been centered in the Mathare Valley, although they currently have two centers in the Huruma slum and a center in the Baba Ndogo area. Now the MoHI team is in the process of opening a center at Grogan in the Bitathuru slum and two new centers, Nyayo and Grogan, in Korogocho.

“The needs in these communities are great, with desperate poverty that reminds me of the environment I encountered in Mathare more than ten years ago,” says MoHI Executive Director Mary Kamau.

Social workers began the recruiting process for new pupils in July. Using the principles of Community Health Evangelism (CHE) as their strategy, the staff enters the community and gets to know its leaders, and then gives them the opportunity to be trained in CHE lessons that empower them to identify both the needs and resources of their community.

There are currently 156 children who have signed up for the Gitathuru center, 120 for the Grogan center and 121 for the Nyayo center.

“Please pray for the staff and community in these areas,” said Mary Kamau. “It is through the Hope Partnership that we are able to expand and follow the call that we have heard.”

When a preschool class at Sherwood Oaks Christian Church, Bloomington, Ind., learned about the scarcity of accessible clean water in poor countries, they went to work to raise money to help out, report David and Marsha Van Wagenen, CMF missionaries in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The children participated in a project called “Work for Water” in their homes and neighborhoods and collected $40. The funds were sent to the CMF Urban Poor team in Addis Ababa and used to purchase eight strong, blue plastic water containers that were given to extremely poor families in the Kore slum of the city.

The Van Wagenens personally visited three families in the slum to deliver the containers and some groceries and share Scriptures and prayer. One container went to Abebech, an HIV+ wife and mother of three, who recently became a Christian.

A second container went to Alem, an HIV+ widow with a young daughter. Injured in a fall from scaffolding on a construction site where she was working, she now survives by selling vegetables by the side of the road. The third visit was to Tizita, a malnourished and ailing divorced mother who now lives alone.

“These people are so thankful for the gifts given by U.S. children,” said Marsha Van Wagenen. “The needs do seem overwhelming when we look at them from the human perspective, but how wonderful that there is another perspective when a person is in Christ!”

Ivory Coast has endured months of turmoil recently, but things quickly began to improve in May after the resolution of the political crisis. Now God has once again opened the doors for the spread of the Gospel into the Beoumi region in central Ivory Coast, reports CMF missionary Andy Gable.

The Association of Christian Churches in Ivory Coast, in partnership with CMF, have been making plans for some time to plant four new churches in Beoumi. As the political situation improved, the Gables’ nearby teammates, Brian and Tabitha Hauser (Burkina Faso), returned to the country and accompanied several church leaders to Beoumi to encourage and share God’s Word with the people.

One group of listeners in Beoumi was particularly overjoyed to receive the church leaders and their message. This group is part of an unusual religious sect in Africa whose members worship and pray to the one “Creator God” and reject the traditional amulets, charms and statues that permeate African culture. However, they had no concept of salvation and had never heard the good news of Jesus Christ.

“Upon hearing the story of Jesus and the salvation that God has given through Him,” writes Andy, “they cheered and praised God for revealing the complete truth to them! Our national church leaders said they had never experienced a group of people so hungry and thirsty for God’s Word. On the final day of teaching, 58 people (everyone from the local sect who was present that day) stood up to say they wanted to be baptized into Christ.”

Next week, four church leaders, accompanied by team member Christina Skelton, will travel back to Beoumi and lead the group to a nearby lake for a celebration of baptism. Nestor, a national pastor, will stay and teach the new Beoumi believers.

“It is so exciting to see God’s Spirit leading us to harvest fields that He has been preparing well in advance,” says Andy. “We wait in great anticipation to see where God leads us and how the Holy Spirit will move in this new region.”

Larry Kineman, CMF missionary in Worcester, England, had two opportunities recently to participate in BBC radio broadcast discussions about the recent rioting and looting in major cities in Great Britain.

Larry is a member of a group called Street Pastors, who go out into the streets of Worcester on weekend nights to engage in meaningful conversations with young “clubbers” who are out on the town. As a result of that connection and his experiences, he was asked to join a Sunday morning panel discussion on the local BBC Hereford and Worcester radio station on the topic: “Have our morals deteriorated in the UK and what can be done about this?”

“Our input was limited since there were three of us on the panel,” writes Larry, “but I shared the missional essence of Street Pastors, which is a response by the church to urban problems by going into communities, listening, caring, and dialoguing with people as a practical way of demonstrating the love of Jesus.”

Following that interview, Larry received another invitation to a different BBC radio talk show, and in that interview he was able to address the underlying problems that have led to the community unrest.

“A primary issue to address is how to strengthen the basic block of society, the family,” he said in the interview. “The newspapers have been reporting that youth are in court facing sentencing without parents present because they can’t be bothered to show up and support their children. Young mothers are afraid to confront their sons who show up with stolen goods in the home. Strengthening families will require a focused effort over a longer period of time.”

The devastating drought in Turkana and other areas of Kenya is also having a significant, life-threatening impact on the chronically poor urban populations in the Nairobi slums, due to a sharp rise in the price of basic staple foods.

Longtime CMF missionary Keith Ham brought to our attention a very informative article about the crisis in the Huffington Post. According to the author, Elizabeth Wright of Concern Worldwide, the rising food prices have produced a “hidden emergency” in the slums, where hunger is already an everyday reality. The urban poor are being squeezed to buy less and eat fewer meals, spiraling many into a real emergency situation. Yet the deepening crisis in the slums remains “largely invisible,” she writes.

If you’d like to help provide drought relief for Kenya, you can do so here.

Could you get by on less than $2 per day? Millions of people who live in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, must do so, but CMF’s exciting new small loan website offers donors the opportunity to make a “big dent” in the cycle of poverty.

CMF staffers and expert volunteers have been working for more than a year to launch BigDent.org, a comprehensive website that highlights the photo and story profiles of hundreds of small business owners in the Mathare slums of Nairobi. Donors can simply go to the website, read the stories and choose an entrepreneur, and then make an online donation of any amount directly through the safe, secure site. A handy search feature helps a donor narrow his choice by gender, business sector (retail, restaurant, tailoring, etc.) and neighborhood.

Donors’ gifts are given to their chosen entrepreneurs as microfinance loans, and recipients must participate in small accountability groups that include training in biblical business principles and moral integrity, as well as mentoring and support, until they have repaid their loans. Loan recipients are also required to establish a savings account even before they receive a loan. The microfinance program then functions like a bank for the business owners, creating an opportunity for most of them to use checking and savings accounts for the first time. The result is greater economic stability and security for the entrepreneur and his or her family. When a loan recipient repays his or her loan, the donor receives an email update. The donors’ original funds are then recycled back into the BigDent program to help another entrepreneur. Currently the repayment rate for BigDent microfinance loans is over 98%.

CMF missionaries and their partner, the Missions of Hope (MoHI) Business Development Services, manage the entire loan process on the ground in Nairobi, taking photos, writing the stories, administering the funds and organizing the accountability groups.

Big Dent’s overall goal is to facilitate transformation among the desperately poor through microfinance programs. The small loan given to a poor business owner helps her to grow her small businesses and change her life, breaking the cycle of poverty for herself and her family for generations to come.

Sound interesting? There’s lots more information about BigDent on the website, including FAQs, a fuller explanation about the loan process, and a quick summary of the concept of microfinance. If you are interested in making a big difference with a donation in a direct and personal way, take a look at BigDent.org today.