17years ago I became minister of a small church in the Oxfordshire countryside in the UK. It was only a tiny church, 6 members then, and is still a small church of only 15 members. The average age is 60yrs. We are all working class, most live on small state pensions.

One of the things the church was doing when I arrived was supporting a church in Kenya which is led by Daniel Muiruri. The previous minister of our church had contact with the church in Kenya, I don’t know how it came about, but he insisted that our church paid for him to make visits to Kenya. As you can appreciate, in a tiny church it almost made them bankrupt. But rather than not support Daniel at all they decided to continue with a small amount of financial support and endless prayer support.

Now you may have heard about this church in Kenya on the TV news, it was recently burnt to the ground with people in it in the present rioting. Daniel it’s minister, is married with 3 school age children, and a married daughter. In his recent e mail sent me from an Internet café he says:
Things have been very bad, our people have been killed houses and properties burned down and now many families have no where to spend a night, even us as a family we are all camping at a PCEA Church compound .(Presbyterian Church of East Africa.) Hundreds of people where we are kept and protected by security forces and as we have lost our house and church to the fire. (the church is an independent church affiliated to no particular denomination) We are all sleeping outside in cold night but despite all this we thank God that we are alive, although our 12 sheep’s and 3 goats were stolen. We humbly and kindly request for your prayers for us and the lots of families. We are greatly suffering we have lost everything. I mean everything our houses were torched down with everything in it. But we thank God he has saved our lives.

We are only to have one meal in a day to help us keep going; people can not go to work can not travel because of security purposes. Things have totally changed in our place and it is not like Kenya we knew of, it is like another different country but we keep on holding to faith and praying for peace to prevail we seriously need your prayers please, also many members of our church in Eldoret have been affected by the clashes please pray for this families for God’s provision protection encouragements comforts and hope many now are hopeless as they lost everything we pray for God’s intervention and that things return to normal so that we can continue with life again.

All they have is the clothes they stand up in. They sleep in the open and a have one bowl of something, I don’t know what it is, but it looks like mud with white bits in, a day to eat. Even when the troubles end these people will have to rebuild their lives, their homes, their church. All their hard work destroyed just because they belong to the wrong tribe. How will they do this? And how on earth can a mother who saw her 3yr old thrown into the flames of a burning church ever rebuild her life? I weep every time I think of this poor woman watching her child burn and there is nothing she can do to save him. My heart goes out to her. I am sure she is not the only person who suffered such an atrocity. They all badly need our prayers. And they also need money to rebuild their lives and homes.

Another part of my ministry is in prisons in the UK and this led me to write to a couple of men on death row in Alabama. I have been writing to Charles and Earl for about 12yrs now. It has taught me a lot about the American judicial and prison system. In this country most of my prison work is among sex offenders which can be very hard, especially if their offence was against a child. I really prefer not to know what their offence is.
Thank you for reading this
Rev Issy