Pray for Kenya

I have been reading with increasing horror and helplessness the news of the election in Kenya and its aftermath.

I have never been to Kenya, but I’ve learned much about the country these past six years as I’ve served as one of New York Yearly Meeting’s representatives to the Friends United Meeting board. (Quakers are more concentrated in Kenya than anywhere else in the world.) I also met many Kenyan woman at the United Society of Friends Women International triennial in North Carolina three years ago. I’m not a very good singer, but somehow, miraculously, my voice inexplicably soared out of me when I sang hymns with them in Swahili, and that amazing memory is with me as I read the stories coming in with names of places that I recognize.

Here’s one of the stories.

I have friends from New England Yearly Meeting, James and Eden Grace and their young sons, Jesse and Isaiah, who are living in Kisumu, Kenya, working at FUM’s African Ministries office there. Kisumu is under curfew now, according to the New York Times, in an attempt to control the rioting there. Ben and Jody Richmond, whose hospitality I enjoyed many times at their home in Indiana, are serving an interim assignment at Friends Theological College in Tiriki, Kenya.

Here is part of the request for prayer that my colleague John Muhanji, head of FUM’s African Ministries Office, made on an FUM mailing list.

The country Kenya is now in chaos now and many people are dying and properties destroyed as a reaction to the announcement of the results. We are appealing for prayers that calmness may come to our country.
Peace and unity may prevail in our country. We are all safe wherever we are. Pray for Kenya!! Pray for Kenya!!!

God bless

John Muhanji