Hunger and Hope on Mt Elgon

I got to Kitale on Wednesday evening. The next morning I joined a short-term mission team from Mtn View Community Church, Clovis CA on an expedition to the Mt. Elgon Training Center at Kopsiro on Mt. Elgon. It was great to be back and to see the once-devestated hillsides once again planted with crops and new homes scattered across the land. But the area is far from recovered from the trauma of the land dispute violence of 2007-2008 - there are a lot of traumatized indivduals, and hunger is a present reality for many. We were told that four individuals of that community had starved to death the preceding week.

The good news is that the church is alive and well in Kopsiro. At a leadership training conference the team put on there were over 100 pastors in attendance. Since they all had to walk to the center for it, this implies that there are nearly 100 churches active within a 10 kilometer radius of Kopsiro.

On Friday we did a distribution of sheep for widows, cows for pastors and maize (corn) for all. The team had paid for 2,000 lbs of maize, but even that wasn't enough to give something to everyone. At times it seemed tense as people waited for food, but in the end there was an orderly distribution. Pray for this area - for God to sustain these Sabaot people until they can harvest the crop that has just recently sprouted.