Living on the edge

"If you aren't living on the edge, you're taking up too much room."  This has been a only-half-joking family motto of ours.  This week Luke and I are thankful for the opportunity to head out to an edge together.  We're accompanying a team from Kijabe (two surgical doctors and us) to a refugee camp on a border of this country.  Back to the edge.  Where the largest collection of refugees in the world (about half a million people) live.  People who fled war and drought to eke out an existence.  People who have now been there for about twenty years, an entire generation who knows only this way of life.  Through a series of providences doctors from Kijabe have been invited to provide teaching and medical care.  Ever since I read of the massive influx of population into these camps in the last year I have wanted to go, a humanitarian disaster on our doorstep so to speak.  The camps closed to NGO's for about six months because of the danger of kidnapping and attack in 2011-2012.  But now the UN is allowing workers to return.  Even up to the last few hours today we wondered if we would be canceled, however.  This is a culture where violence is an accepted expression of will, where displeasure is expressed through a grenade.  Thankfully the situation is considered stable at the moment in spite of recent isolated events affecting Kenyans mostly, who became targets when the country's military invaded their neighbor.

Jesus moved towards hostile people, and healed and loved and cared in spite of risk. 

This is a rare opportunity for us to follow in those footsteps.  Please pray for the Kingdom to make subtle but real inroads into a desperate place, and for us to be used in that process.  Please pray for meaningful service, stamina, and a safe return Wednesday evening.  And pray for precious time together for Luke and me, and for God to continue to make his future calling clear.