Letter from Judy Parker's friends in Kijabe

Dear Team -- here is another email from Carolyn with more information.
Jerry – U. Fred and A. Drula arrived a day later than Carolyn and her daughter – see toward the bottom for Carolyn’s comments. I think these pieces of info pretty much makes our decision for us.
Judy

From: Paul Jaster [mailto:pjaster@kijabe.net] Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 1:23 AMTo: Judy ParkerSubject: Re: TRIP

Judy,

You may be better informed than we with more access to news.The situation in Kenya is definitely not looking like it is going to have any easy solution or go away very quickly. The losing party continues to try to have a rally (or swearing in of his presidency) in Nairobi though so far the police have managed to block that. There are hot spots scattered around the country. Just down in the valley from us are many displaced people who have had to flee their homes.

Follows a note from someone who was there yesterday.

Thankyou all for helping with blankets, clothes and money - 63,750/= hasbeen raised so far. The situation down there is pretty miserable. The smallAIC church building (the new big building is only half built) - a bit biggerthan the hospital's old chapel - is the focal point and only shelter for1,400 people, with trucks arriving as we left. Two drop toilets serve them.Most will sleep under the stars on the dirt. Fresh water is needed, as is some shelter outside and a daily serve of food. I will return with PastorSimon in the morning to dish out some of the money to the 165 or so peoplewho've indicated they can get a matatu to relatives elsewhere. So about300/= for each 165 is about 50,000/= so we'll have some left over for morefood, possibly for another 3-5 days. We've already given them some bags ofmaize and beans and cabbage for a few days.

RVA has decided to postpone the start of school until Jan 21. Below, from their recent letter. With the current uncertainty, we have wrestled back and forth about the best time to bring students back. Our local community is very stable and safe. Once students are here we feel confident it could be pretty much business as usual, at least on campus. The driving concern for us has been our concern for the safety for your family and child in transit. Urban centers have been those most strongly affected by violence. Those of you who are located nearby could easily select safe times for traveling. Those in rural areas could potentially select routes avoiding dangerous areas. Our biggest concern is the stability and predictability of the situation in Nairobi for collecting the significant number of our students who fly into JKA. While things have not progressed politically at the present time as many of us would have hoped, we still hope and pray that a breakthrough may be just around the corner. We wish we could predict when this might happen, but only God knows. We feel we need to set the date far enough ahead to give adequate time for things in Nairobi to settle. With rally dates being proposed and changing daily, we are not convinced that one more week will be adequate. Because of the challenges in booking your flights and making the necessary travel arrangements to get to international airports we do not want to select a date that has a significant probability of being delayed again. Therefore we have chosen a more conservative approach and set our new arrival day for term two for Jan. 19th (Saturday). This will allow our first day of instruction to be on the following Monday.Things are quiet here in Kijabe. The hospital has a shortage of supplies, some critical. But the census is down as few people are traveling. We had no problems flying in on Sat. Dec. 29. Nairobi had a few areas of violent activity but we just avoided those areas. The stores for the most part were closed and the streets quieter than I have EVER seen them. We were back briefly on Sunday to the W. side of Nairobi and the grocery store lines were very long. Wed. morning when mom and dad came the city looked more like business as usual though downtown was still mostly closed. I was thankful that they came in when they did as things were quiet after Odinga's attempted rally on Monday. Tues. and Wed. were calm, but with the rally planned for Thru. (though prevented to some extent) we were asked not to travel Thurs. or Friday as now they will try the rally again today.It really is hard to know what you and others should do about plans to travel here. We certainly hope and pray that things will settle down soon, as it is sure not in the countries best interest for this to continue.

We'll be praying that God will give you wisdom as to what to do. Leona must really be concerned. (Kijabe is definitely a safer place than Nairobi.) Mom & Dad did fine with the travel and definitely could see that God was with them as he provided for them along the way. They are still tired from the jet lag as I am too!

Love, Carolyn