contact info update

We’ve updated our contact page.  Sometimes packages sent to us to the CMF-Kenya address (PO Box 59322 / 00200 City Square / Nairobi, KENYA) have … disappeared after arriving in Kenya.  So we’ve gotten our own PO Box that we can check ourselves.  So if anyone wants to send us some snail mail, use this new address:

Joshua & Ruth Barron
PO Box 1197
00502  Karen
Nairobi, KENYA
East Africa

August update

Maasai Women's MinistryA new house, curriculum development, training sunday school teachers for the Maasai churches, a special visitor from America …

click here to view a PDF of our latest newsletter.

We’ve  posted some new pictures of the Maasai Women’s Ministry on our photo album page.

Have you ever wondered just where we live?  Take a bird’s eye view of the places we’ve lived in Kenya, together with our major ministry sites.

 

East Africa Drought & Famine

“The worst drought in East Africa in 60 years …”

Back in 1979, Jan Voshaar observed that due to the forced redistribution of land in the early 1900s “in some dry areas there is no longer question of any grazing system.  If the weather is good, there is grazing, if not, there is drought and cattle die” (Tracing God’s Walking Stick in Maa, pp 47-48).  The pressures of increasing populations and deforestation over the past 32 years have only made this worse.  When the rains come, the land can be green.  When the rains fail … well, just watch the news.

In Kenya, the northwest and the northeast have been particularly hard hit.  The northeast is home to the Rendille people, among whom some of our congregations are hoping to plant new churches.  (A Rendille man has come to Christ in one of the CCC congregations in Nairobi.  He loves his people and wants to share Jesus with them).

Of course northwest Kenya is mostly Turkana Land, where there are many CCC churches and a faithful CMF presence.

Our CMF teammates note the devastating effects of the famine in Turkana

Drought affecting the Nairobi slums

CMF’s Famine Relief efforts in Turkana

Give to help CMF’s famine relief efforts in Turkana

For other possible updates on how the drought is affecting CMF’s work, go to cmfi.org and enter “famine” in the search bar.

A one-horse town

"a one shop town"This is my favorite road sign in Kenya (so far).  Duka Moja is a small village in the Rift Valley half way between nowhere and lost.  (Okay, it’s actually on the REALLY, REALLY NICE new highway between Maai Mahui and Narok.)  But I think it’s funny because “duka moja” is Swahili for “one shop”.  So whenever I drive past this sign (fairly often the past year), I think of the segment on the old Hee Haw show:  “Goosepimple Junction, we salute you!”  And I laugh.

(Goosepimple Junction is a real place — “village” and “hamlet” are too large — in Southwest Virginia not far from where I grew up.)