Three years ago, everything changed. I was pregnant with my first child. The same day I found out I was having a baby girl, my father found out he had colon cancer, the same disease that killed his father. My dad was in the ICU while I was getting an ultrasound in the same hospital. Miraculously, God spared him. While my father’s health has remained up and down, he has devoted his life now to doing something for “the least of these.” Since then, he has gone to Naivasha, Kenya several times each year to work alongside Bishop Jeremiah, a former Maasai warrior turned pastor and church planter.Both my parents have helped raise awareness and financial support to Bishop Jeremiah as he and wife, Mama Beth, take care of orphans who have lost their relatives to AIDS. The money they have collected, partly through Brunswick Church in Troy and A Child’s Hope International in Maine, has been used to build an orphanage and develop a micro-loan project that gives the working poor the means to buy things like a bicycle or wheelbarrow. We consider those tools such simple things, but to Kenyans, it is a chance to own their own business and make their own money rather than be indebted to others. Last December, everything changed again when the presidential election in Kenya happened. The incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, was re-elected, despite national and international concern that the voting process was unfair. Immediately, supporters of the losing presidential candidate, Raila Odinga, set off roadblocks and burned cars and homes all over Kenya, especially in the ghettos of Kenya’s capitol, Nairobi, and other pockets of the country where tribalism was alive and pissed off. Many people were killed, without regard to women or children.Fast forward a few days later. Refugees all over Kenya were flocking here and there, heading back to their respective lands throughout Kenya considered home to their tribes. Caught up in the violence all over the country, however, some sought sanctuary in places like a church that was burned to the ground. Others were moved to a prison in Naivasha and promised safety. Bishop Jeremiah, his church and community have responded by feeding and taking care of thousands of refugees in their community, no matter which tribe. He has reported that a group of churches in Naivasha have organized a multi-ethnic, multi-tribal neighborhood watch to confront the youth gangs who have been behind much of the violence. Watching with much alarm, my father postponed his recent travels plans to Naivasha (he’s monitoring the situation, talking with Bishop Jeremiah daily and prayerfully considering hopping on the next plane to Kenya). He and his business partner, Joe McKee, were among concerned folks in the US who decided to launch a web site, www.kenyahelpus.org, to bring more attention and financial support to the needy in Naivasha. What can we, as Christians and people concerned about the “least of these” in Kenya, do from all these miles away? We can pray. And we can give money that will be used to buy food and blankets for the refugees (nearly 1000 have already lost their lives from the violence). Would you consider helping? You can go directly to the web site to make a donation online. Spread the word to your friends on facebook and myspace, too, and please help. We can’t just do nothing.