Winding down...

I have a little over 48hrs left in Nairobi. It feels pretty strange; part of me wants to stick around, part of me is looking forward to returning.

It has been an extremely busy past couple of days. This week is Church Army Africa's biggest week of the year, and I just so happened to decide to leave square in the middle of it!

Thursday is the Church Army Captain commissioning, which is then followed by a dinner with the Bishop of Kenya (Patron of Church Army Africa) as the special guest.

Everybody has been working for the past couple of months to make sure that everything goes smoothly, and I have been attempting to complete all of my work as well before fleeing the country.

The Mission in the City documentary has again been pushed back, but it is my goal to complete it after this post, and perhaps put it up tomorrow.

I have been trying to get in all of my "good-byes," there have been so many people I have met in so many different areas over the course of my time here that it was been quite a feat to do so.

The interns slept over Dave and Lucy's this past Saturday, and they threw me an early Birthday party since I leave before it takes place. They made a cake and everyone gave a speech. It was a lot of fun.

The next day I went to church and said good bye to all of my friends there, and then I went for my last Big Chicken Inn experience (heartbreaking...).

Afterwards we went to Uhuru Park to just hang out for a while. Uhuru park is Nairobi's version of Central Park, and on the opposite side of the public hang-out there was a huge gathering to support the "No" campaign. Those against the new constitution in Kenya.

The group mainly consists of religious figures and a few rogue MPs.

While we were just hanging out we heard a loud explosion and we looked around for fireworks but there were none we could see. Nairobi, being a city of many random and inexplicable loud sounds nobody thought much of it.

About 20min later I returned home to Church Army and turned on the TV to see that the No campaign had been bombed.

In Kenya they count anyone injured as a "casualty", so I was completely frozen when I saw scrolling along the bottom of the screen: "Uhuru Park explosion - 80 casualties." I later learned that 3 people were killed and around 75 injured.

Festus one of the interns was at the rally, within 15 feet of where the explosion had occurred. He left 10 minutes before it did. Stunned by his luck, and influenced by all of the morning discussions we'd been having, that night he gave his life to Christ. He shared the whole story with us this morning, and the group was excited and happy for him.

There's very little information as to what exactly took place at this point, but the religious leaders are blaming government officials, and after the violence following the previous election, things are already appearing to spiral out of control as the referendum vote approaches on Aug. 4th.

Keep Kenya in your prayers.