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OK, how about something a little less personal, and a little more organizational. Does that work for you?
S2S is at it's core about relief work. Ā God has put us in a position to move surplus wealth in His Kingdom mostly from America to this point, and send it to Zambia where He has some beautiful families living in deficit in that same Kingdom of God...God's people living out His will on this earth. Ā Like that doctrine? If that doesn't make sense to you, let's get together some time and I'll show you how clear this missional doctrine is in the New Testament.
I'm getting my facts and numbers reigned in just a bit this trip, and this is what I believe we are dealing with.Ā Ā In the 125 churches we are working with, there are an average of 150-200 members and 25-40% of those members are eating 3-7 meals a week.Ā Ā That simply isn't enough caloric intake for them to live effectively, certainly not enough to live a life of flourishing that we should expect would be available when serving the King of Kings. So for the past 5 years S2S - because of great partners like you - has been giving additional sustenance (raising that average to 2 meals per day), through our partner churches to a group of humans now up to somewhere around 20-25,000 people per month. That's my best estimates for the next 10 months at least...who knows what God will do then. (that seemed like a terrible sentence, IĀ apologize, but IĀ am very tired). :)
But because there are so many who are anxious to do development work, in addition to our food relief; we have partnered with Zambia Iowa Agriculture Partnership (ZIAP) a beautiful sister organization born out of The Ridge Church in Ankeny, Iowa...to began a pretty significant farming and farm education process. Ā If everything works out the way we are hoping in this '25-'26 growing season, somewhere near 10,000 farmers will be trained in new farming methods that will hopefully triple their maize yields...maybe more. In addition, we are hoping that some 250+ of our actual vulnerable saints in the relief bucket will be initiated into the maize farming world as well.
But the beautiful thing that God has led this trip into is an upcoming partnership with the Youngs family (Dr. Curtis Youngs, Animal Science expert from Iowa State University, and his son Matthew Youngs) to find ways to provide protein into the diets of our vulnerable saints. Our team spent the entire day today touring farms and a couple of churches in the Chongwe area to consider what is available as current resource, and what a community farming effort focusing on these rural, neighborhood churches might look like. And believe me, IĀ couldn't be more excited after the first day in our new animal farming adventure. Ā IĀ believe God is going to do something amazing in this area. Ā After all, we know that "...everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced...but solid meat is for the mature..." (Hebrews 5:13,14). Although we are careful not to try to make plans that could run ahead of the vision that God gives us on a daily basis, IĀ can see a new maturity coming to S2S that allows us to introduce protein options through the local Zambian churches.
That's what I've got for today. Ā I'm sorry if there were too many numbers or facts in this one, but my mind is exploding with potential. It is fun to dream of what God can do if even just a handful of His people on both sides of the ocean will commit to living out the food-for-faith trade that we believe was so incredibly important to the Apostle Paul and the 1st century church.
I'm going to try to get some sleep. My last few days have been: 5 hours of sleep, 26 hours awake, 4 hours of sleep, 15 hours awake...let's see how much sleep I'm permitted to enjoy tonight...here we go!
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Rog
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