Today's pic is from one of our favorite partners in Petauke, Zambia. They have handed out the last of their stores from last year's harvest and will clean out their storage space and get ready for some fresh maize to be delivered in the next month. Speaking of the 2026 harvest...
I sent a wire late in the week for the 2nd batch of harvest funding. We have made the decision to add 3 churches in Solwezi and will be wrapping up our harvest acquisition there over the coming weeks. We have divided our two largest geographical areas each in half for the coming year: Mambwe will now be split into Mambwe and Mfuwe; and Chipata will be split into Chipata Central and Chipata Kasanengwa. We have heard those terms before but are still learning how to properly label the areas where we are active. We are adding two churches in Petauke, both communities where one of our grower trainers participates. We see that as kind of a reward to those communities for the good work both Patrick and Fred have been doing over the last year.
In Lusaka, Chikankata and Livingstone we still have several churches that don't have a place to store maize. Those areas, and several outlying communities will have many leaders receiving funds from us monthly and then going to the ag dealer to purchase bags to share with the community.
As a spreadsheet lover, one of my favorite parts of this season is using Google Sheets to capture harvest acquisition data and allowing members of our Zambian team to learn how to access and edit these files. The hope is that the process will be both more accurate AND better controlled than it has ever been. It seems like the team is excited about the opportunity.
