Today's pic is a scene that has played out or is about to play out in around 109 churches across Zambia. This one came from our friend, brother and partner Shasha Khwabe, in rural Chipata Kasanengwa District at Exodus Baptist Church.
I want to use this one of 109 to tell what this community has experienced over the recent growing season. First of all, this church community claims 398 members. That puts them right in the middle of the pack in terms of the churches we work with. We have several larger than that and many smaller than that. Shasha and 30 other members of his community were treated to grower training from one of my very favorite Zambians - Lackson Lungu, who leads his own church community nearby. Brother Lackson had spent the previous growing season under the tutelage of Tracy (our American partner at ZIAP) and used the skills he learned to train nearly 500 growers representing 15 communities at two demo plots ZIAP provided. We provided some seed and fertilizer to just four of those 30 growers - hopefully the four that needed the help the most in order to put what they had just learned into practice. They got the rain they needed, and they put the newly learned growing skills into practice throughout the growing season. Now comes the harvest, and with the help of our harvest donors, we have purchased what they grew and wanted to sell us and a little more from some other growers in the community in order to give them the inventory shown in the pic to use up over the next twelve months for the most vulnerable members of their church.
If you are really curious, you can go to our website under the "Who We Are" menu, scroll down to the map, and play with it until you find that church just west of Chipata (near Malawi). Feel free to reach out if you need help with that effort. :)
Our team is working hard to get the harvest process finished up, even as they begin to ramp up for Roger's trip coming next month. I will write more about that over the coming weeks, but you could certainly begin to remember that effort in your prayers a little early. They are attempting to do something our organization has never done in our almost six years of work: BUILD SOMETHING! Stay tuned...
This verse has been on my mind so much lately. I'm going to share it from The MESSAGE version today. It is a little bit more "in your face" and I apologize in advance...
I John 3:16-17
This is how we've come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God's love? It disappears. And you made it disappear.
I hadn't considered the word "shoulder" in that text before. Pretty significant contrast between being "Shoulder 2 Shoulder" with our brothers and sisters (as promoted in 2 Corinthians 8) and turning a "cold shoulder". I can't think of a happy medium or compromise that would allow us to even be "lukewarm" in these analogies. We either align with our brothers by sharing from our surplus into their deficit or we turn a cold shoulder. One "proves" the love of God within us and the other causes it to disappear. Harsh?
