Besides purchasing the harvest of many of the newly trained growers throughout our distribution system, we also try to give one more blessing to our Zambia S2S team in country. They participated in the ZIAP training a year ago and, just like the other trainees, they put what they learned into practice on their own family plots. Several of those were around Lusaka, so we actually had to add churches in Lusaka this year just so we could find a place for all the corn some of our team grew. The cover pic this week is from one of our Lusaka churches' July feeding program.
So, I have been quiet the last 3 weeks as Rog chronicled his travel to and from Zambia. If you followed along, you know our group of 4 Americans, 6 Zambia staff, and many skilled and unskilled Zambian men and women worked together on the animal farm project. Here are some of the accomplishments of that group:
- A 3.5-acre parcel near one of our churches was fenced in to provide for some grazing land at some point.
- The first structure built was a chicken coop designed to hold 400 layers; it is currently housing 100 - which should be providing some eggs any day now!
- Another structure built was a goat enclosure designed to hold 8 goats; it is currently housing 3 - one of which is a pregnant female.
- A caretaker was chosen from the region nearby, and he and his family will move into the new dwelling built on the campus.
- To let passersby know what is in front of them, a large sign was erected along the road.
There are still many questions around this project that will be answered over the coming months, but even as I drove Rog home from the airport this week, he seemed really excited about a second animal demonstration farm project in the future. There will be travel and funding options available once again, if that is something that interests you.
So, what's next?
Well, the harvest is behind us, and the trip is behind us. Both of those efforts create ongoing decisions and costs, so we will set about making both the feeding and the demonstration farm successful, working through our team and partners in Zambia. We are always excited to have new monthly donors join the 30+ of us that are a part of that amazing group!! Or if you are a part of a small group or church community that you think would be interested in a personal visit from Rog and/or me or both of us, we are excited to tell the story whenever possible.
The last clean water project we completed was actually for the animal demonstration farm. We put that in before the team arrived, so it would be available immediately for the arriving animals. If you want to underwrite another clean water project, those are around $2,000 each to complete. The one at the animal farm was our 35th project. With well over 100 communities in our feeding program, you can imagine we get regular requests for more help with clean water.
We are awaiting word from ZIAP as to what their training effort will be this fall and how we can support it. Stay tuned for that.
After that, we have been raising funds annually to provide seed and fertilizer to as many struggling growers as possible. Hopefully we will be able to continue that program closer to our winter - which marks the beginning of the growing season in Zambia. Also, hopefully the struggling growers who were trained and provided for last year are struggling less because the combination of the new skills they learned and a very cooperative rainy season gave them a terrific harvest.
Thanks for the many of you that followed along with the trip the last three weeks! And thanks for those that have been following us for almost six years now. There is more work to be done - more LOVE to be SHARED. What an amazing opportunity to put into practice the LOVE that is flowing through each of us.
