Farming God's Way

This past week we had the priviledge of hosting a group from an organisation called “Farming God’s Way.” They led seminars for our workers, community farmers and also some folks from another mission not far from here. As previously mentioned, farmers here burn everything on a yearly basis- destroying valuable nutrients in the soil. To try and combat this, the “Farming God’s Way” method has two basic principles. 1. Do not burn. (simple enough!) 2. Do not plow. (simple... what??? Hey wait a minute... don’t plow???!!!) The basic idea is that by plowing we are disturbing the soil’s God-given ability to retain water and nutrients. Instead, they have developed a method of planting and replanting in the same holes, year after year, taking advantage of the previous year’s roots and stalks as “mulch” for this year. Sound complicated?? It’s not really, it makes a lot of sense when you see them do it, and in theory, the method is much easier to maintain. We have planted a small sample section to see how the method produces. It remains to be seen just how much more yield this method will bring about versus the traditional plowing and fertilizing method. These last two weeks have been a whirlwind of getting situated and adjusted. I have a feeling it will take us awhile longer before we truly feel at home, but we have a good start! We spent several days last week visiting orphan homes and gathering information to make a central database for the details. Because so many people have come to help with the orphan program over the years, information has been compiled, lost, found, re-organised, given to someone else, re- filed, un-filed, copied... and on it goes. The Amigo Orphan Program will be one of the areas I will be focused on, and so with all the changing of hands and the loss of info with Lynn’s laptop going AWOL, we decided to just start fresh and get it organised once and for all, so everyone will have the same info. Although it sounds simple- it’s a lot of work to track down all these kids, get the info we need, and input it into the various spreadsheets and profiles we have created to track our progress. It has been encouraging to meet the widows and orphans, hear their stories and see what the mission has been able to help them with. Every home we visit has new faces to fall in love with! Here are just a few of the ones we have met so far! Rick has jumped full steam into getting some work accomplished on Dwight and Lynn’s new place- pulling the rest of the guys along behind him! It’s a slow process but we are excited to see some progress, as door frames and windows are being installed, and Kim begins putting on the first base coat of paint. Please continue to pray for us as we get settled. We appreciate your continued prayers for health and safety, as well as for our finances and especially for our ministry here. We have uploaded our newest slideshow/video for September- a link will be available soon on our resource page! God Bless, Rick and Heather