Visited the Ruaha diocese farm on the border. Someone donated 100 acres of very fertile soil next to the river Ruaha. The project is to provide food for pastors and people in all their parishes. Ruaha diocese centred at Iringa has a history of bad maize harvest with severe famine which follws a poor rainy season
They have a very complex system of channelled irrigation and can grow three crops per year. They have been advised to have half as banana and half cattle. The bananas feed the cows and their manure feeds the banana. The whole thing is aimed at a sustainable income production for the diocese.
Caught in the mud and two hours later we were met by the Morogoro driver and taken on there to spend the night.
Bishop Godfrey took us for dinner and we talked OpTan and SSP's.
Who said food was not good in Tanzania!
I was presented with an analysis which showed the original capital is still being recycled amoung 76 pastors with some of them having completed one cycle, taking a second. They do seem to have a number of slow re-payers. They also would like to extend the scheme to evangelists.
Problem - 500 of them.
Generally most people over here referr to the schemes as microfinance.
Brickhill is well respected in both Iringa and Morogoro as key players in these schemes.
We met a group of people over here from the UK who are putting on "Rooted in Jesus" which is a discipleship course translated into Swahili and dependent on memory verses.
As far as discipleship is concerned they have exactly the same problem as we do - could well be worth looking at this course (English version)
The next day we again met Bishop Godfrey and some of his co-workers. Please pray for Leah his wife who has diabetes and a kidney complication which is proving both difficult and expensive. She really needs to go to S. Africa or the UK for treatment.
 |
As we travelled through Mikuni national park we caught glimpses of Antelope, Elephant and Giraffe
No comments:
Post a Comment