BASKETS OF HOPE PREPARED-SHARED IN PERU
A bakers dozen team of 13 pictured above, (starting top left and going back to right front (Kelly Kurth, Justin Trent, Gary Adams, Dan Lutes Kara Krueger, Kara Jones, Anita De Young, Matt Crawford, Hans Vargas, Megan Lutes, Travis Sheets and Stephen De Young), from across the USA headed down to Peru for a busy week of service. From, plane, to plane, to bus, truck, motorcycle, ferry, canoe and several hikes this team conducted all types of visits from farms, schools, hospitals, Churches, markets and villages - they covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time. The team was making an exploratory visit for agriculture development to see what was happening and what the potential could be. In the video below you can see there is mechanization being used, a contractor hired out to harvest rice at multiple farm sites. Dan Lutes was made the observation, "At one point [while Travis and Lucio discussed agriculture] Lucio said 'we just don't have that information.' It reminded me that this would be a good place for farming God's way to be applied and reminded me of Hosea 4:6 - my people perish for lack of knowledge".
Highlights from the trip: It was great to see the Bibles provided by the Arizona Gideons were distributed to local Pastors. Another highlight for the team was the packing and delivering of over 200 Baskets Of Hope. Thanks to generous donations these bags were filled with medical, food stuff, Scripture Bracelets, and Bibles that were disturbed by local Church members along with a team member(s) to villagers who were in difficult circumstances and perhaps feeling unnoticed and not cared about. Thanks to everyone who helped make this trip possible, your kindness was felt by many people.
NEW GRINDER AND MIXER ARRIVES AT THE ARC
Nathan surely must be exhausted working on the details with the team to see the poultry feed opportunity continue to develop. There was a lot of excitement after waiting longer than expected for the arrival of the locally designed and produced grinder/mixer to arrive at the ARC. While the number of bags being produced this year is less than planned (the economy has taken a hit in Liberia) the in-reach in sharing the Gospel with local producers continues to grow. The economy has really hit the farmers in Liberia hard, their fuel prices, their input prices, and their cost of goods sold have all increased which has been a reason why HITHMI has had an INCREASE in the number of farmers served. Last year we served about 10 farmers. Currently on a regular basis we serve 20 and sometimes 22 farmers. Although the numbers of bags have decreased, we are grateful for this opportunity to mentor, walk alongside and work with these farmers. With these new farmers we have been able to go out to their farms and observe, listen, advise, fellowship, and pray with them, that has been very meaningful.
Another unexpected outcome of the poultry feed, the team at the ARC sees these hard-working farmers coming in to ask questions, purchase feed, and seek prayer, this has led to during the morning devotions the team is praying for these farmers, their families, their village churches, and their operations. Of course with the most spoken prayer -
for Liberia to grow her own food.
KONAH'S COMMUNICATION
We have begun to cross train all the workers at the ARC. It is helping others to learn the various works in the ARC. The process has started yet it is not perfect but it is leading each of the workers to participate in what I term as capacity building. This training may continue for two to three weeks. It is helping to build the workers up but the goal is to increase productivity. The journey towards transformations is just starting.
It was very exciting to see the new machine install and grinding corn. We are grateful to God for what He is doing through the ARC. May His name be exalted now and forever.
Praises:
It is just by God's grace that ARC achieved and developed areas of production that people are processing different kinds of product.
We remain grateful to God for such production center.
Prayer concern:
- for God to strengthen us as we making changes in the ARC
- God brings new batch of missionaries
- For God's protection as Liberia potentially enters into a rice shortage. If possible please consider making a donation to the mission to offset the cost of rice, which is served every day to the team and labors for lunch.
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