Steve's Travels - Zambia and East Africa

In August, I Steve, took off for Zambia and spent 9 days there with the ZambiaWorks team. They are working hard and doing a great job of helping small farmers to raise vegetables using a low cost model to generate income for their families. The area had experienced its first hard frost in years and some crops and trees were damaged. One of the resulting factors as that the green vegetable crops needed to have the damaged leaves stripped off so they would shoot new ones. As I was watching the farmers strip off the leaves, I noticed that several were still in pretty good shape, so I said, “Oh, you could eat those. “ Wiggan just looked at me and smiled saying, “They have so much of that kind of food at home, they are not even interested in these leaves.” Wow, what a far cry from where these families were just one year ago when there was not enough to eat. It is amazing to see what a little assistance and motivation can do.



In early September I took off again on a 3-week trip to East Africa. The first stop was Burundi where I worked with the micro-finance board for two days. I then traveled to the hills of Makamba in the south and looked at the work of one of our partners and some cassava projects. There is a serious problem with mosaic disease and this program is propagating mosaic resistant varieties and selling the cuttings. We are getting ready to hire an agriculture manager who we hope will oversee the program long into the future. The goal is to build an agriculture institution to provide technical and marketing support to the rural farmer as well as provide much needed agri-credit to these communities.

After the week, I went to Kigali, Rwanda and met with one of the WR regional technical people whose focus is village savings and loan associations (VSLA). WR has been doing savings programs for a couple of years and after some time, most of the participants start asking, “What’s next?” For me, the obvious answer is agriculture or some kind of micro-business. I have created an approach that moves people through the phases of savings, saving plus agriculture, then if they qualify, agriculture plus loans. I was also able to visit the essential oil business that had been started by WR several years ago. The grow and distill oil from geranium, lemon grass and eucalyptus.

The second week found me in Goma, eastern DRC on Lake Kivu (see left side of map). I spent several days working with the MFI and looking at their ag-credit program. You might think that this is becoming a bit routine, which it is as I get to know the process and the people. However, it really is a challenge to make loans of any kind to poor people, but when you add agriculture to the mix, it gets even more challenging.


At the start of the third week, we traveled back to Burundi for a conference hosted by the Canadian Food Grains Bank. They have provided us with a 3-year agriculture grant in Congo and wanted to train us on the proposal writing and reporting side of the equation.

Mid week, I hopped on a plane to Nairobi to meet with our WR office there and see how we might go about starting a sustainable agriculture program in Kenya. Some early impressions about the capital, is that there is construction and cars everywhere. Their challenge is the street sizes have not kept up with the demand. Imagine a two lane road, backed up as far as you can see, and no stoplights or stop signs to direct the traffic. Let gridlock prevail, and it does! Fortunately the only time I had to go through the main part of town with bad traffic, was on the way back to the airport. While stuck at a traffic circle, we saw a herd of cows moving through the intersection!

It was a good interaction with the Kenya team. We just scratched the surface with two days of meetings and a little travel outside the city to see the countryside. There are some huge, 10+ acre greenhouse businesses there that fly their fresh cut flowers straight into Europe. We also saw some Maasai herds of goats and cattle out on the dry grass ranges and experienced one of the first rains of the season. The countryside will look very different next time I see it for sure.

Joy in Chaimite

A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of accompanying a team from Ohio to the villages of Chaimite and Koka-Misava. It is always a treat to leave the city and get to the "real" Mozambique. Sometimes people say that Maputo is like another country. In the village, people are very traditional and many speak their native language and do not speak Portuguese. It was a good week and one of the highlights was being invited to the dedication of a new water station. Here's the background:

From The Chapel, Akron, Ohio Website:
“Our Christ-centered, holistic ministry gained momentum in November 2006. A team of eight taught the Bible to many Bible-illiterate church leaders and served in very practical ways such as health education. Chapel representatives met with village leaders and learned of their biggest health need—water. The village wells yield only brackish water. And, in just a year, 32 women and children were killed by crocodiles in the nearby river while collecting the only potable water available. Added to the problem, severe waterborne diseases in the river threaten the population. Upon return, the team led The Chapel’s congregation to give $25,000 for a pump, a two-mile pipeline, and storage tanks so clean water would no longer be a concern.

“With great delight, as of Summer, 2010, The Chapel has provided four clean water stations in Chaimite (serving 1000 families), with all of the water pumped from the Limpopo River (no more crocodiles or waterborne diseases!!). Three water stations exist in Koka-Misava (serving 1500 families), with one station drawing water from a solar-powered well and the other two from another well–all water from deep, clean aquifers).

“The two villages have a history of some Christianity mixed with a large dose of animism and witch doctors. Either no understanding or a warped concept of Jesus and the Gospel is the norm in southern Mozambique. However, Chapel teams, in cooperation with on-the-ground World Relief personnel and others committed to Christ and sound doctrine, have been able to teach the Gospel widely to adults, youth and children. There is a growing embrace of Christ and his Word. Physical water has saved many lives, but our prayer is that the living water of Christ Jesus will quench the thirst of those who are spiritually parched. ”

Each water station is staffed by a person who collects a small fee for each container of water. The community water committee handles the funds and uses them to maintain the water stations and pay the staffers. In Chaimite the fund grew and they decided to build another water station themselves. They dug 3,600 feet of trench to lay the pipe and paid $10,500 for the materials and labor to do this.

The team from The Chapel that was visiting was invited to the dedication, October 4, 2011. The village was very grateful to The Chapel for providing the seed money for the first water stations and to World Relief for organizing the construction of the stations. This has led to a sustainable water project for this village of 9,000 people. They are taking responsibility to meet the needs in their community with their own funds. It is a good example of giving a hand-up so people can help themselves instead of making people continually dependent on hand-outs.



During the dedication they sang a song that speaks of the water of life that satisfies and quenches thirst. It is living water and we will never be thirsty again. A skit was presented of women collecting water at the river and being attacked by a crocodile. They are so grateful that now they can get clean water close to home and without this danger. The community leader expressed deep appreciation to The Chapel and World Relief for bringing this resource to Chaimite and for helping the community to begin reproducing water stations. They spoke of The Chapel and WR being the “grandparents” seeing this new “child” born. No celebration would be complete without singing, dancing and presenting capulanas and scarves. It was a very joyful day in the village of Chaimite.

You can view more pictures of Chaimite and Koka Misava here: http://www.youtube.com/user/mjsm1th?blend=22&ob=5#p/u/0/HwXyDzGDpg0 This was a trip two years ago but some of the same people returned this time.

Training Church Leaders

We have some catching up to do on this blog!

Today I'm thinking of World Relief and the work we help to organize from the head office. I work with Church Development. One of the main things we have done is to help four coordinators in different areas to hold trainings and seminars for pastors.

Pastor Madeira, who has worked in the center of the country with World Relief reported that “lack of unity among pastors brought unhealthy competition among themselves, disunity, lack of trust and enmity to the extent of some of them going after witchdoctors in order to prosper more than the other. With the unity we brought among them, there is now the spirit of cooperation, repentance from the wrong done in the past and a passion to serve more and more strongly for the Kingdom.” Jose Madeira is the one on the left of the picture, next to Anastase Nzabilinda who is the director of Church Dev. and other leaders from Sofala Province.



Willem Nel, director of Volta a Biblia, a Bible training center said that it takes a long time, much prayer and discipleship before people are willing to leave ancestor worship and animism. And then he commented that we are all tempted with idolatry, whether it is ancestor worship, or trusting witchdoctors in Africa, or materialism and security in the West.

I learned early in my time in Mozambique that many pastors are chosen because they can read, or they have natural leadership abilities, not necessarily because they are Christians. The country of Mozambique does not have a strong background of Christianity. During the Socialist era Christianity was suppressed and it has only been 20 years since then.

The training these coordinators have been doing is very basic "What we believe" teaching so that the pastors will receive the truth and then pass it along to their congregations. The sad news we received recently is that we can no longer give them even the small stipend we were giving because there is no budget money for this in this new fiscal year. We are also needing to stop support to two young men who have worked with children's clubs and with trainers of children.

It really grieves me to see this part of our ministry end. Who knows, these pastors may continue going out and training even without funds for transportation but I know it will be difficult for them to continue.

If you would like to contribute to WR, one way to do so is through the catalog you can find here: https://worldrelief.org/page.aspx?pid=723&nccsm=15 If you'd like to give to leadership training go to "Stand for the Vulnerable" and then "Train a Church Leader." Mention Mozambique if you'd like.

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Hab. 2:14