We
may Friday a day of focus on handing out our “backpack Bibles” in the Sibanga
marketplace. This was a challenge since
many people have gotten accustomed to us handing them out and frequently come
to us asking for one of their own. We
like to be strategic about the giving out of this precious seed since we figure
some are merely taking them to sell for shillings. So we walked toward the back of the market
place and began entering various businesses.
Our purpose was two-fold: to
explain to business owners about the vision of RUN and to leave them with
copies of the Bible. We handed out a
total of 28 Bibles and had some great conversations with pastors, tailors, agro
vets, clinic nurses, and many more. God was
so good to us during our conversations!
PROGRESS! Small steps, but it certainly is worth
celebrating! We spent a couple of hours
at the land yesterday talking with the workers making bricks. It seems word was going ‘round that our
workers were not being paid although our Facilities Manager told us they had
been. As it turns out, the foreman had
been paid but he took the money and left without paying the workers. We have made things right with several locals
who helped with the brickmaking and our Facilities Manager will pursue the
foreman to have the funds returned to us.
Tedious as it may become, we have had to resort to giving receipts for
every single shilling handed out and requiring the person receiving the cash to
sign the receipt.
Then
we learned that water for brick making was still a problem and that the neighbor
had offered to allow us use of her well.
Unfortunately, a length of rope was required to get the water from the
well and no one told us of the need. An
$8 piece of rope was all that was standing between us and making bricks! We also learned the djembe our workers were
using was borrowed from someone else and each time the owner came looking for
it, brick making was stopped again. $5
later, RUN was the proud owner of its own djembe and work was under way once
more! So after two hours, one thing we
learned was that $13 was all that had been standing in the way of production
for two weeks!
Late
Saturday evening we received a very distraught call from one of our board members,
Grace, telling us her brother had died.
Night travel here is HIGHLY discouraged but we felt strongly that we
needed to go to Grace’s home and show our support so with flashlights in hand
we walked the short distance and entered to find many others already gathered
with her. We stayed for awhile and just
hugged her and prayed with her. Then the
gathering of friends took up a collection to help Grace with transportation
fees to go to Cheringani where the body was being taken for funeral arrangements. Deaths seem so common here and place such a
burden on family members. Funerals
require paying to have the body released from the mortuary, transportation fees
to have the body returned home, and providing an enormous amount of food for
the family and friends who come to mourn the person’s passing.
Prayer
Points:
1. Please
for our friend and board member, Grace.
Although she knew her brother was ill, his passing has still hit her
very hard.
2. Pray
that communication improves so that work on the land can move forward. The solution to our brickmaking problem was
two simple tools but for some reason, it was not getting communicated to the
right people.
3. Again
with the “small” things! One item needed
to move forward with our NGO certification is obtaining copies of resumes from
our board members but it is proving a difficult thing to accomplish. Pray against even the small things the enemy
is using to stop our forward momentum.
No comments:
Post a Comment