Like The Wind

"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

John 3:8

A friend told us we remind her of this verse.  That, of course, just made us laugh and appreciate our family and friends who graciously accommodate us as our travels unfold.  Sometimes we don't know until within an hour where we'll be eating a meal or until the day of where we'll be staying the night.  I'm sure these are survival skills as we'll be needing flexibility and freedom and relationships that can stand a little uncertainty.

 

We spent this past week in Kentucky with lots of details to attend to such as a passport appointment for the kids, a dentist appointment, a vaccination appointment, and a driver's license renewal.

The big project was this solar dehydrator Philip built at his Aunt Beth's house, inspired by the class at ECHO.  Beth is going to experiment with it this summer and we may be dreaming up other appropriate technology we want to try out on this side of the ocean.

 

Dev & Doug FUN-raiser

"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."

1 Corinthians 10:31

 

Our friends Blair and Rheanel excel at many things, one of which happens to be throwing a party!  This weekend they brought in their favorite band from Louisville, reserved the back area of Whaler's Catch downtown, and ordered the perfect summer weather.  Somewhere in the midst of a fancy dinner and good music, we landed $3,500 closer to Africa. 

 

Whoever said fundraising was going to be hard, laborious work clearly hadn't met our friends.  Thanks for the fun, Blair and Rheanel, and many thanks to each of your generous friends.

Missions Sunday

Four continents were represented in Missions Sunday at a church in San Antonio last week.  Our work is the Africa arm of the missions efforts.  These sweet kids are getting their fair share of sitting through back to back church services....and doing it cheerfully!  That is a blessing in and of itself.

 In each service, we had 5 minutes to share our story with the congregation.  Another blessing.  The best blessing of all was this.......

Coming out of second service to find our friend Troy already surrounded by a crowd at our booth as he is enthusiastically sharing our vision.  It's so cool to see we are one small part in a BIG movement of many hearts for West Africa's little ones.

Our Big God

Throughout Scripture, the main character is God.  We are encouraged to see the same story unfolding as we are in the middle of visiting with seven churches in six weeks.  Those who have committed to join our Africa support team have not done so because of our eloquent words or fancy speeches.  No,  we are hearing stories of God's work in their lives prior to our lives intersecting with theirs.  They aren't supporting us because of US, they are supporting us because of the Lord God Almighty.  Meeting with churches is a joy when we know it's not up to us to persuade people to join us.  If our supporters joined us because we impressed them, then we might lose that support as soon as we did something unimpressive.  On the other hand, the awesome people we have met are excited with us about what THE LORD is doing in their lives and churches, and in ours.  Now, that is the basis of a PARTNERSHIP!

I'm (Sara) also coming to an understanding that the people we meet with are not {scary} strangers but brothers and sisters we had not yet met.  To date, there has been one presentation in which I did not get nervous at all.  This is quite an improvement!  As we watch others (especially Saturn Road's teenagers!) take the burden for Burkina's orphans upon themselves, we are reminded how small we are and how BIG our great God is and how much this is all about Him.

Happy birthday, Hayden!

What do you expect at a two year old's birthday party?  Little Hayden had all the good stuff:  decorations, food, bouncy house, friends, cupcakes.

 Did you notice what was missing? 

PRESENTS!

Hayden's parents want him to learn from a young age that the Lord blesses him so that he can give to others. So, INSTEAD OF BRINGING GIFTS, party guests were asked to bring

 a contribution for our mission fund.

In his honor, hundreds of dollars were given to bless many children on the other side of the world.  That's quite a legacy for a two year old!  Thanks bunches, Hayden!

Tropical Agriculture Development class

"ECHO exists for one major reason, to help those working internationally with the poor be more effective, especially in the area of agriculture."

 

For one week the Lord gave me a free pass to learn and enjoy ECHO farm, a living classroom where the goal is to honor God by fighting hunger through agriculture.  A fellow student described our class as "the Gospel interwoven in the techniques and practices of agriculture."

Are you wondering how anything "tropical" could possibly be applicable to the hot, dry, desert land of West Africa?  So was I!  One of the first lessons I learned last week was that "Tropical Agriculture" is a reference to the areas between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.  Now we're talking!  One of the Tropical Agriculture Development class (TAD) teachers even spent his childhood as a missionary kid in Mali before another 23 years working in our part of West Africa.  I couldn't have been more pleased!

For five days we studied topics such as "Challenges Facing the Small Scale Farmer," "Land Care and Soil Restoration," "Harvesting and Using Underutilized Tropical Crops," and "Basic Botany for Gardening."  After a classroom presentation, we would walk across the street to the ECHO farm and SEE or ATTEMPT the techniques about which we had just learned.  We built a hot compost pile, classified weed roots,  cooked lunch over a rocket stove, and examined worm compost after dark.  The ECHO farm maintains gardens focusing on areas such as tropical rain forest, monsoon, semi-arid, highlands, lowlands, and urban settings.  All week in the classes and in the gardens I thought, "I can't believe I get to be here!" 

An unexpected blessing of the class was the camaraderie of brothers and sisters who love God and pursuing missions. Among the students in my class, seven of us will be serving full-time in Africa by next year, Lord willing. Our class ranged in age from fresh out of high school to nearing retirement with both short-term and long-term missions callings. Each individual's path to ECHO was unique, but it was clear the same God is living in all of us. Some students held degrees in agriculture, and others (like me) were simply gardeners headed to the mission field. Amazingly, we each walked away with just what we needed learn because this is such a quality program.  (Check out the course description here.)

I skipped Animal Production Systems on Thursday to have extra time in the ECHO library, which is FILLED with resources for agriculture and missions.  Philip's aunt Beth attended the course with me, so she was taking notes in class while I skimmed books such as Redemptive Agriculture, Kids Ending Hunger, For Hunger-Proof Cities, African Indigenous Vegetables in Urban Agriculture.  Aunt Beth is devoting her garden this year to experimenting with the techniques we learned at ECHO! 

Picking a tropical salad for Wednesday's lunch was one of my favorite activities. Our salad included moringa leaves, prickly pear cactus, cranberry hibiscus, and a dozen other tropical leaves.

One of the reoccurring themes of the TAD class was encouragement to become learners: students of agriculture, students of culture, students of God.  I felt a tension later in the week that Philip and I are not agricultural missionaries, we are not church planting missionaries, we are not medical missionaries.  We have a base-line of training in each of these areas and are passionate about them, but I was doubting God's choice of sending us who are not so good at any one area.  When the teacher from West Africa said to the class on Friday, "Development workers who arrive as 'experts' usually have very little to offer," God met me in my doubts.  It was as if He said, "I knew you would feel this way.  Be assured, you're still on the right track."  It is less about what we are going to do in West Africa and more about who we will be.  Thank you ECHO for an awesome week of training and opening up new dreams for our orphans!

----------------------------------------------------------------

 Banana trees, avocado trees, papaya trees, a cinnamon tree.....

ECHO is such a fun place!

Semi-arid plot:

Class composting project:

 Discovered I love Cranberry Hibiscus:

Housemates, minus one:

"The great aim of education is not knowledge but action."

-Herbert Spencer

Planting Seeds of Faith

This weekend we worshipped with Joey and Andrea, who planted the seeds of faith in Sara as her youth ministers back in high school.  Her first mission trips were with them to Rio Bravo, Mexico, over a decade ago.   Sharing with their current group of teens yesterday, we spoke about how fun it is to get out of the way and let Jesus be Jesus.   We laughed, we cried, we conquered technology.  Unbeknownst to us, Joey and Andrea had prepped their youth for our visit so that at the end of our talk the entire class walked up and just started handing us cash.  Have you ever been mobbed by a middle school class who loves to give?  One Sunday morning is all it takes to see the Lord has big Kindgom plans for His teens at Saturn Road, and Joey and Andrea are raising up another generation for Christ.

"Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it."

1 Corinthians 12:27