What Agriculture Could Be

We are really looking forward to getting away to the United States to the wedding of Jenny’s brother. We are anxious to see family since it has almost been a year and a half. We are also ready for a break and to get away and clear our heads. After a few months we start to get emotionally tired and need to get a break to get away from it all and think. We have found a bible study to go to every few weeks that is composed of some Brazilians, an African American and her husband from Barbados, an Argentinean Couple, a family from Sweden, a single lady from Holland and another from from Portugal. It is quite a mix and we have not even met everyone yet. We have worship services in both English and Portuguese but mostly in Portuguese because several of the Brazilians and the Argentineans cannot speak English well. We have really enjoyed getting to know so many people from different parts of the world. And yet we all seem to be able to understand each other because we are all missionaries living in another culture. We especially were excited to talk with the Argentineans because they are from our part of the world and I always loved Latino people and the Spanish language. It felt like I was talking to my neighbors from back in our side of the hemisphere. Many of these people have been missionaries a long time so they have helped us greatly to understand things and to encourage us in our work.

"Vetiver" Grass Lines in Pastor Fernando's Field

I had a good week last week. I went traveling with a Zimbabwean missionary to visit his agriculture projects. He introduced me to some new plants and seed varieties that I think will really work well here. I brought back a malaria fighting tree and have already had much interest from people in the church so I am propagating new trees so that people at the church can start to use it. They say it acts as a prophylaxis and also medication for malaria. I hope that it can spread more in the communities because people are set back so often with malaria throughout the year and it kills a number of people especially those who are older. I also brought some erosion controlling grass back and we started planting them in the Pastor’s field in lines to control erosion. I brought another farmer along to learn how to do it and he was really excited about it and took to use in his field. I also talked to the pastor about a tree that he already had in his yard. You can make it into a living fence, you can feed animals with it because it has a high protein count, it can be put in food for kids and adults to stop malnutrition and makes excellent firewood. He had been given it but never new it had these uses. He said he always wanted to raise animals but was not able to. This could provide him with the means to make a fence without cost, provide food and other benefits. I also want to introduce some of these seeds next year for them to try because they produce greater quantities and quicker and can shorten the hungry season by a couple of months. They have real potential to sell as well as there is good market for them. I want to introduce new varieties of peanuts, cowpeas, sorghum and maybe a couple of fruit trees like papayas that produce the first year and mangos that are larger and less stringy than the ones that you normally see being sold on the street. I hope to let them experiment with a number of seeds to see if they like them and if they have benefit. If so they can reproduce them from seed for the future.

Sunday School is also going well and people are really interested in learning, especially the youth. They are learning bible verses and I told them I will give them a bible when they learn 50 verses. In the United States this would not work because bibles do not have that worth. But here, with new Christians wanting to learn and any literature in scarce supply, getting a bible is actually a real incentive. Who knew!