Both Anthony and I
have the normal routine activities like cooking, cleaning, doing dishes, and
washing laundry. But that's just housework. When I have free time, I read, sew (I've
donated some clothes I made to the local church), and work in my garden where I
experiment with planting and creating mulch, compost, and organic pesticides. Although I do this for fun, it is helpful for
my work because I am learning what kinds of techniques do well in this region.
But there are lots
of "real" work activities we do too.
Our communication with our supporters through our blog and prayer
letters is an important part of our work, so we make sure to take good photos
and write stories about what is happening in our lives.
We also spend time
doing research and studying various topics to prepare training and teaching
materials. For example, I work on
lessons about caring for God's creation (in general and through agriculture)
and continue to refine my baking training materials. Anthony has been writing sermons and trying
to improve his When Helping Hurts curriculum.
We meet with
people from different mission and development organizations and from churches
to discuss the work we are doing and to plan ways that we can work together. For example, I have been advising a young man from our
church in Soroti who has started an agricultural development organization. We hope this will help enhance connections between all of us people from different Christian organizations who work in the same place.
I am doing
research with one of the Ugandan agriculture field officers on edible
wild/local plants in Teso (this region of Uganda). We're trying to compile information about
what plants are traditionally eaten and how.
While our supervisor, Edward, is in the US and Canada, I've been helping out by reading reports and project proposals from the partner organizations and working with them to revise them and make sure they will be understandable to an outsider who might read them. I've also been making visits to their current projects to see how things are going.
While our supervisor, Edward, is in the US and Canada, I've been helping out by reading reports and project proposals from the partner organizations and working with them to revise them and make sure they will be understandable to an outsider who might read them. I've also been making visits to their current projects to see how things are going.
And currently, I
am planning with the main PAG church in Soroti to do a variety of trainings and
to set up a demonstration garden on some of the church's land. We want to do some comparison plots of
Farming God's Way and traditional farming as well as some demonstration kitchen
gardening (vegetable) techniques. And
then, the church wants to emphasize being good stewards of God's creation next
year, so the pastor asked me to put together some materials with Bible verses
and questions that small groups can discuss about caring for creation. So right now we are in the planning stages,
which means meetings and reading materials I have and writing plans.
So there you have
it. Some of the activities we do that
are individually less blog-worthy.
Thanks for giving us as good idea about your actvities.
ReplyDeleteBill
Great post!
ReplyDeleteHow neat to be able to work with a goat in your lap :)
ReplyDeleteBlessings!