BUT we made it!  😉  This report will be a little shorter than normal as we were sick for two weeks on and off.  While this slowed us down as a family, the work here and the plants on the farm kept right on moving.  For this we are extremely thankful and praise God for that daily.  The concern and love we have been shown both here and from the states has been extremely encouraging to us.   Several of the Christians that we worship with came over to pray with us and for us and we have been contacted by many others checking on us.   God has truly blessed us with a wonderful Christian family around the world.   Thankfully we are healed up and back at it now!

 

Summer weather has finally come and with it plenty of heat and little rain.  January has been a time of maintaining what was done at the end of December and prepping to till and plant the large fields.   The carrots, peppers and tomatoes are doing SO well!   The carrots and this variety of tomatoes are new crops for the farm.  The carrots are growing long and straight, indicating that the soil is soft (not easy to do here) and has the right nutrients (also not easy to accomplish)!  I was able to teach the workers on the farm how to plant the carrots and they should be planting two more rows next week to start a rotation of carrots.  Lord willing, this will provide the school with a continual supply.  Carrots are in MANY of the recipes that are used here so this should help cut costs for the school.   The workers have also planted some of the onion seeds that we harvested a few months ago and they are growing well!   This means that we no longer have to buy onion seeds and so cutting some costs from the farm.  Farming will either teach you reliance on God and patience or it will drive you insane.   Some days it is a toss up as to which you have decided upon.  🙂

The orchard is doing very well!  Several papayas have been harvested for the school and there is already a large bunch of bananas on one of the trees.   The farm workers have gotten the trees cleaned up and there are many suckers (young banana trees) coming up beside the original ones.   This is a great sign for future crops!   I also showed the farm workers how to trim the moringa trees to increase leaf production.  The trees always look terrible just after trimming, but they are now putting on many new leaves and look great.  It’s a good analogy to God working in our lives….it seems like there is a Bible verse about that… Moringa trees are completely edible but the farm will only harvest the leaves and the seeds for the school to add to meals.  If you have time, you should check out this incredible plant!  It has some amazing stats for nutritional value!  There are many websites talking about it and you may want to use it yourself!  We use it daily.

Phillip has continued with his teen class on Saturday and Sunday morning.  He is hoping to turn it over to some of the men who have been helping him so that he can help them maintain it and take ownership of this essential work.   Phillip was also able to start a new Bible study with several of the young adult men this month.  They meet two to three times per week with the topic “The Life of Christ”.   This has been encouraging to Phillip and the men seem to be enjoying it and learning from it.  Phillip has also been put on a rotation with the other local preachers to go to different congregations and preach on different topics.  Phillip’s topic is “Importance of Worship” and he has been pared with E. Kashumba.   Their first congregation to visit is Kioga and we will be going there this coming Sunday.  Prayers for wisdom and receptive hearts for this chain of seminars.

Phillip was also able to go see and help with the raised bed gardening classes that Kashumba does all over Tanzania.   This one was at a local school and the students worked hard getting the beds finished before it poured down rain.   The goal is not only to help the school provide vegetables for the students, but to also to teach the students a better and more effective way of farming.

I have been maintaining the Bible studies that I have been doing for some time now.  We are going over the book of Hebrews in both of them.  I am fairly certain that I am growing as much as the ladies I am studying with.   Ladies class at Kisongo is going extremely well.  At first I had them choose topics to cover each week.   This was very helpful to me because I had to go back and restudy many of these topics but also because I was able to learn more about the women here.   Right now we are going over verses to help them do Bible studies with their neighbors.

 

The boys are enjoying having my parents here and are continuing in school very well.   Their Swahili is getting better and they will probably know more than Phillip or I before this is over!   Both boys have discovered a love for coloring the “adult type coloring books” and we were blessed with many friends from the states sending us gifts that are greatly appreciated (coloring books included)!

We thank each of you for your love, support and encouragement.   Without God this would be impossible and without each of you this would be difficult.  God bless each of you!

In Him,
Phillip, Bekah, Micah and Nathan
For those who have asked, support can be sent in two ways:

Through Paypal at: pbduncan20@gmail.com
Or:
Checks can be made out to and Mailed to:
Bear Valley Bible Institute of Denver
2707 S. Lamar Street
Denver, Colorado 80227 (Memo line: “Duncan TZ mission”)