Having my parents here was definitely a large part of what we loved about the beginning of February!  Beyond the fun of having some of our US family meet our TZ family, seeing the farm progressing and the Christians here growing was wonderfully rewarding.  The Maynards came back from furlough and brought with them her sister and brother in law who also helped things progress at the farm (and it was great to meet them too).

February was a busy month for farming here in Kisongo.   If you have enough water, you can farm year round in this part of Tanzania but water is not easily available out in this area so we use drip irrigation on the raised beds and for the green house.  For the larger fields we have to wait for the rains to come.   The rains are slowly heading this way and Lord willing we will have enough but not too much to cause flooding.  Dad got the fields tilled and ready to be planted and Agustine got them planted.  We were also able to harvest the two rows of carrots only to discover that the crop had been much more than we had anticipated!  75kg total!  Each row is enough for a month of meals at the school.  The farm workers also got another two rows planted so Lord willing we will have another round of carrots ready when those run out.  Much of that will depend on what the rains do.   We also cleaned out the green house and harvested 8 kg of green peppers and 45 kg of tomatoes to make way for sunflowers to help cut the cost of feed for the chickens.

Joe, Dad, Justin and others got the young banana trees split from the adult ones and have gotten the larger trees cleaned up to help encourage production.   All of the other trees are growing well in the orchard and more ditches have been dug to try to keep flooding from re-occurring.  The papaya are still producing well along with the greens and other vegetables in the raised bed.

 

Phillip has been holding a bi-weekly Bible study with some of the younger Christian men along with his weekly Saturday and Sunday teen class.   He was also invited to go to Dar es Salam to help teach at a Leadership Seminar over the last weekend in February.  This went very well and it was encouraging for him to see the church working and growing in other areas of Tanzania.  He was also able to visit the radio show that is hosted in Dar and broadcasted across much of TZ.

I have continued my two weekly Bible studies with Christian women and am hoping to add another one soon.  We are studying through Hebrews in both of those studies and I hope they have been learning as much as I have been learning.  I have also continued to teach the women’s class on Sunday mornings at Kisongo.   We are going over different subjects that are important to help them do personal evangelism but also to help them KNOW what they believe.  Thanks to my mom being here we actually have pictures of me teaching!  🙂

The boys have had a big month with my parents here, helping at the farm, making friends at Shanga (a local business that employs disabled locals), doing school and nature studies on the local wildlife.

 

Micah has decided that his new love is photography so I’ve promised him that I would include some of his pictures he took recently.

 

 

With a full month of farming and evangelism this month has flown by!   God has blessed so many things here, though not always in the way we would hope.  His ways are higher than our ways and His ways are always better.

Prayers for good rains and a productive harvest are appreciated.  Thank you for following along on this adventure!  We pray that you are all well!

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”