(Cover photo: Ted’s chicks have arrived. Chickens are highly valued in Tanzania for meat and eggs. Ted will be offering training in chicken farming this coming dry season.)
It has been a fun month for Ted and Kim as they have been receiving visitors for agricultural training. Due to Covid-19 they have had to move from larger groups to smaller ones as a precaution, but this has allowed them to build new relationships as well as rekindle old ones.
Ted said, “Pastor Methodi Mwendapole and his wife Mama Hekima from the Grace church came for training before leaving Tanzania as missionaries to Burundi. As Methodi said, ‘These days when you apply for residency to work in another African country such as Burundi, Immigration wants to know what training you have that could assist the people of that country to make a better living while utilizing resources locally available.’ After completing our beekeeping course we were able to equip him with a certificate of completion in African beekeeping. We also taught him a hands-on course in grafting avocados and other fruit trees.” (Left: Methodi and Mama Hekima in the pineapple grove.)
Their friends Pastor Paskali Mwendapole and his wife Skola also visited for a weekend and he was mostly interested in learning how to cut bottles and make glasses. Tanzanians use mostly plastic or tin cups so Ted helped him make a cutting jig for cutting glass
Ted says, “Today we are receiving a group of 70 students from Ilemba secondary school who are coming with their teachers to learn about budding and grafting of fruit trees and how to make farming practices symbiotic. For example, waste from our pigs feeds our fish and afterwards waste from our fish fertilizes our fruit trees and pineapples. Dropped fruit and irregular fruit is then fed to our pigs, and the process repeats itself again. Thanks for your kind prayers as we seek to encourage farmers through mobilizing our discipleship team to visit farmers in their gardens and orchards. This kind of one-on-one visit gives us the amazing ability to build lasting and solid relationships with local people. Over 90 percent of local people are farmers! What a great avenue to reach and impact local people in a practical way!” (Pictured is the plateau tree nursery.)
