Prayer and Praise:
This
past week has been an encouragement as we cross paths with other like-minded
and motivated people. We have met
several who have a vision for meeting local needs in conjunction with the
traditional missionaries’ translation, literacy and evangelical work.
One
person we met, I’ll call him Greg (because that’s his name), came to serve for
a short time with another mission and decided to return to do research into
Business As Mission and coffee roasting.
One of the projects on my back burner is to build a coffee huller so
that local growers can add value to their crop and transport more value per
load to the wholesale buyers. This could
overlap very well with the work Greg is researching. Greg happened to cross paths (if you believe
in coincidence), with the Papua New Guinean man with whom we started down this
Business As Mission road. He literally
crossed paths with him in the road in front of his house.
In the
same conversation I was invited to explore the micro-hydro project in a village
where the locals are already working on other community development
projects. In that village specialization
is developing on its own without outsiders saying, “You should be doing this…”
Local ownership is paramount for the sustainability of any project. And specialization is a giant step in the
process of developing a community. For
instance, one person mills timber but pays someone else to build his
house. Traditionally, everybody does
everything and there is little or no expertise because there is no time for it. The next day I was invited to another village
to assess their site.
A couple
of days ago we attended a talk given by a man, Bruce French, who started working in
agriculture in PNG over fifty years ago.
His life’s work has been how to address nutritional issues with local
plants rather than imports.
Here is his website and database (which is truly
astonishing): Food plants international
In PNG the
ground is so fertile you can poke a dry stick in the dirt and it will sprout
leaves. But malnutrition is still an
issue due to imported trash food and lost knowledge of local nutritional
plants.
We seem
to be on the crest of a wave of people from all over asking, “How
do I live as a Christian in this world in a practical way? What practical difference can I make and not
just say ‘stay warm and well-fed?’ What
knowledge or experience do I have that can be used as an expression of God’s
love in this world?”
While
working on these things I am still acting as Assistant Manager at the Auto Shop
in Ukarumpa.
Please pray for:
·
Appropriate
goal setting; keep our goals in line with the Lord and not just follow an idea.
·
Wisdom
when to strive forward on a plan and when to wait on the Lord’s direction.
·
Continued
prayer for Liz’s energy and pain level.
