Celebrations!

Everyone came to celebrate and give thanks for the food for new beginnings, the harvest for future promise and the blessings of people everywhere!





When God blesses you, it is so you can be a blessing to others!




Such beautiful sounds...such intensity... such aliveness!




The new grainbank is almost completed! Fill it up with the harvest!




Zikomo, zikomo, zikomo!

With an End...A New Beginning

We have less than a month to go with so much excitement yet to come as we come to completion of this phase of the project. This week we’ll have the last distribution in Ulongwe and in early May we’ll be in Chipoka for the last distribution there. There will be celebration as this is the time when the harvest of the maize crops will also be happening. The good and plentiful rains have been there at the right times. It’s amazing how quickly things change. No more rains, cool nights (great for sleeping) and beautiful, warm, sunny, clear days. Winter is coming…  And then we must leave… the on-going work, the hope and the anticipation of other harvest, of food security, all in the care of the communities themselves and our partners who work in these communities.

This week at church we heard a pastor from an organization called Visionledd tell of the work that a few paid staff but many, many volunteers were doing in so many different countries working with widows and orphans. He so challenged us all to be redeemer kinsmen for the vulnerable and the marginalized. Remember the story of Boaz and Ruth? He was the redeemer kinsman. We just celebrated Easter. Jesus is our redeemer kinsman. Whose redeemer kinsman am I? Isn’t that the challenge of living in the Kingdom of God? I am so taken by the challenges that continue to be laid in front of me in what I see and what I hear. Maybe because the challenges are more evident here but they are surely there in North America! I do not always want to see the need, or possibly it is easier to blame the situation on those involved. Again I am always given lots of things to reflect on but more importantly, challenges to act on.

Easter for Living!

On this day between Good Friday and Easter, I find the words below from Jim Wallis "A Call to Conversion", an exclamation mark of why we do the things we do, because so often, I forget and then become discouraged and frustrated. So we are reminded, remember and live!



What is the good news? When all that sin had done, or could ever do, was laid on Jesus, it did not overcome him. Death could not swallow him. The grave was denied its victory. The witness of history and of his followers is that “he is risen.” He is alive. He has triumphed over all. He is the victor over every sin, hate, fear, violence, and death. Nothing is stronger than his victory—nothing past, nothing present, and nothing future.



On Easter morning, and each day of our lives, we celebrate the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which triumphs over every other reality. In the face of the world and its systems, we proclaim the resurrection, saying, “We have seen the Lord.” We see him in the lives of our brothers and sisters. We discover him in the faces of the poor, in the faces of all the victims, and in the faces of our children. We see him in the lives of Christians who have suffered and died because they believed. And we see the Lord in the bread and the wine. He shows us, as he did his disciples, the evidence of his suffering. He invites us to reach out, take, eat, and drink; he wants us to remember him, to see him, and to know his victory.
His way is life. The world’s way is death. We can now stand before the world’s false realities and securities, free to deny them, denounce them, and remove ourselves from them. We stand before the reality of the resurrection and confess with the first disciples that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.



We stand before the world as fools. We are foolish enough to believe that Jesus’ way is stronger and truer than the way of the world. We rest secure in the knowledge that he has, and will, overcome. We are called to be fools for Christ, a people saved by his cross and converted, finally, by his resurrection.

May God convert us to such foolishness.

Some photos, some people!

We'll share some photos this time, of some various aspects of our work and our joy.


Jane, one of the CDF's with her little boy, the same one I held in 2006 as a 6 month-old. Time flies.



Hans is just astounded at the little lady who is carrying a 50 kg bag of cement which will be used for the restoration of a grain bank.



Mr. C is showing a maize cob from his farm. It is drying and some of his maize may be ready, fully dried in a few weeks. This garden was planted in late November. The Food for Work gardens will take into June to be ready for harvest.