Tanzania presentation this Sunday

Portland, Oregon is where it is happening on Sunday the 3rd of May. At 5:30 PM, our Tanzania team will be showing a new video of our trip - and for the first time ever it will be in HD! Pretty exciting. Come join us at Vibrant Covenant Church (107 NE 45th Ave, Portland, OR 97213). Everyone is welcome. You can read more details on this Facebook invite.

A couple more things:

Leah Davis is our traveler/volunteer in Tanzania. She's been plugging in and helping with Home Based Care in Dodoma. You can follow her blog here.

Also, our friends at These Numbers Have Faces donated some soccer shoes several months ago, and in March we had the chance to pass these cleats to our sponsored kids. They loved them! I shared a bit with the director of TNHF on how the distribution went.

And a couple of things you can be praying for right now:

• Eric Chapman and his teammate Steve will be leaving in a week for Uganda and Sudan. Please pray for their preparation and travel. Edwin and his wife Cristine will also be joining them.
• We need more office space! Please pray that God will provide a spot for us to operate from over the next several years.
  

Lahash Spring Retreat Photos

This past weekend our lovely Portland team met up in Trout Lake, Washington for a retreat. I grew up in Washington, so it's always nice to be up there and get some fresh air. 

We had a big gathering of 17 of us during the course of the weekend. The main point of this retreat was to analyze the past couple years of work and plan for the upcoming years. It's so encouraging for our whole team (board, staff, and volunteers) to come together and pray, share vision, and dream. We are grateful to God for the team members who have been joining us recently.

From Spring 2009 Retreat

ENVIRONMENTAL

One of the Lahash Holistic Development Model is to Ensure that life in the environment is healthy, sustainable, and that the community is being good caretakers of the air, land, and water. Today we were able to put that in great action at the new Tenderfeet Land headed by Cheryl from Canada. The truck below is carrying a bunch of different species of trees that we purchased.

Gitonga a father of some of the children that Margaret is taking care off also joined the team in planting. On the picture below is a hole being dug for an umbrella tree which will give a very nice shed to the children during hot seasons. Some fruit trees were also planted.

Below is a picture of a live fence that we planted today. The whole compound will be surrounded by this.

Tenderfeet Visit!

Cheryl Feyf a nurse from Canada has been visiting our partners in Uganda and Sudan for the past four weeks. She just arrived the other day from Uganda to visit our partner in Kenya-Tenderfeet. She will be working mainly on planting fruit trees and few of other trees at the new Tenderfeet land in Riruta and also visiting some few families in Kibera. We were supposed to visit the families today but it was was not possible due to security in Kibera. The kiberans have uprooted the railway line so that no goods go to Uganda because they are claiming an island "MIGINGO" belongs to them at the same time Kenyans are claiming the same. Until the island will be pronounced for Kenya, things will remain the same. I am not sure whom the island belongs to. Please pray for this issue becouse this is how a small thing becoming more that what we expected therefore leading to loss of lives,there is no reason for this to happen!

Amazing Grace Windstorm destruction

Hi there friends.

Recently Amazing Grace Orphanage in Uganda had a severe rainstorm that blew through. It damaged several of the grass thatched huts and ripped the roof right off of one of their storerooms! Susan Tabia just sent the photo below to us. I added a picture of what the building used to look like.

Susan's trying to raise funds to repair all of the damage. It is going to cost $1,900 to repair the three most damaged buildings.

Email me if you'd like to help out with the reconstruction costs.

Tanzanian Kids Choir MP3

While our team was in Tanzania this past year we recorded the kids in our sponsorship program singing this song at the Dodoma Mennonite Church. Enjoy!

FENCING THE TENDERFEET LAND

The fencing of the new land acquired by the tenderfeet school has commenced and is done to secure the place from trespassing and for security purposes.
The constructors on the site of the venue are doing a remarkable work to see that the work goes on well. they are using hard wood poles and concrete to ensure that the fence is long lasting and secure enough.

The Title deed of the land will be out in the course of this week which will give legal mandate to the school to own the land without any further disturbances or interference from the the authorities.

INNOVATION IN KIBERA

Green revolution reaches Kibera with a big bang with thousands of people trying out the trick behind it and be with food around the clock and seasons of the year.
Having been said that its one of the biggest slums in Africa,this does not mean that you cant plant and eat or harvest your vegetables. Land scarcity is one of the characteristics of describing the Kibera slums but people have come up with clever innovation's to plant vegetables thus saving money.

This innovation is also employed by Tenderfeet to try save money to buy food which is very expensive.
I have been in the area for almost two and a half years now and have seen how people suffer with the atrocities of going without food days without a single drop of most special commodity on earth,Water.

This innovation will not only save the need of people looking for jobs to buy food and water but it will conserve the environment and the waste water will be used to irrigate the small farms of thousands of people in the slums.
A research done by the united nations found that the residential people who leave in the country live for less a doller a day and they can not buy or eat balanced diet or afford clean drinking water.
Translating to the green innovation will allow more people to have meals on their tables by using the vegetables they plant and also sell some of them to buy a balanced diet for their families.

Summer Travelers preparing

This spring and summer we have a variety of individuals and one small team of two traveling to Tanzania and Sudan. Leah Davis (pictured below) will be going to Tanzania for the summer (Join her Facebook group here - read her blog here). She will soon be joined by Emily Deichsel in June.

From Summer 09 Travelers!

In June we'll be sending Eric and Steve (pictured below) from New Mexico to Sudan. Eric's a veteran traveler on his third trip to Uganda and Sudan and is setting up an Advocate community in Roswell. Heather Young will also be traveling to minister in Southern Sudan.

From Summer 09 Travelers!

Please pray for these kind servants as they join in the good work that is going on in East Africa by our brothers and sisters.