Phil's ZMS Newsletter - April 2007

Covenant College Farm

The rains stopped about three weeks ago. We have had one reasonable shower since then, but basically it has come to an end for another 6-8 months. The main story I am able to relate is that we have harvested our first lima (50m x 50m) of ‘God’s Way of Farming’ (GWoF) maize, and we have witnessed His incredible blessing. We were hoping to show that we can increase the yield from 6-10 50kg bags to between 25-30 bags. The harvest from the first lima shown below has yielded just over 40 bags!

This reminds us truly of the parable of the talents and God has proven to be true to His word. If we are faithful with the talents He has given us then He will add even more. In this harvest He has added 25% extra and we are humbled by His blessing upon the crops.

In February we installed drip irrigation lines in our vegetable garden, and the results are now plain to see. With regular irrigation the vegetables are growing well and we are now beginning to provide quite a lot of the vegetables required by the College.

Covenant College

Joseph Pettitt has been visiting for the past three weeks and lecturing to the students.

On Friday and Saturday (13^th & 14^th) the Annual Trust meeting of Covenant College Zambia Trust was held and we praise God for the positive outlook. Cees Molenaar was offered the position of Principal which he accepted. So another answer to prayer has been realised and we look forward to working with him and his wife Miriam in all the various ministries of CC.

Christian Education Fund

Joseph also spent time on the Community Schools work supported by CEF. On Easter Monday we held a teachers conference to which 55 local teachers came. I was able to teach ‘God’s Way of Farming’ and then took them on a ‘farm walk’. Below they are standing next to our first lima which yielded the 40 bags. They were all impressed, but now we have to find ways of helping them implement this method. In the beginning it does need an input of seed and fertiliser worth 300,000 kw, approx £40. The returns make it more than viable, but for most people this amounts to more than three months wages. If we can help them in the first year, we will then have to try and teach them to hold back from the profit these input costs for the next year. Culturally this is a very difficult obstacle to overcome!

Street Boys Lusaka

I was back at the MacDonald’s for the last two weeks of March. The first Saturday I took 19 of the boys to Adventure City, a water theme park in Lusaka. What fun to watch them go up and down the steep water slides for four hours non-stop. I did do it a few times myself, but not for that long!

Talking of water, back at Old MacDonald’s Farm they were having different water problems, a shortage. After a pump test to the existing hole it was clear that it would not be sufficient for the future. So we commissioned a drilling company to drill a new hole and we struck a much better source less than 50 metres away. The new tower and tank have been erected and this new source is just about to be connected up to the main water supply.