January 10, 2012

Greetings and Happy New Year to you all

It has been a couple of weeks since I have last posted.  I hope everyone has gotten over the holidays and are enjoying your return to whatever is the normal routine for you.  Isn't the weather just great?  Chicago in the 50's in January who would of guessed?  Today was simply wonderful but I believe it will be short lived and old man winter will come to bite soon enough.

I haven't heard too much from Kenya on the orchards since my last post.  The first orchard planted in July passed the five month mark a few weeks ago.  The first fruits will start to trickle in within the next month or so.  After they are six to ninth months old they will start to produce more and more fruit for what we expect to be about 5 years.  The second and third years should be the best and then the yield starts to dwindle after that.  Within the next week or so I will have Bishop Hezron go out and get some pictures of the orchards.  Progress reports too.

I am presently trying to come up with my travel dates for my next visit to Kenya.  I would assume that since we planted the twenty six other orchards about 10 weeks after the first orchard in July it will be about 10 weeks after the first orchard starts harvesting fruit before the others start to harvest.  This looks to be sometime in early to mid April.  This still seems like a long time from now.  My goal is to be in Kenya a couple of weeks before the first harvesting and for a few weeks as the first harvests take place.

On this next trip I have to get into Uganda to visit the orphans that Bishop Moses of Freedom Ministries has told me about.  My heart aches that these children have to live like they do.  If we can be successful in getting widow's to be self sufficient groups then can we do it with orphans?  Out of all the money that is donated every year it is only a drop in the bucket for what is truly needed to reach all the children that are in need.  We hope to provide capital for an orphanage to venture into something that will produce an income for support and sustainability for the children.



Take care and God bless you all

Dave