October 15, 2012 Kakamega

Greetings

Yesterday we traveled to Mumias to attend church services at Jerusalem church.  We were unable to give enough advanced notice of our arrival to get the other local Mumias churches to join us a Jerusalem.  I might have said this before but here in Kenya a church service can be an hour.  It can be two hours or it can be all day.  This is Kenya and we were late so the service had already started.  I think upon our arrival they decided to start over.  On our way to Mumias Bishop Hezron asked Aaron if he wanted to preach the sermon.  Aaron took the challenge and did an awesome job with only about an hour or so preparation.  After the services we went to the General Secretaries home for a meal and discussion on the micro finance society.

Today we were off to Busia to meet with Bishop Moses at the border to assist him with opening an account with the bank.  Without going into a huge amount of details but to open a church account in a Ugandan bank is going to take them possibly weeks to accomplish.  Listening to Peter explain what the ministry has to do to open an account makes me really feel sorry for the signatories of the account.  It sounds like they have to make at least two trips to Kampala so they can get a recommendation letter from the Born Again Church.  All protestant churches have to be registered through the Born Again Church which seems to be a quasi-governmental agency.  Without a recommendation letter from the Born Again Church no bank account.  They will also have to have a constitution, photos, meeting minutes, etc.  My heart goes out to them.

After our meeting with Bishop Moses and Samuel his General Secretary we were off to meet up with Councilor Ben in Funyula to discuss fish farming with the Chairman and Secretary of the Funyula Fish Association.  As of my last meeting with them last year they were going to register as an association and start to manage the farms as a single entity.  Part of the problem was that too many of them were harvesting at the same time causing too many fish coming to market all at once.  It was my hope that this one group could become large enough to help control the market instead of the market controlling them.  I believe that they have about fifteen to twenty percent of the active fish farmers in the area within their group so far.  It also sounds like there are still some independent farmers and a few other groups that have formed.  It still seems that feed is the main issue that these farmers face.  The availability, type and cost makes for lower yields.  The group prefers to have meal of rice bran and blood in a powdered flake form.  This meal would be very high in protein and makes for plump fish.  Also a local micro-banker Nicolas joined us to discuss forming a micro-finance entity with the fish association. 

After the meeting with the fish association it was off to see Pastor Robert in Bulimbo to review the chemical list and seedling replacements for the surviving orchards.  While we were at Pastor Robert’s orchard we saw plenty of fruit on the vines and he told me that they are harvesting every day now.  According to Robert he still has a couple more months before the vines are fully mature and the yields are at their best.  The vines look great however some of the locals have been coming in at night stealing fruit.  Also there have been quite a bit of hail storms recently and when the hail stones (up to pea size) hits the fruit it leaves a little blemish where it hit.  It doesn’t affect the taste or damage it unless it knocks it off the vine before it is ready to be picked.  Once the passion fruit is close to being harvested it comes off the vine with very little effort.  In fact I went to pick a purple one today and once I touched it the fruit fell into my hand without even having to pull on it.

Tomorrow we are off to Nairobi with Pastor Peter and Bishop Hezron.  On Wednesday we will spend the day with Pastor Ososo and then on Thursday we will be flying up to Maralal for a visit with Ken and Susan Black.

Take care and God bless                                 

Dave