Mid-July 2017 Maynard Mission Report

Horton Chapel Church of Christ

Farming:

July has proved to be a busy month for the farm. As you saw in our last report, we are preparing for the ACSOP students to come back in a month. My brother, Jacob, and I spent more than a week rebuilding beds and planting greens for the coming semester.

For the last two weeks I have had the help on my brother-in-law, Jeremy Sentell. In preparation for the 700 new layers we built 96 more laying boxes to fill up the walls of the chicken house. We have also cleared three acres of corn. This has to be cut down by hand and stacked. The corn will be removed and bagged and ground to a fine powder as the school needs it for ugali. The stalks will be used as silage for the milk cows.

We have had a lot of visitors to the farm this month. A man from Karatu (2 hours away) heard of the success of our farm and came to visit and learn our techniques. We also had a couple come and look at our cows to learn what they needed to look for in a milk cow for a local orphanage. This is what this work is all about – teaching and serving others. We had a special treat at the end of the week when the “older kids” at the Neema Village orphanage in Arusha came to the farm for a field trip. The kids were able to milk a cow and gather eggs! It was a fun day for everyone and Anna and her sister, Lee, helped the kids put together a cow craft at the end of the tour.   

Evangelism:

We travelled out to Moshi for a children’s seminar at the beginning of this month. It was great to be able to take my brother to see this aspect of our work. Anna and Haley Norman taught the children while Jacob and I had a class of more than 30 teens to adults wanting to dig deeper into God’s word.

Currently, we are feeling like we need more hours in our day to get everything we need to accomplish completed. We are all still going to the Meru area at least once a week to follow-up with studies from the campaigns in June. Anna and her sister, Lee, are also going to Bible studies in the Kisongo area (where we live). 

Last week Anna and Lee put together a fun VBS for the kids at Kisongo Kanisa la Kristo. Thank you to Tiffany Gaines for the material you sent in May! The theme was “Faith In Action” and each night they explored new Bible stories of faith and how the characters showed their faith! This VBS topped out with 111 kids!

Anna has started back teaching Bible at the local public school here in Kisongo on Friday’s. They were on break for a month but are now back. They have finished Genesis and Exodus and Friday Anna summed up Leviticus and began the book of Numbers. She enjoyed being able to take her sister, a public school teacher in the States, to this work.

There is a team from Northport Church of Christ in Tuscaloosa working in the Mto wa Mbu area currently. We have not been able to visit them much due to our schedule but we have heard wonderful reports from their work. We are grateful to have Northport working here for the Kingdom.

Until all have heard.