Post by: Scott Pothoven – Currently in Africa with Bill Moore
Sunday was a real blessing to us as we were able to have a day away from meetings and in terms spent the morning worshipping with our dear Ugandan brothers and sisters at Watoto Church. This was our second time being able to worship there and it is an amazing experience to sense the presence of the Holy Spirit in a church that looks so different from our church back home in many respects. As I stood and worshipped God with hundreds of people I didn’t know I couldn’thelp but think this is an experience everyone should get to have and then I remembered, this is a mere glimpse of what heaven will be like someday. What a joyful future we have! After church we spend the day relaxing by spending some time out enjoying the beautiful weather and catching up on some reading. Bill and I both decided it was good for us to schedule a day off to worship and rest, not surprising since this is what God has commanded us.
On Monday we left Kampala very early and began a 4 hour drive to see the farmers we are working with in the Fort Portal area. FortPortal is in Western Uganda and is the home of some of the richest farmland I have ever seen, even growing up in Iowa! It was a long and rough ride as we have become accustomed to anytime we travel throughout East Africa, but we arrived safely and had a blessed time with the people there.
One of the highlights was being able to see a thresher be put to work for the first time in harvesting amaranth. Our Uganda employees, Innocent and Alex, had been working hard the last couple weeks to get a mechanized thresher ready and despite some setbacks the machine arrived Monday when we were there and we saw the first amaranth being run through the machine. While not working perfectly it was a great start and we are hopeful with a little tweaking the machine will be a huge benefit to the farmers and our efforts to keep improving the overall efficiency of growing amaranth.
The second highlight of the day was going to look at the 200 acres of land we are renting this Spring to grow amaranth. We wound our way through a traditional Ugandan “road” and finally arrived on a beautiful piece of land set back against some rolling hills in a lush part of Uganda. We saw workers out on the land clearing some debris and getting ready for the first plowing in a couple weeks. The work will not be easy but the land looks great and we are excited to get started and see how we can do with our first shot at leasing land.
We were also able to meet with some of the farmers we had contracted with to grow amaranth this past season. We talked through some of their struggles and tried to work with them to improve our relationship and set clear expectations. While these talks can be difficult at times due to cultural and language differences, the ending is always good as we are able to come to a common understanding of each other and agree on our desire to keep pushing forward. We assured them that we are here to help and the fact this was now our third time coming back to see them certainly helps them trust us more and more. The work for the farmershere is not easy so we are hopeful we can keep working with these precious people and help them get better yields with less work in the future.
It all added up to a long day out in the fields but it was well worth it and we are thankful for the work God has given us. We were blessed with safe travels to and from FortPortal and we were especially blessed to spend some time studying Gods’ word with our Uganda employees, Alex and Innocent on the way tome today. There is no doubt it was a reminder from God as to why we are here and what is most important. Yes, we are here for business and we are here to be successful in those efforts. But ultimately that is merely a platform on which we can love others and spread the good news of Jesus Christ. We are humbled that He has allowed us to be a part of this great calling. Our prayer is that someday we can say with the great apostle Paul “we have run the good race and fought the good fight!”
