November 17 Update from Mike Rodgers

Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 12:58 PM
Subject: Encouraged

Hey All,

David Haywood and I made it to Langano and had great success completing the land survey of Langano Farms. I will send an updated “Langano Farms Journal” newsletter once I get home. We finished 2 days early and were able to survey the school (expansion) for Joan and camp development for Jake.

I expected other experiences while here in addition to just the survey work. I was very encouraged to see the progress of the farm project without my supervision these past two months. However, times are VERY difficult here for the community nowadays. The need is great (as you may have recently heard in the news) here in Ethiopia with the famine going on out east. Langano is feeling it also with the lack of rain and no/little harvest of corn…their main food source in this area. The farm project is producing great vegetables because of their training in irrigation and God’s blessing upon it. It is giving them hope but is such a small scale operation at this time. They desire me to pay them salaries as “my employees” but I have to remind them that it is not my project, I am not their company president and that they need to be dependent on God and each other and continue to work hard and be patient. I want so much to give them money, etc. to help them “get by” but it would only defeat everything I believe God is doing for them…to make them dependent on Him alone. I believe many blessings are going to rain down on them if they can persevere.

There were some other difficult experiences while here to include attending the funeral (“lixo”) of a little girl today who died two days ago. Her dad is Bahdahdo who is one of the community elders and a friend of mine. His little girl was about six and had meningitis which caused her to be extremely malnourished. I last saw her 3 months ago just before heading to the states and thought she was going to die then.

I also visited a friend and on the way gave a ride to Adem who is a very energetic and hard working Ethiopian I have known for about a year. Things are so difficult for him that he wanted to give me his newborn son who is about 3 months old. I explained that his (only) child is a blessing from God for him and not to be given away. It is hard to articulate the hardships they are experiencing.

Other than be woken up in the middle of the night by hippos this past week (they sound like Jabba the Hut), everything else went well. It was good to see Kaweti, the community and the local “ferengees” (other foreigners) here. David and I return to Addis Ababa tomorrow morning (Wednesday) and then leave Ethiopia Thursday night. It will be good to return to the family as I feel like I haven’t seen them in a month because of the week of “swine flu” (i.e. malaria), then the week of recovering from malaria, then this trip. Once again, your prayers were a comfort to me and I appreciate you all.

Serving and Praying Together,

Mike

Mike Rodgers

Langano Community Development Project Director