Double Portion Farm

Story #2: Emma and the Farm

Emma is a 25 year old Ugandan who is the manager at Double Portion Farm. The farm is one of CLD's projects and was originally started to help cut costs at the school by growing food to feed the students. It has turned into an incredible mission to share farming and business techniques with interested students/interns who come for 9 month terms to learn from Emma and the other guys at the farm.

Emma has been married to Agnes for about a year and just became a dad! They had a baby boy named Jeff who I had the pleasure of meeting when we were there - he was 22 days old when I got to hold him! Such a sweetie.

Listening to Emma talk about the farm is inspiring and exciting. When he was showing us around the farm our first time there he said: "This is my mission field. This is what I am so excited to share with people everyday - how to farm God's way and do it with joy!"

The farming techniques they teach are from a Zimbabwean farmer who started a program called "Farming God's Way". It is basically a return to traditional ways of farming (compost for fertilizer, mulch, etc) instead of what many farmers do now (slash and burn, using GMO/hybrid seeds which they have to buy again every year, etc). The farm has seen their outputs increase significantly since using Farming God's Way and they are eager to share what they've learned with other local farmers as well as some from other surrounding countries.

It was such a pleasure to help out around the farm - weeding, harvesting corn - and we even got to camp out and spend a night there. It was beautiful and so very peaceful.

http://www.comeletsdance.org/farm/ for more details on the farm's story.

Let the stories begin.

Well we made it back home (after 41 hours of travel to get here - whew!) and I can hardly believe the trip is already over. Obviously I didn't get much time to blog while there, but for those still interested (and for my own processing benefits) I am going to write various posts about our time there in the weeks to come. 

I've decided to write the posts as stories, each one featuring someone or something that especially impacted me while in Uganda. It is a privilege to tell someone's story, a privilege that I don't take lightly. My prayer in sharing these stories is to share the beauty of what God is doing and who He is working through in a place far away but not so different from our own. (see my previous post on story telling for more of just what stories mean to me)

Overall I can say that God met me there and my heart left significantly more full than it arrived. I am so thankful to have been able to go back and am continually in awe of how faithful and kind God has been to me. 

Story #1: Martha

I'm choosing to tell her story first because she was the last student at WCIA school that I hugged and shed tears with before I left. I can still see her sweet face so vividly and feel her arms tight around me as we soaked in our last moments together.  

Some background. Wakiso Christian International Academy (WCIA) is a school started by Come, Let's Dance. The school has both boarding and day students and includes grades from pre-K through primary 7. (They also opened a high school this year but more on that later). 

Check out http://www.comeletsdance.org/school for more info on why they started a school and the impact they're having. 

The school is a place of laughter, learning, singing, dancing, and praising the Lord. We were able to help out in classrooms, the library, with gym class, cleaning, etc during the day. We spent many afternoons playing and hanging out with the kids once school was out for the day. 

Martha is a sweet girl that I met early on in my time there. She is in fourth grade, speaks very good english, loves to sit with her friends and talk, has a beautiful singing voice, and a kind, sweet spirit. We colored together, we sang songs, played games, etc. At some point we developed nicknames for each other - she is my little mosquito and I her grasshopper. <3 div="" nbsp="">

I could go on for days. Suffice to say Martha is a sweet friend and I cherish the time we spent together. I would love it if you would join me in praying for her - for health, for her studies, her family, for the beautiful woman she is growing up to be. God be praised. 

Martha is on the left and Adrien on the right.