Harvest offerings

It's harvest time in Tungamalenga.  Everywhere you look as you walk through the villages, you see evidence of a pretty good growing season.  Corn dries in the sun, ground nuts are being shelled, tall grasses are bundled to use for roofing.

Our first Sunday in Tungamalenga brought harvest offerings to worship.  Bags of corn, bags of rice, some small and others large, there was even a rooster hiding among all the bags.

Members of the parish bring these harvest offerings each year.  The parish may use or distribute some items, but primarily they sell them to use the income for parish projects like roofing a chapel or an evangelist's home. 

This is the harvest offering at Makambalala preaching point.  They are in the process of building a home for the evangelist -- they have been building for five years, have walls completed and have begun buying iron sheets for the roof, as funds become available.

In addition to partnering with the Tungamalenga congregation, Shepherd of the Valley also has a relationship with the Huruma Center in Iringa, an orphanage owned by the Iringa Diocese.  For several years, we have provided scholarships to students entering secondary school, and we have provided gifts when we visit and at Christmas time.  As we have come to know the needs of the center, we have learned to give practical gifts of food, clothing and school books.

So this year, instead of buying a gift of food in Iringa, we purchased some of these harvest gifts in Tungamalenga.  At Makambalala, we bought one of these large bags of rice. 

We didn't really announce our intentions or ask for assistance, but as so often happens, the congregation learns everything that we do or plan.  So as we continued visiting around the many preaching points and village congregations of the parish, we started receiving small gifts -- a bag of rice, a bucket full of ground nuts, a chicken!

Frequently we receive gifts for sponsors from the parents of our many secondary students.  This father (above) was someone we met at Kisilwa.  He left early and then came back with a bucket of rice, asking us to pass this gift along to the orphanage.

In the end, we were able to deliver all this to Mama Chilewa and the kids at Huruma Center.

During the dedication of the Mahove water project, we were also given a sheep!  That was also delivered to the orphanage -- a real treat for these children who eat meat only on special occasions.

The children sang "Asante sana Yesu" and presented our travelers with gifts of beautiful kitangas.

I was so touched by the participation and partnership of our friends in Tungamalenga, many of whom have never heard of the Huruma Center.

The circles of love that have been created by this partnership are many.  The donations we used to buy the rice from Makambalala were given by an elementary school aged brother and sister from Eagan who collected their coins over the past year.  From Ryan and Ainsley to the people of Makambalala who both gave and will receive, from scholarship sponsors to the thankful hearts of the parents of those students, from travelers to gracious hosts, to this dear child of God.

Asante sana, Yesu.

Thank you, thank you, Jesus.