Side Trips, by Elton and Pat

When we were in Uganda last time, the final evening Paul and Pam brought in their entire ministry team for a meal and sharing. They each shared their vision. Dereck is a business man and his vision is to help people get started in their own businesses and to be able to support themselves financially instead of relying on hand-outs. We told him we shared his vision and have kept in contact with him. He came to visit us this past March. On Saturday, he made arrangements for us to go to Kampala to meet with his group that come together every week to learn about how to start a business. We both spoke through an interpreter. I told the story about our connection with Dereck and how we have a shared vision to set up a micro-loan fund so that people in the United States can loan money to people in Uganda so they can start their businesses. Paul went with us and took along Ossaman, who is a small businessman in Jinja. Ossaman shared his story about how he started out with a pedal bicycle to drive people around town, saved his money, bought a used motorbike, fixed it up and sold it at a profit and of course continued to save, then he bought a new motorcycle and now owns a second new one. His goal is to have a fleet of boda-bodas and hire drivers who are safe and reputable, dress them "sharp" in uniforms and build a reputation of being the best. He shared how he became born again and relied on God for all of this and how God has blessed him. But that he had to follow God's leading and save money each week in order to succeed in business.

The ride to and from Kampala was rough and tiring. When we got home we got to meet Sera and the boys from the Caring Place when they came over for pizza, their favorite food.

About Elton's trip to Kenya.

Calvin Burgess of Guthrie has established a farm in Kenya to provide employment for local people. He invited me to come to the see Dominion Farms. Abdu and I left with a driver the morning after our arrival and rode over some might dusty and rough roads! It took about 5 hours. The farm is a blend of American equipment and African ways. Some of it is progressive and some is primitive. It is a 17,000 acre swamp, of which to date, 2,000 acres have been cleared and are being used for growing primarily rice and it has a 1% grade toward Lake Victoria. The rice is processed on site and then marketed throughout Eastern Africa. The label is called "Prime Harvest". Dereck, referred to above, is a marketer of this grain. There is a large fish farm, raising Tilapia. They also raise chickens and sell eggs. They put a diversion in the Yali River and that is what is used to flood the rice paddies. About the equipment, when I walked on the farm, it first looked like an American farm with all of the John Deere 4-wheel drive tractors and the John Deere combines. The farm employs about 150 Africans. Calvin is working on moving away from mechanized farming to more manual farming in order to employ more Africans. In addition, he plans to hire women out of prostitution to become marketers of the rice. While we were here, he hired the first one, took her to Dereck and his wife, they got her cleaned up, purchased clothes, fixed her hair, and she started marketing grain on Monday. She was only in prostitution because she had no other way to make a living. Now she has another way. There are many more like her. Our evening meal was fresh Tilapia....so fresh that they killed it in the frying pan to get the best flavor. It was great! We returned to Jinja the second day and got home early evening. It was an rough ride but worth every bump!