The Manna Project: August missions update

RWENZORI SCHOOL OF PREACHING - UGANDA

After two quarters have been completed at the school there are many milestones to be reported and much to look forward to. The students regularly go on evangelistic campaigns which have resulted in the planting of 6 new congregations and over 150 baptisms. They are truly putting their education into practice!
Gregg Knight is planning on traveling to the school September 5-16 to work at the school and I look forward to hearing his report from his upcoming trip. Gregg is a special individual. He has sacrificed and worked diligently over the last few years. Recently because of money constrictions at the Manna Project, he took on extra work by becoming the located evangelist in Denison, TX. I appreciate his work and his love for God and his people.
I will be traveling nearly every week until January trying to raise funds for the Manna Project and also give reports to our current supporters.

One of our younger pigs in his own feed bowl!

The school farm continues to flourish as we strive to be a self-supporting school and teach the students to be self-supporting. We have been rearing breeder pigs since February and our sows were bred last month and are looking forward to many piglets being born in late October.

They also recently were able to harvest corn from the farm to feed the pigs and the students!

Corn harvested at the school used to feed both students and livestock!

We have also been able to harvest lots of tomatoes, okra, kale, and many other vegetables. These vegetables are going a long way towards helping our school become self-sufficient! Just look at the piles of tomatoes they are harvesting!

Raymond carrying tomatoes from the field!

Piles of tomatoes to be consumed at the school!

Our Guinea pigs continue to reproduce and our two goats recently turned into three!

Our two original goats on the left and our new kid on the right!

We are planning on soon building over 50 Kenyan topbar hives to produce honey to sell,eat, and pollinate our gardens. We are confident that by December of 2017 this school will be self-supporting!

Maurice Gasper (our farm manager and teacher) working a top bar hive!

HAITI

I am planning to very soon take a trip to Haiti to resume our work there trying to encourage the church growth and self-supporting education of the local preachers. I will be conducting two seminars there, one on the church leadership (elders) in which I will teach them about qualifications and responsibilities of elders and deacons. We are also going to be teaching a seminar on top-bar beekeeping to the local preachers, members, and anyone else interested. Please be praying for this work as we prepare for it.

MANNA PROJECT RESEARCH FARM

We continually are striving to grow in our knowledge to be able to train more preachers to be self-supporting through agriculture. It is our objective to always (if possible) to practice what we preach at our research farm. This year we have had several projects going that we believe are going to be very beneficial in helping preachers around the world become self-supporting.

TOP-BAR BEE KEEPING

Bee keeping is a very profitable and useful trade to learn. It is able to provide several income streams through the selling of honey, pollen, wax, and also through pollination. There are many methods and types of beekeeping. We have decided to do top-bar keeping because it is very economically feasible to peoples in developing countries. The hives are simple and inexpensive to build from a wide number of products such as wood and even sunflower stalks. The bees traditionally are more gentle in this style of hive and thus easier to work for the bee keeper. At our research farm we currently have two langstroth hives that we started this year, one we purchased in the spring and the second hive we caught a swarm of bees! We plan on building about 20 top-bar hives this fall and in the spring to fill them with bee packages!

Pure honey extracted from 3 frames of one hive.

Swarm of bees that landed on our old pop-up camper.

Swarm of bees caught and moved into a new Langstroth bee hive.

Natural comb formed from the lid after just a few days in the hive because I didn't have enough frames in the hive when they were caught.

Our first bee hive in our herb garden.

My little beekeeping helpers in their new bee suits!

COTURNIX QUAIL RAISING
Raising Coturnix, also called Japanese quail, can be easy, with the proper knowledge. Their space requirements are very small, compared to other birds and poultry. These birds don’t eat a lot, convert feed into protein efficiently, and are much more friendly creatures than even the sociable chicken. The eggs are easily incubated and the incubation period is sixteen to eighteen days. The Coturnix Quail mature to butchering size in six weeks with a average weight of 5-6 oz. This quail will begin laying eggs at seven to eight weeks old and reach a slaughtered weight of 4-5 oz. We recently incubated some quail eggs and the quail that hatched have now reached seven weeks and laid their first egg yesterday. We currently have 9 females and 3 males in our breeding pens. We also have ten males in the feeder pen that we plan on butchering soon. We will be taking all the eggs from them and incubating them to try to build up our flock to around one hundred females that are laying.