Heart-ing the CHE Work

It made my heart full to see what a clear success our training on kitchen gardens was in one church in the far East. I was called out from arranging my things in the sleeping room at our host church, with words that I had to see what was out in the church yard. As the other CHE pastors motioned me over to where the cooking is usually done, I saw the garden bag that we had done as a demonstration, but it had some huge plants sticking out of it! That was a part of our training 6 months ago, but the old couple who look after this church had followed the idea perfectly. The concept is to use their waste water to pour on the large sack with vertical layers of plants that can all benefit from the water instead of some water soaking deep into the ground unused. This old couple reported that they hadn’t had to go to the market for the staple greens to put in their sauces for the past month, a nice money saver!

The older caretaker of the church with his wife cooking in the background.  To the right is the garden bag, and it has
inspired another little garden nearby where they wash dishes.

As my co-worker and I have been training and visiting with the pastors we’re mentoring in CHE (Community Health Evangelism) the past couple months, we’ve gotten a better feel for how they are implementing the strategy. Honestly, it has still been hard for most of them to get the hang of it or find the right situations to use it, but all of them report that it has opened up some new relationships for them and helped them personally. 

More encouragement from the far East, there’s an evangelist from the herding tribe who is doing a garden bag and small additional garden as his house. His neighbors have seen and tasted the benefits and other pastors report similar interest from neighbors about their clay stoves. Pastors in first region we trained in the Mid-West are all trying small businesses like selling young chickens or school supplies from money they’re collecting and loaning each other in an internal loan group. Several have some new believers that have endured over a year, and all ask for prayers for their families, openness of community, and more tangible tools for ministry. 

A couple of the CHE pastors from the Far East.

There’s also encouragement from last week’s central area training in the region where we live. One of the young evangelists shared how the micro-business training has really helped him. He used to have to ask multiple neighbors for food every month, but now he always has at least something in his pocket to take care of his family needs. This is the evangelist I wrote about earlier whose wife was very sick with ulcers. But he’s thankful that she has gotten much better and he knows it’s been through the prayers of many people. Another evangelist had six professions of faith last Sunday. Three teenagers in his family, and three teenagers from the village. That is exciting, but he prays for perseverance through temptation and persecution that they will have as new believers. 

On the other side of things, many of the evangelists are struggling with house problems. Walls that are falling down, lack of a perimeter wall to keep people and animals out when they aren’t home, or lack of space for their family. The one with multiple teenagers only has one room that he built himself in a village where the clay sources are very far away so it’s difficult to expand. He and his wife sleep with the kids and young women in that room and his teenage boys have to ask for space in other people’s houses. There are other discouragements, like not everyone following through and some still waiting for the CHE program to give them a salary or something more. This is always a reminder that we have to keep praying for God to work in hearts and bring about change internally. We also need prayer for many of the pastors who face resistance from some neighbors who vandalize their property behind their backs or reject their practical health ideas because they say they won’t accept anything that comes from a different religion.

-- El Padre