Month: December 2016

I hope everyone had a great Christmas! We did, we had the joy of giving on Christmas day. I think we gave sixty-five soccer balls and sixteen jump ropes out to our children in Sunday School. We wanted to give them a gift because they have faithfully come every Sunday, have a desire to know more about the Bible and we just love them! It was a little tricky, and had to closely co-ordinate the giving as to not have hundreds on our doorstep, but we accomplished it and made all the children so happy. Raelee and I made ONE HUNDRED FIFTY cupcakes, Christmas eve was spent with Christmas music on while we baked and Christian pumped up balls. It was a really good evening and even better morning! This is how God works, we were hesitant at first about giving gifts – not knowing for sure how many would be there Sunday morning. Sometimes we have 75-80 and some times we have over 100. Do you know we had three balls left over and only because Raelee’s three amigos were absent. One child too many and we would not have been able to give any of them out. (We decided our plan B would be to drive around throwing soccer balls from the truck! Would have been pretty fun also!) Zula came right after church looking so forlorn because he missed it, but because I knew he had been sick for a couple of days – I was the one doctoring him – we gave him a ball. The other two apparently had not come because they were out running around in the center so they knew they weren’t getting one. We emphasize every Sunday how important it is to hear God’s word. It was funny with the cupcakes, the children thought they were the strangest things and weren’t too sure about eating them at first. Raelee was blown away that they didn’t know what a cupcake was, but they soon discovered they liked them very much!

For us, the saying it is better to give than to receive was definitely true Christmas morning!

Wednesday was Raelee’s seventh birthday. We had to go to Kampala to get supplies for the rabbit project and so we decided to celebrate her birthday there, hotel with a swimming pool! It was so hot on the trip there, we couldn’t wait to go swimming! She was so excited, she gave us our orders. While Daddy took her shopping for new floaties I was to go get a birthday present. We met up and ate lunch and made it to the hotel. As soon as we were checking in to the hotel it started thundering – huge thunder! So the staff got the pool ready and Raelee got her suit and floaties on and the downpour began! It was the biggest storm we’ve seen since we got to Uganda, it looked like hurricane winds and there was even hail! It all blew over in about thirty minutes while Raelee stood at the door watching. The pool man got out there in a hurry to scoop the leaves out. (She is treated like royalty everywhere she goes!) The manager asked if we wanted to wait until the pumps cleared the water up, but Raelee couldn’t wait. So, while most of the staff was watching (it is a small hotel), she got ready. We had a big argument beforehand about the water being cold, but Raelee INSISTED no water was too cold for her. So I decided to record her reaction when she jumped in. (She still denies the water being too cold – she’s stubborn that way!)

After she jumped the first time the manager of the hotel asked how I stayed so calm, she would have jumped in. I told her that the floaties weren’t going to let her go under, and even without them she can swim. She can’t swim without them if me or Daddo aren’t in the pool especially when most pools around here are over her head even in the shallow end – which this pool doesn’t even have. She knew she couldn’t touch bottom here. And unless she was going under I wasn’t jumping into that water after the storm! I had a light sweater on as it was!

She got a new dress, sparkly shoes, more doctoring tools and Sparkles the unicorn. She was quite excited, Tuesday night she got to get frozen yogurt and put sprinkles and gummy worms on top! Wednesday she had a strawberry milkshake. We looked all over for a cake or even a cupcake but found nothing. They aren’t big on cakes or good desserts here. She was content with the trip, all the birthday wishes, including a video from two very special people! So I hid the 7 candle in my purse and when we got home last night she found it. So apparently now I have to make a cake for it (maybe she will forget about it! Ha!)

Sparkles the unicorn ate breakfast, doesn’t like eggs, has special sounds when she is happy and sad. Loves to nap. So, when Raelee and I got out of the truck to run in a store I told her daddy “Don’t let Sparkles jump out the window” Raelee put her hand on my arm and in all seriousness said “You DO know Sparkles isn’t real don’t you?” I guess I can’t participate in her imaginary world!

Birthday #7…..Success!

Our bunnies waiting on their new homes to be built! This row is probably about half of the two hundred! Can you imagine when they have babies there will be 800-1000 tiny bunnies?! Wow!

We are starting a rabbit farm. Christian and I purchased six rabbits – two males and four females because we read all the facts and success of rabbit breeding and nutrition of the meat. We wanted to give it a try before presenting it to the board but Mike came and he got so excited about it we are now in the process of building cages and a barn to house two hundred+ rabbits! He spoke with the young man we met that is breeding, raising, selling and educating people on the benefits of rabbits and was just as impressed as we are with his knowledge, his heart to educate poor Ugandans and his entrepreneurial spirit. He is a preacher’s kid also, and has a heart on fire for Jesus. Here are some of the facts:

Rabbit feeds include grass, weeds, garden waste, and concentrates like rabbit pellets. Moreover the carcasses of rabbit have very high meat to bone ratio in comparison with other meat producing livestock. Rabbit manure is high quality fertilizer, while utilization of rabbit skins to make hand bags, shoes and hats. (Just about every part of the rabbit is utilized).

Rabbit meat has less fat and cholesterol than red meat, higher health benefits. Apart from fish, rabbit meat has the highest amount of protein and contains the lowest fat than all other types of meat. It contains fewer calories and Sodium than other meats but contains more calcium and phosphorus (which is very good). And, it tastes like chicken!

Rabbit farming is lucrative because, as we all know, they produce abundantly and quickly! It takes only thirty days from conception to birth, and they can produce throughout the year. They grow and mature very fast, can be ready for eating and/or market in less than six months. The cost of raising forty rabbits is the equivalent to raising one cow. Rabbits convert up to twenty percent of the proteins they eat into body weight. That’s higher than any other animal! The two breeds we will mainly be breeding are the New Zealand White and California rabbits, they get huge! A mature rabbit can sell at $18-22 at market while only costing $1 a month to raise. It is easy to start-up and cheap to operate and maintain. After the costs of cages, food costs are relatively low or even free. We have abundant food already growing on our property, and see the benefit of employing widows to grow grasses or beans and maize to convert to pellets. We can also farm worms with the manure to process into the pellets.

So our plan is to breed and raise the rabbits, educate our neighbors on the nutritional value of the meat. As I have said, malnutrition is one of the biggest problems here. Most families NEVER get meat to eat. We could give them chickens or a cow but they will not eat them. They will hold on to them until they absolutely have to sell them when in need of money. With rabbits, they can start out with one male and two females and very quickly have enough meat to eat and some to sell. We are going to have a training program called 5 for 5 where at graduation of the program the person will receive five rabbits to breed and cages. They are to train someone and give five rabbits, and so on. We will be the buyers and to ensure they are keeping meat to eat, will put a limit on how much we will buy at one time. Part of the training will include record keeping to ensure there is no inbreeding and also to prevent breeding a female too often.

The urine sells for almost as high a price as the rabbit meat because it is an excellent fertilizer. In Kenya, urine sells higher than the meat!. There is a great market opening up in Kampala for urine, manure and meat. Hotels and supermarkets are begging for rabbit meat, the demand is much higher than the suppliers so we have no worry we can sell plenty of meat which in turn will allow us to put money back into projects, Another of goals is to be as self-sufficient as we can and not have to fully rely on donors to our projects. The skins can be sold, and we would like to donate or employee seamstresses to make moccasins for the babies to help prevent jiggers in their feet.

So, we believe this is going to be a fruitful endeavor and feel we have God’s blessing on it. We are praying that the main objective – to provide families a way to have more nutrition in their diets – will be accepted and flourish.

We have had two teams of workers for the past 10 days and they have worked hard. Christian has been cutting wood every day, 7 hours a day to make the cages! He has had three to four little helpers that have been underfoot and some days driving him crazy. But, these boys have no fathers and he knows that he can be a great influence on them and teach them early a skill that will help them in the future. Yesterday I missed a picture opportunity, Christian said he turned around and all three boys had pencils behind their ears just like he did! No wonder he keeps having to search for pencils! You can see how fast the work has been going by the before and after pics!

Last Friday:

Two sets of ten cages last Friday

Joseph came to visit and see the progress

Cages had to be moved outside the barn, getting ready to put the doors on them.

Not a worker, but isn’t he cute?

Today – 5 days of work later:

Last Friday there were 2 sets of 10 cages (20). Today there are 10 sets (100 cages!)

I think you can see the crooked set…there were some boys in trouble that day! They let kids do the hammering! They will re-do it when they finish the others.

The walls aren’t going much higher – it will be fencing and a tin roof.

You can see where the urine is, this is a big container and this is 7 days of urine for only 6 rabbits! We have to re-think this for 200-1000 rabbits!!