Busy Days

We’ve been so busy the past few weeks! We had our rabbit cages and some rabbits on display at the National Agriculture Expo – where the President spoke and it was a lot of work getting everything ready. Of course it was kind of last minute that we were asked to have them there. The feed store we have gotten food for our animals asked to have the display since they sell rabbit feed. And to get interest in raising rabbits. We’ve had many calls since from people wanting to buy one rabbit or a pair of rabbits, which was not our intention but we did sell about 20 rabbits. We’ve had calls from people wanting to “partner” with us but for now we are just focusing on our community. It was a good experience to see people get interested in raising their own rabbits. We sold one set of cages but have some other people interested. The cages are not inexpensive – especially since we have to pay the “mazungu” prices on materials so we won’t make money from them but it gives income to the men that make them and gives them new skills. We tell them that if they can get better prices on the materials they can make a pretty good income. We try and explain to them that every time we get gauged on prices, that is money that could be used for other things but they don’t get it.

Our rabbits are growing, we have around 300 babies – that isn’t including the 200 adults! It’s a lot of work, even with our three workers. We have orders for meat and sausage and are pretty excited about it. There are to rabbit breeders that would like to work with us on selling the meat, they already have a couple restaurants in Jinja that order but they can’t keep up with the demand so it would be great to work with them. Our five for five program is to help our community to be able to have meat to eat but also can provide income for them, so helping to open markets for the meat will be a help to everyone raising rabbits. Our village isn’t quite sure about it yet but we plan on having a cook off soon with grilled rabbit to find good cooks who want to open a stand in town and have their own business. We want to help get them started and then they will be on their own with their own business. That will also help our community members that start raising their own rabbits.

We are preparing for guests from the States coming this weekend. Everyone is so excited and working hard to get everything looking good! It’s really not that much extra work – we have great help and they keep the farm looking good all the time. Personally we are excited to have fellowship and people to strengthen us, pray with us and play with us!

We got our car back after two months of not being able to drive it and we are so glad! I was quite nervous in Kampala and the trip home but we made it without incident. We had a crowd come to the house as soon as we drove in, you would think it was a community car as excited as everyone was that we got it back! We were getting congratulated and hugged by everyone! It was a good day!