From Carita Feliz (Happy Face) Child Development Center (EC-478) in Ecuador.

At one point during our visit we walked to the back of the home, where the family owns a small plot of land that’s adjacent their grandfather’s land. The soil was rich, the land was tilled – but the family hadn’t finished planting all of their seeds.

A staff member from the Child Development Center asked us if we’d like to help, so Kelly, Patricia and I each grabbed a handful of corn. We’d turn over a section of soil, drop in four pieces of corn, then walk another foot and repeat the process. We did this over and over for about half an hour, moving from row to row, visiting with Rosa Maria and her children as we planted.

And on the third or fourth row, I looked down at what we were doing, and I thought, This is it. THIS IS IT.

Barring something totally unexpected, I’ll never witness the harvest of those seeds.

But.

I’m no less invested in the outcome just because I may not see it in person.

Read the entire post at BooMama.net.

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My Account l Sponsor a Child l Help Babies and Moms l Crisis Updates

My first exposure to the issue of food security in Africa was during an extreme drought in 1985. The stories were heartbreaking and people died in both Ethiopia and Somalia that year.

You’ve heard in the news that the current drought is much worse in Somalia than anything in the past 60 years. I can’t imagine.

I have spent the past week traveling with our very capable Ugandan staff, following up on our Complementary Interventions food security activities implemented in 2009 to see if those investments are now allowing caregivers of our registered children to weather the storm of low food availability and high food prices.

The answer is that our Complementary Interventions food security programs work!

Food security is always a complex situation. Drought is not the only factor. Typically, harvests are sold at low prices because farmers have limited ability to safely store their harvest and because other family needs require cash.

It is not uncommon for a family to sell their grain at harvest time at a low price, knowing they will need to find a way to buy some back in a few months.

This year the United Nations put additional pressure on the market price by purchasing large amounts of maize for relief programs in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As a result, families in Uganda are shocked to find prices through the roof now that the time has come to buy back some grain.

There are definitely areas of Uganda where people are suffering greatly, but the situation is nothing like those across the borders in Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. The Compassion Uganda office is planning a response to the present drought crisis, but it will be a very targeted one.

My joy this week has come from interviewing families who participated in our 2009 food security programs. Those families have now built up adequate reserves to survive two or three years of poor harvest.

The difference between these families and the ones we plan to help in the coming months lies not so much in how severe the current drought is or how high the prices are, but rather in how prepared the families are. If our 2009 program could have included other parts of the country, those families also would be better equipped to manage the situation without outside assistance.

One example of our food security program is in the community of Tubur, near the town of Soroti. Gloria is a sponsored child at the Tubur Child Development Center.

Gloria’s mother is still using the seed from the maize she received in 2009.

She also received orange seedlings at that time and they are now blooming. She will soon have her first orange harvest! And she is on the third round of replanting the cassava cuttings she received.

Each season, the harvest increases. She is currently eating cassava and awaiting next month’s maize harvest.

Gloria’s mother filled two basins with beans from her first harvest after seed distribution. Her most recent harvest filled two very large bags with beans.

Very excited about her current living conditions, she was not satisfied with showing us just one field. She insisted we come with her to see more. While others might be saying,

“Give me more!”

Gloria’s mother was saying,

“Let me show you more!”

An additional component of the 2009 Compassion Uganda food security sustainability plan was that the families who received seeds and cassava cuttings would share some of their harvest with their neighbors and also store food for hard times. Gloria’s mother and many others we met in Tubur have done this.

Another community where the Complementary Interventions food security activities made a significant difference was Ngora, near Kumi town. In one home, the small amount of green gram and cowpeas received has now become more than 45 pounds of beans stored for family consumption.

Another sponsored child, Martin, lives with his widowed mother and his six siblings and attends the Ngora Child Development Center. His mother said that she is very secure with food now and can survive a drought.

In the past, she used to work in other people’s gardens for income to purchase food. Since receiving the cassava cuttings, peas, and other seeds, she no longer needs to work for others. And she has even given cuttings away to her neighbors.

The current high food prices and low food availability is a highly talked-about issue in Uganda at the moment.

It warranted a large district-by-district map of current conditions in the newspaper this week and was the major topic of prayer in churches countrywide.

In spite of these realities, our ministry in Uganda should be encouraged by these Complementary Interventions efforts, because for those caregivers and their families the food situation this year is secure.

Praise God for the privilege we have of complementing the ongoing Child Survival, Child Sponsorship and Leadership Development programs in ways that make such significant long-term impact.

Complementary Interventions works!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Greg Keen works in our International Program Group as the Complementary Interventions Director.

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I grew up in Wisconsin, a part of the U.S. that doesn’t get a lot of attention. But it’s a beautiful, fruitful area. There are farms, gardens, orchards and, of course, dairy cows. My first job was working on an apple orchard when I was 14.

The harvest was my favorite time, when people came out to buy bushels of fresh apples. It took years to develop the trees to get that fruit. And then it took continual care to keep the apples coming. But as every farmer knows, you can only do what you can do — there are limits.

Ministry is like farming, too.

Paul said, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow” (1 Corinthians 3:6, NIV). Paul assumed the people he was talking to understood farming — they understood there were limits to what they could do and what they couldn’t. He helped them see that this applied to ministry as well.

The ministry that Compassion does around the world is development. And, just as in farming, we do what we do for the outcomes — the fruit — not for the activities themselves. A farmer doesn’t grow trees because it’s good to grow trees; he grows trees in order to get the apples. At Compassion, we don’t busy ourselves with activities because the activities are good, but because we want to see an outcome of our labor — good fruit.

John 15:8 (NIV) says, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” Disciples bear fruit, and we want to bear much fruit.

In order to do this, we need to know what we are growing, what it takes to grow good fruit, and how we evaluate good fruit. We don’t want to just have fruit that looks good. Think of a Red Delicious apple. They’re beautiful from the outside, but sometimes when you bite in to one, you find it’s not all that good.

The fruit we hope to see in the children we minister to are that they would know Jesus, that they would be healthy, that they would be able to get a job or create income for themselves, and that they would be able to relate well to others and have an appropriate attitude about themselves. This fruit may look different in every child, just as every seed grows up to look so different.

But as with farming, we know that we can’t control every element in a child’s life. It’s a lot easier to garden in Wisconsin than it is here in Colorado. I used to garden with my mother, and it was so fun to watch the seeds sprout and the tender plants push through the rich black soil. I wanted my kids to have that same experience here, so we planted gardens. But the soil, the sun, the wind, the hail and the drought of Colorado made that much more difficult than in Wisconsin.

Colorado is a harsh environment in which to grow vegetables, just as much of the world is a harsh environment in which to raise children. Many of these young people with amazing potential are growing up in the harshest of environments. The conditions of our world and the conditions of our souls hold us in bondage. God’s children are shackled by the chains of disease and a world that underestimates them. They are in bondage to the shallow dreams of those who walk before them telling stories about the limits of life.

We could get discouraged. What chance do these kids have? The fruit we want to see in these children seems impossible! But God is the God of impossible. Many do make it against amazing odds, clinging to life, blooming in inhospitable places. Our job is to make that more likely.

But in our excitement about bearing fruit, I have a warning. Our goals are ambitious. Our dreams are visionary. But our expectations have to be tempered with some realism. We must be careful in our zeal to see children released in marvelous ways that we not place unrealistic expectations on them. They are unique human beings with their own set of potentials and gifts and their own set of struggles and problems. Our job is to love them and to help them and to let them grow.

It makes me think of one of my favorite children’s movies, Mary Poppins. Do you remember the scene in which Mary Poppins pulls out her measuring tape to see how the kids measure up? Michael was “extremely stubborn and suspicious,” while Jane was “rather inclined to giggle.” Mary Poppins was, of course, “Practically perfect in every way.”

Sometimes I think we expect the kids in our programs to measure up to the Mary Poppins standard. Just as Jane and Michael Banks didn’t measure up, neither will our kids at various times. As we watch them grow, we have to set reasonable targets. And even as they are leaving the program, we need to remember that they are adolescents — at a most vulnerable and chaotic stage of life. These are young people figuring out their way in the world. They make mistakes; they have a journey to travel. Many of them are becoming more and more like Jesus, but they’re not quite there yet. Just like you and me!

So we continue to plant, and we continue to water. We know what fruit we want to see in the children we minister to, but we also know that God is the one who will make it grow.

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But at some level, I apparently thought a clear call to ministry meant that God would go before me, opening many doors and leading me to pastors and ministry leaders who would be receptive, all resulting in hundreds of child sponsorships, every year. Well, dozens, anyway.

But that has not been my experience, which has left me variously puzzled, frustrated and often discouraged. What does a clear call or direction from God, mean, then, if not that the ministry will be fruitful?

Recently, as I pondered the question again, Moses came to mind. Now there was a man with a clear and definite call: Go back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let My people go!

Finally persuaded to obey, Moses set out for Egypt. On arrival, he quickly discovered that God had not prepared Pharaoh’s heart to cooperate. Ten plagues later, Pharoah agreed, only to change his mind and give chase.

Many other examples can be found, but think about just a few of the obvious examples:

• Peter boldly preached the gospel message of Jesus Christ and was repeatedly tossed into jail. His call was clear: “Feed my lambs.”
• Paul boldly made multiple missionary journeys, preaching, speaking, doing miraculous things in the name of Jesus. Several times, he was thrown into prison; once he had to be let down over a wall in a basket at night to escape. Could a call from God be any clearer than Saul/Paul’s?
• Jesus Himself was God incarnate, God in human form, the God/Man. Say it however you like, He was fully God and fully Man, come to earth to show us how to live and to reconcile us to the Father. For three years, He poured Himself into 12 men whom he had hand-picked to be His disciples, and He still lost one of them. Then, accused, put on “trial” by Jewish leaders, taken before Pontius Pilate and tortured, He was crucified.

Obviously, the clearest of God-initiated calls to ministry of any kind do not mean everything is going to go without a hitch. So what does it mean?

I can’t claim to have the ultimate answer, but here’s where I am.

Any member of Compassion’s Advocates Network will tell you that getting invited to share Compassion’s ministry with many churches requires a real passion for finding sponsors and sharing all that Compassion’s ministry accomplishes. It also requires patience, persistence, and the ability to rise above what sometimes feels like personal rejection.

Obtaining an invitation from a given church, I’m told, can take three or four years of repeated contacts and relationship-building. This, I have staunchly resisted applying to myself, whether due to faulty expectations or a prideful desire to be the Wunder Advocate.

My awakening came a few months ago at a luncheon for church and ministry leaders. I had conversations with two pastors with whom I had spoken many times.

I have previously met with the home-group leaders at one of the churches and enjoy the full support of the pastors … short of doing a Compassion Sunday. The other pastor and his family are Compassion sponsors, but I have had no invitations from him.

The first of these two pastors advised me to talk to the home group leaders, again — and to expect to do so again. Repetition — the squeaky wheel.

The other pastor mentioned changes in his congregation and its focus, so I asked if those changes would mean a fit for Compassion. His answer: “Not yet, but we’re getting closer.” Ahh!

As I drove home after the luncheon, a question crossed my mind: “If I am called to be a sower of seeds, am I willing to do that?”

Hmm … well, I would really like to take part in the harvest, but … yes. I am willing to be a sower of seeds.

Wow! What a relief this is to me! I felt the pressure lift from my shoulders and from my soul.

I don’t have to worry about the results! That is not my job. I have not failed, and now I have been set free!

I can now call pastors and other church leaders without thinking every conversation should end with an invitation, because I am a sower of seeds. That is my job, and I can do it better, now, than ever before. Praise God!

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This is the fruit of seeds planted with hope, watered with hard work and dreams, and, at last, harvested with joy.

Pastor Damian checks two sacks full of beans. It is just the beginning of the harvest and the fruits already look promising.

Another man, Brother Juan, a seasoned farmer with dark skin and gray hair, is a perfect example of a Salvadoran farmer – thin but somehow robust, quiet and wise. Juan has served as an adviser to Pastor Damian since they decided to implement program “Double Seed.”

Juan talks about the beans and how they should keep some leaves and dirt in the sack so the beans will not lose the humidity they need.

“This way, they can last for about a year,” he adds, and smiles, knowing that the efforts made these past three months have given results – promising results that translate into hope.

It has been three months since Double Seed started in the community of Corinto, in Zaragoza, a city located eight miles south of the capital city, San Salvador, in El Salvador.

These past months meant sweat and great efforts for the people, but it also meant hope for a future that did not seem so clear a few months before.

Declarations made by international organizations since the third quarter of the year contrast with the hope at Zaragoza.

On July 13, 2008, the president of the World Bank, Mr. Robert Zoellick, declared to news agencies that they estimated that poor countries will need over $6 billion in assistance because already rising food and energy costs will continue to climb until 2012.

The economy section of El Diario de Hoy newspaper the next day showed that the cost of staples has increased 40 percent. But numbers are not as compelling as individual stories.

The journalist recalled a scene at a street market where a woman who preferred not to be identified collected the grains of maize that fell on the floor after the salesman weighed the grain to put it in bags and sell by the pound.

After much effort, this woman collected about one pound of maize just from the grains that fell on the floor, which would her feed her family that night.

Since the global food crisis filled the headlines and breaking news segments, Compassion El Salvador and its partner churches began to create strategies to face this threat. Among the strategies are agricultural development programs for the families of Compassion-assisted children.

The crisis experienced all around the world has complicated roots, and the truth is that the most affected are the people in greatest need. Now Compassion is striving to provide help, hope and the Word of God to those families at greatest risk.

Compassion El Salvador created multidisciplinary teams at the country office level, which developed a strategy that first takes into account the valuable input of pastors and church leaders.

This strategy has been implemented in two stages. First is the short-term response, where families  most in need receive immediate relief through our Complementary Interventions program (CIV). They are receiving enough food for their families to cover six months.

The second stage involves the church more, since the purpose is to support the families at the child development centers, and start income-generating activities such as chicken farms and hydroponics.

Among these programs to secure food for the short term is Double Seed, implemented by our church partner, Iglesia Jesucristo es El Señor, which runs the child development center, Nuevo Amanecer (New Sunrise).

In rural communities like Corinto, most of the people do not have a steady job and survive with what they can harvest with the seeds they receive from the government. The real hope and help they have comes from churches and organizations like Compassion. Churches like Jesucristo es El Señor and Pastor Damian understand this and have taken the challenge to make a difference in the lives of the children.

Sister Sandra, partnership facilitator for Jesucristo es El Señor, says the church received $2,000, and there will be another $700. With that money the church was able to buy seeds and other materials they needed to begin the harvest.

The land was borrowed by the pastor’s family, and the labor was the result of the collaboration of the families of the children at the development center. So far, they have sowed five acres of corn and one more of beans.

The most impressive part of this plan is the name, Double Seed. “At the place where they have sowed the beans, the church has a small group that meets to share the gospel,” says Sister Sandra.

It is called Double Seed because they are not just planting grains that will secure food next year for the families of the children from the child development center and the church - they also are planting the gospel that will secure the salvation of the families that are not Christian.

For now, Double Seed has been a short-term immediate response to the food shortage and is intended to secure food for the families of the children enrolled in the program for the next several months.

The church is becoming a holistic oasis in that poor community, where people are not only finding support for their children, but also for their families and for their souls.

“The LORD will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest.” – Psalm 85:12 (NIV)

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