SMI May 2013 'The Outing'

Greetings family and friends;

We are all doing fine here and things are happening according to the will of our Father. The church is growing both numerically and spiritually. We are currently going through a study of the basics of our faith called ‘The five S’s’ … Sin, Salvation, Sanctification, Spirituality, and Service.

It is amazing how little the average Christian believer here in Nakuru knows about their faith. It is not because they don’t want to know … it’s because of the lack of spiritual knowledge in their leaders.
Also our school is up and running with more kids signing up everyday, but more on that next post. Keep those prayers coming!

I wanted to post about a little outing we took two weeks ago. Amma (for those who don’t know that’s what I call my wife Cynthia) and I were becoming very tired with all the work in the city, so we decided to take the day off and visit a tree/herbal farm about 20 miles north of Nakuru.

It turned out to be a real fun day; we learned a ton about African flora especially indigenous herbs and made some real friends in the process. The name of the farm is ‘African Forest.’

The farm is 126 acres on one of the most beautiful pieces of land in the Rift Valley and it is run by a delightful couple named Kenya and Helen. Kenya (yes that’s his real name) is an indigenous Kenyan educated in England and America and is the closest thing to a modern day hippy you will find here in Kenya.

We found Kenya and Helen to be friendly, hospitable and amazingly full of wisdom in the medicinal benefits found in the indigenous herbs and trees of Kenya. Their farm is an extremely efficient business producing beautiful plants, charcoal, medicinal herbs and a whole lot more.

Amma is already using the new herbal medicinal information on me and other Kenyans. I am drinking daily a cup of tea made from a particular tree that is already lowering my blood pressure. Now that’s good news!

They have quite a selection of decorative and healing plants.

 

They also employ some walk behind tractors that are kind of like the walk behind lawn mowers we use in Rose Creek Village.

They have several high tunnels and plant many of their starter plants in circles beneath the big trees utilizing the shade of these huge Acacia trees.

There is a huge charcoal making hut that turns the root balls, coming from clearing the land for trees, into charcoal they sell to retail stores in Nairobi.

Here you can see the women employed to make the charcoal pieces small enough to fit into the bags for resale.

This is a huge kiln to create clay pots in which they also sell.

There’s even have a small homemade meditation hut whatever that is.

Lastly, we learned the hard way not to stop and talk two foot away from army ant highways. They don’t bite you till they are halfway up your leg (very painful) and yes, these little guys can kill and eat full grown cows if the cows don’t move out of their way quick enough.

Well hope you enjoyed the tour… we sure did and we hope to use some of these ideas when we are able to purchase some land for the ministry. Helen and Kenya said they would be glad to help us get started.

Much love…  David and Cynthia