Hello Everyone welcome to our second blog update regarding outreach. We are so glad you are here! We have decided to do two outreach teams one in Malawi and the other in a rural part of Costa Week. Weekly updates regarding both teams will be shared here. With our many different backgrounds, culture and spiritual gifting we have come together in this season to serve one Lord. Keep reading to hear what the Lord is doing through us!

Costa Rica Update

Week 2 Report

The second week of DTS started out with a High school visit to teach the kids about the affects of drugs and alcohol on the brain. A few of us did home visits to connect more with the people in the community. The first with a couple passionate about their community specifically helping teach their neighbors about growing their own food, composting and gardening. Teaching english to a wide age range is a passion of the wife. The second visit had to do with encouraging a few locals about their diabetes management and how to improve their health by incorporating exercise into their daily routine. A big part of our outreach here is helping with a few construction projects. After getting materials ready the team dove into our first special projects which was replacing a rooftop at a drug rehab with men we’ve been meeting with weekly. These men are passionate and on fire for God and we are looking forward to meeting with them next week. The construction crew have even seen monkeys stealing mangoes from a tree. We also got to be part of a youth group leading worship, playing games, teaching about the gifts of the spirit and sharing testimonies. The youth were attentive and we enjoyed connecting with them and we look forward to meeting with them next week. We ended our week celebrating a pastor’s birthday at the church we’ve been a part of on Sundays and helping at the children’s program.

Malawi Update

Week 2 Report

Week 2 is in the books. This week started out with a trip to visit a food forest near Agabu. Here Dion (the founder of Mitongwe Farm) showed us his work in agro forestry and how he and his team have worked to restore the soil and produce food for their school and other ministries as well as to sell to their surrounding community. We were able to tour the property and see the many varieties of trees vegetables and medicinal herbs they grow. Mitongwe Farms also has a nursery where they start many of their own trees and a dehydrating room where they can preserve herbs and fruits. To round off our trip Dion served us a wonderful authentic Malawian meal. On Friday we began teaching agriculture classes to a group of about 15-20 people who are interested in advancing their agricultural skills to help feed their families. They will meet every weekend for the next year to continue learning new farming techniques. This week we taught sack gardens, manure tea, organic fertilizer and planting fruit trees in zai holes. It’s been really cool to listen and see how people here garden and being able to present sustainable alternatives to things like chemical fertilizers. The participants are eager to learn and put some of the skills they are learning to use in their own gardens. In preparation for our teaching of zai holes in a 4 square garden this week we spent lots of time digging holes. We were able to plant 10 banana trees and 2 papaya with holes for 4 more papaya trees. Our hope is that these trees will grow quickly with the zai holes creating a nutrient dense area of soil for the trees to flourish. With any luck the bananas we planted will produce fruit before these classes conclude and the participants will be able to enjoy the harvest of their workshops. This week we were also able to visit Crown Ministries and see all they are doing. We enjoyed a wonderful cup of coffee and apple crumble tart at their coffee shop and got to help support them by purchasing some cheese for our meals. At Crown Ministries we toured their mushroom houses as well as seeing their many compost piles which produce compost able to be sold as an alternative fertilizer. We were also able to see the farming gods way plot and a pvc greenhouse made by a previous SSD outreach. This week was an amazing opportunity to see what God is doing through the people of Malawi as well as the connections and community these long term missionaries have built.