Dear family, Calvary Baptist co-workers, and other partners,

When we're sick or hurt, our whole world seems to shrink to the confines of our own discomfort, of our own fears, of the space where we recuperate. And yet, while we are preoccupied with our own cares God continues to work in the lives of His people. That's what happened this last week.

Three days after my motorcycle accident, I was preoccupied with the gymnastics of rolling over in bed without igniting the lightning bolt in my side. Even though God's hand was rapidly knitting my bones and tissues, my mind and spirit didn't stray very far my injuries as I went into the Kinshasa clinic for a CAT scan. At the same hour on Saturday, my Lusekele colleagues, Miriam and the women of Lutala were celebrating what God has made possible in their village.

It started a little over a year ago. The Lusekele Agricultural Development Center entertained visitors from ARD / RAISE, a US-government sponsored project supporting sustainable agricultural development and small business development. Our Baptist church agricultural program has insisted for nearly two decades that developing a diversified rural economy based on dynamic farms and small businesses is essential to the material well-being of the rural people with whom we work. We found that ARD / RAISE shared this vision and they agreed to finance a credit program for groups of small farmers. Lusekele buys a processing machine that adds value to local agricultural products. A local farmers' group sets up a small business managing the machine. The group signs an agreement to pay off the loan in monthly installments from the business proceeds over a reasonable period of time. And the recovered funds finance another village-based agricultural processing business.

The Lutala women have set up a business hulling palm nut kernels. The kernels contain a meat rich in high quality oil. Usually they are cracked by hand. But the work is slow and tedious. It is hard to earn much money quickly. Abandoned palm nut kernels often make up great waste heaps next to oil extraction sites. The mechanical huller turns this waste into a marketable product, adding accessible income to oil palm production in the area.

Saturday was a day of prayer and praise, a day of ceremony . . . and a day of admonitions. God brought people together to give the Lutala women and Lusekele the resources to launch this experiment. Now it is up to women and men to employ these resources to produce the modest fruits of prosperity that God offers. Much depends on their integrity, wisdom and foresight. Patience, discernment, goodwill, diligence, faithfulness, perseverance – all marks of the person living in obedience to Christ – will be needed in due measure if the business is to succeed.

So even when our eyes are momentarily focused on immediate problems, God is at work inspiring and empowering the small steps that advance His kingdom toward the final consummation. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" is not only our daily appeal to God, but it is an affirmation we declare daily. God is alive, active, transforming hearts and through changed hearts changing lives, even while we seem to be on the sidelines.

Rejoice with us over the small triumphs that make up this march through life with Christ.

ED and MIRIAM NOYES

The Lusekele extension agents who brokered this project were supported in part by a grant from the World Relief and Development Committee of the American Baptist Churches.This grant was made possible by your gifts to the ONE GREAT HOUR OF SHARING. From all the people in Lutala and Lusekele –

THANK YOU ! ! !