Dear Friends,

You want to know what has been happening and I want to share it with you.Why is that always so hard to do?I've got nearly seven hundred pictures on the hard drive that document what Lusekele has been doing over the past six weeks.But when it came down to finding a way to share life here with you, I realized that a bunch of photos sitting on a digital slide sorter can be very boring when it's not your own life.Without context and explanation images can convey only a small bit of the meaning of life.They might pique your interest, but they wouldn't necessarily inform and inspire.To craft the right words takes time and considerable energy.And the results are often disappointing.So this note a is a compromise.Maybe someday we will finally figure out how to be both actor in the drama of God's enterprise and engaged, objective reporter of what happens.

The end of April, Timothée and I flew into Kinshasa for meeting with our Presbyterian partners.They have a wide-ranging interest in disaster relief and long-term development similar to our own World Relief and Development Committee supported by the One Great Hour of Sharing.I have contributed to a couple of agricultural development proposals that they have floated and they were impressed with what Lusekele has done with limited resources.This past year, they provided nearly $22,000 to Lusekele for agricultural research and extension activities covering improved oil palm production, high-yielding manioc, and protein-rich grain legumes (peanuts and cowpeas.)The Kinshasa meeting looked back over 2005-2006 and charted a course for 2006-2007, for which the Presbyterians have committed another $21,000 plus.God has certainly blessed us with wide-ranging partnerships.

The day before I was to return to Lusekele, Miriam called me with the news of her father's turn for the worse.She needed to travel to California as soon as possible instead of waiting for May 15th.The next day we crossed paths at the Vanga airport, exchanged news and I kissed her goodbye as she left on a 6-1/2 week trip.The good news is that Arley rallied, regained strength, and spent some good time with Miriam and her sisters over the next couple of weeks.So the hurried departure turned out to be important and richly rewarded.(This picture, right, was taken in Claremont, August 2004)

Meanwhile, back at the farm, the Lusekele staff was fretting.The rains seemed to be sputtering.And it wasn't certain that they would continue even through the middle of May.But three big rains capped off the season, ensuring that even peanuts would have enough moisture to finish ripening.The staff turned from anxious uncertainty to surprised bewilderment that there was so much to harvest – all by hand.Suddenly they were trying to figure out where to store the unshelled beans, where to dry them, how to thresh them and how to clean and sort seed.

As the pods dried, in the afternoons all the Lusekele workers would be busy slowly beating them with boards to break out the seeds.Inevitably many pods were still partially intact holding many beans.These would be stripped one at a time for the remaining beans.Then the beans would be cleaned using a winnowing basket or pouring them on the ground and letting the breeze blow away the chaff as they fell.While the work is tedious, it becomes a social activity, a time for sharing stories and news and discussing questions important to everyone.What it doesn't do is produce very much seed per person-hour of effort.Nor does it quickly condition the seed for storage, increasing the risk of insect infestation.As I write, Lusekele is in the fourth week of seed threshing and cleaning, involving at least 10 people for 3 hours each afternoon – all to clean less than 1 ton of cowpea seed.

Of course, these observations led to further musings.Part of the problem of poverty in Congo is the dismally low productivity of labor.If it takes 120 worker days to thresh and clean 2 tons of seed, that operation alone consumes 9% of the total market value of seed under the best conditions.Imagine if we could thresh and clean the same amount of seed using 12 worker days and put the saved labor to some other productive use.In the end the amount of saleable product per worker rises and income per person rises.

Well that led to poking around in the garage, which is the repository for all the junk equipment Lusekele has used and abused over the years.In a dusty corner were two machines.They may have been compost choppers or they may have been small motorized threshers.They may be from the early missionary years at Lusekele (when Gene was here).We managed to beg an old used generator motor off of MAF colleague, Maurice Briggs, rig up a pulley for a belt drive, rob another pulley off the abandoned water pump from the 60s-era Lusekele, and come up with a makeshift "thresher".Running pods through twice releases over 95% of the seeds.If they concentrate on it, two people can thresh about 100 kgs of seed per hour.

The garage yielded another treasurer – an old Vac-A-Way seed cleaner.An old washing machine motor was just about right for the shaking screens and squirrel cage fan.Despite the fact that we had only one ill-suited sorting screen, it speeded up the cleaning process a lot and gave me some ideas about how to improve it over the next six months.That should give us time to figure out how to process larger quantities of seed.

Planting peanut seed in February is always a gamble.Peanuts usually take ninety days to reach maturity and the second rainy season can be as short as 70 days.But Antonie Lumonakiese, my research colleague, got everything planted with the first big rains in February and the rains came at acceptable intervals up through 80 days.Our best peanut plot yielded 10 times what we planted – among the best yields we have ever recorded for peanuts.For other varieties we had to settle for tripling the seed stock, but that will give us at least enough seed to conduct a full-scale trial of the new ICRISAT varieties at several sites – a goal I have been working toward for three years.Coming on the heels of a complete peanut crop failure last fall, this was an occasion for thanking God for His grace and bounty.

During June, Emmanuel Souza, a local mechanic and millwright, began setting up our small-scale palm extraction factory. By the end of the month he had the digester installed, the drive pulleys in place and the working platform for loading the digester built.Timothée found a 30 hp motor for a bargain basement price and bought in Kinshasa.That's where the project is temporarily stymied.Truck transport into the interior is becoming increasingly difficult.The motor is still in Kinshasa six weeks later.

This is a real concern for Lusekele, because the center wants to start moving forward organizing local producers (and palm nut cutters).We expect that the palm oil factory will increase the yield of oil (more efficient processing) and improve the oil quality.Both factors mean a better return to farm families who make part of their living off the oil.But Timothée and the Lusekele staff need to time to learn about an efficient palm oil operation and relationships with producers that provide a regular supply of fruits to the mini-factory.

The One Great Hour of Sharing is really going to make a difference for Lusekele over this next year.Eleazar Ziherambere, our IM Africa Area Director, wrote a couple of weeks ago saying Lusekele will receive about $8000 to bring to the center for irrigation.That will make it possible to think about seed production and small-scale experimentation even during the dry season.And Don Watson shared with me a couple of weeks ago that our home church, Calvary Baptist of Salem, has committed to supplementing that money so that we can provide clean drinking water to the families here at Lusekele.

During June we cleared brush from the pipeline right of way and just today the young men started work on cleaning up the old pump site.This morning everything was under bamboo slash.If all goes well, next week they will deepen the pump pond, regrade the site for better erosion control and clean up the remains of the old pump house so that we can see exactly what remains to be done.

In May, Philippe Kikobo and I made a quick reconnaissance of the manioc mosaic virus situation on the east bank of the Kwilu River.We knew the disease was widespread and serious, but we weren't prepared for what we found.No farmer had disease-free plants.And the disease has progressed to the point where most fields showed signs of serious reductions in yield because of mosaic disease.(picture shows Philippe with the women of Kimbanda in a field ravaged by mosaic virus.)

This past week Philo Bidimbu and Philippe Kikobo gave a seminar on mosaic virus and Lusekele's program to multiply disease-resistant varieties.This is the first step in expanding the program to ten new sites on the eastern side the Kwilu River after Philippe and I made a rapid survey of the Kwilu Kimbata and Dwe sectors.Although we had a clear idea of where multiplication fields might be located, the seminar this week tacked the sites down and laid out the program for the cooperating groups.They are motivated because they will be the first farmers to receive the disease-resistant varieties.We are motivated because we see a whole region that can be changed in 3-4 years.(This picture is the harvest from the new varieties taken in May.)

How do people see the Jesus has changed our lives?Righteousness, humility, patience, forbearance, love for neighbors, a respect for God's creation, trust in God in the face of life's uncertainties.None of these, nor the other fruits of the Spirit described by Paul, are particularly religious characteristics.But they show a life of wholeness, goodness and God-like generosity that witnesses to God's healing power.Thank you for being partners with us and the team at Lusekele, helping to bring the presence of and witness to Jesus to farmers of the central Kwilu region.