Faith For Rice

Old Farmer Ted watched his early season rice crop die last month due to drought. Afterwards, he bought $18,000 worth of registered, early-season, Philippine rice seed and replanted.

Did I hear from God? No, I'm a farmer and when it’s time to plant, we plant! We got a rain to sprout the seed then more drought - at the brink of another disaster another rain - and so it's been for a month. There are 164,000 hectares (that's over 400,000 acres) of rice under severe drought in Cambodia, much of it beyond help. Our rice fields have gotten rain that missed the entire country. While we have never had flood cover on any of our rice this year, we pray and pray and pray and get rain just in time. This is more like raising dry-land wheat than rice, and it is exhausting, even for a supposed "Man of faith".

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I was attending a Friday night prayer meeting and I was praying for the rice. I felt no emotion, I'm a tough old farmer and I've lost crops before, but I noticed I had tears flowing down both cheeks uncontrollably! I could not understand this. This has never happened to me in 66 years of life. I asked God, "Why is this happening?" He responded, "These are my tears flowing through you for all you're going to go through in the next few weeks." This was not good news to me.

We are out of rice until this new crop comes in. So, we've put out this appeal.  We need a total of 160 tons to get us to the next harvest, and thanks to some generous donors, 40 tons of rice has arrived.

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