First Rice Planting of the Year

Who would have thought that in the midst of the worst drought in a hundred years, we'd have a problem completing our rice planting because it is too wet and muddy? Three prophets stood over me in February a pronounced, "The drought is broken!" Because of that, I was inclined to plant in mid April but all the experts were warning farmers to hold off planting until July. When I asked that we start planting all the farmers in our rice farm village seemed to be in agreement, "Don't do it! Rice seed is very hard to get and it is very expensive. If you plant and get one rain the rice will sprout and die because we are in a drought!" I reluctantly decided to wait and now we are just finishing planting what we should have had in the ground last month because I yielded to fear instead of listening to God's prophets. A lesson hardly learned is hardly lost. Please pray we continue to get timely rains without flooding, as we still don't have the dikes and reservoirs we need.

There’s no credit available, farmers are broke, banks are demanding payment and there is no rice to sell. We could have bought or rented about anything for a reasonable price but we were broke too. We put out an appeal to some dear friends and they came through. Even though we still have loans to pay we got the money we needed to plant. And we are getting rain. We have built needed equipment, purchased the seed, fertilizer, fuel and chemicals necessary for a crop. Hopefully we will have a good crop. The kids will eat and we will pay our bills and support this work of growing the kingdom of God. "Thank you" seems too small an expression for what we feel in our hearts but the crop is in the final stages of being planted.

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