Newsletters
With our regular newsletters, we aim to keep you posted on all the interesting and important news and updates of our programs and various activities. Enjoy reading!
September 16, 2016
Dear friends and partners,
We have come to the end of another year and started our next program year. It’s always a time of reflection – what did we do well, what we did that is not so good. We went and visited a number of families that were enrolled last year. Cambodia is changing and the deep poverty is not so easy to travel to. Our trip involved driving on smooth tarmac, to dirt, to mud and then just fields.
It was worth every jolt and bump. We met with several families that had started last September. Our staff shared the concept of saving for chickens – chickens that lay eggs everyday! From several it rapidly multiplies to 20, 50, 100, up to 200 chickens. They added ducks – they start to multiply and life is getting better.
The families sold their chickens 100 at a time. And the miracles started to happen. They got ponds from us as they could pay their share. The income started to add up to visible miracles. At first it was the simple things like eating better food – protein supplied through eggs, then it was planting crops like corn and rice, a bicycle so a child could finally go to school. Then a pig – oh my - what a charmer that pig was.
Their homes are slowly improving – one family a cement floor, another an extended overhang for shelter and green tin sheets for the sides - another being able to buy cows to plough his fields.
And the food they were growing – it was amazing - food unable to be grown before because there was no water and no savings to buy the seeds. Foods like rice and corn and sugar cane and fruit trees.
We have seen this miracle countless times over the years – families not knowing which way to turn – not knowing how to make it better – take that first step by savings and have a dream – a dream that begins to multiply and brings about other dreams. It is not the physical changes that touch me the most – don’t get me wrong - it’s a joy to see – but what touches me the most is the change in the people themselves. The former despair is gone – their faces are alight with pride and hope and the pleasure of showing what they have achieved. In time, they will achieve all their dreams – in time the unbelievable harshness of their lives will be changed to lives of fulfillment and dignity.
I thank my God for this privilege of standing with these families, of travel on roads that are difficult – of watching their road out of poverty. I thank my God that all of you stand with us – that you not get tired of yet more families who need our grace for a short time. Our lives are all journeys – often the road is hard and the travel uncomfortable. How good it is that you and I are willing to have others walk their own journey alongside of us. Thank you for that gift.
Janne
Website: www.tabitha-cambodia.org
Facebook: Like us at Tabitha Foundation Cambodia
