Interesting title. You're probably thinking I spent the last couple days teaching the kids a certain dance. Maybe even now the "Chicken Dance" song is coming to your head and you're starting to dance. All of these would be pretty justified. The truth is that since mid last week my work is all about a giant chicken project. Through this email I'll be telling you all about the project. Normally emailing all of you each week is my way to process everything that goes into my life (I need to journal more), but since we worked on Monday I'm a little overloaded right now. It is something amazing when the Lord puts something on your heart, and tells you "this will be the direction you take." This week the Lord has showed me that his plans are so much greater than mine. Through all my weaknesses he makes me strong. The scripture God layed on me today to share with you is Acts 4:32-37. The first reason I like this scripture is because God has given me the gift of encouragement. My teammates here in Swaziland would not object to you calling me the 21st century Barnabas (meaning son of encouragement). I like that when called to give our possessions and offerings we trust that God will provide for us even if we are a little short when we look at our possessions with a worldly view point. I was listening to a sermon the other day and it mentioned Proverbs 3:9-10, which says "Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine." I was thinking to myself, "When do I ever honor God with my first fruits." That means that we give before we spend money on things for ourselves. This week the Lord has challenged me to live this verse out. In the Acts passage I wrote down the last 2 verses say, "Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet. This is how the week began and God has called me to give up my field. Here is how our project began.

       Tuesday and Wednesday's workload at the farm was pretty slim and slow. JB from the Kenya team stayed at our house on Monday and Tuesday night so he could work with me at the farm for a couple days. Tuesday was amazing. It was only 4 of us there working all day, and I spent the majority of the day talking about how amazing of a man Jesus was from the gospel messages, how it was crazy that so many people saw his miracles and still don't believe, and how fired up I am that this same spirit lives in me. I mean he says in the bible that we will even do greater things than he did in the gospel. Anyways I was really fired up all day about how the Pharisees were a bunch of fools who couldn't see light when it spoke to them. Wednesday JB and I went to work on our irrigation pump. We were quite blessed to find a cow with a large bucket stuck on her head. She was standing in the river. It was funny because she put her head in that bucket to drink water from it while she was standing in the river. Over some crying laughter we talked about things going on at the farm. I told JB about the chicken problem at our farm. We don't have any places for the 30 chickens that are there to lay eggs, so the chickens were laying the eggs on the ground. The dogs eat about 85 percent of those eggs. So we bought 4 laying baskets 2 weeks ago to stop this from happening. Well last week we found that the chickens liked to lay in the baskets, however the orphan boys liked the eggs more. Boys started stealing the eggs last week. As you can see we had a problem on our hands! For some reason I kept thinking of the waste of good eggs for the rest of the day. When I went home from work on Wednesday I felt called to ask Ben if he wanted to build a one shelf unit that would hold maybe 8 baskets (this would not stop the boys from stealing though). This was the seed idea that gave birth to a giant project!

       On Thursday Ben and I went out to the farm and I showed him my one rack idea. He liked it, and we decided later that day we would draft up a sketch of the rack. My boss gave us a tour of 2 chicken coupes that were not being used on our farm. I thought they were only storage sheds so the tour was new to me. When we heard that the coupes had electricity running to them ideas began coming to us about a chicken project. Our first idea was to build chicken racks in the shed. The baskets would hold maybe 15 full size laying baskets. After we sketched what the racks might look like more ideas came to us. We began thinking more along the lines of a large scale chicken farm (not American large, Swaziland large). We went from the idea of racks to buying 4 young roosters that are specifically for breeding for meat (we wanted the chicks to grow up and be sold as full grown meat chickens). After that Ben and I decided that we would also want a nice incubator for the operation. That led to us investigating and deciding that we would want a bunch more good laying hens for our operation. Finally we realized that the farm would not see income from the chickens for 6 months. We decided we would also need all the food and vaccinations for the whole operation for 6 months. By doing this the farm will then be able to provide. The chickens we will be raising are a local meat breed. Once the egg is layed it will take between 5 and 6 months for those chickens to be ready to sell. So we are even considering buying 7 months worth of supplies to make the foundation a little stronger. You can imagine how busy things have been since my one rack idea started on just last Thursday. The Lord has directed Ben and I to do this project. Glorifying the Lord means doing this project WELL! The most awesome thing is that the Lord is allowing me to be the Barnabas. All the cost of the chicken project are on me right now.

       The project itself will cost us between $1,400-2,000. The main cost we have are the supplies and the Incubator. Between those 2 our cost will be $1000. Also we have already built the racks, bought 60% of the chicken laying baskets (18 of 30), purchased 30 laying hens that we'll pick up a week from today, have at least 2 roosters to pick up around Tuesday next week, have done research on how much feed we'll need for 7 months, and we know the exact incubator we need. Sound a little crazy to you? Friday a team of 15 is coming to slack all the tall grass around the coupes to protect from predators, paint the racks we built, and disinfecting both sheds. Don't worry we will be working with them. We haven't even had time hardly to take a few pictures. I want to send y'all some when the project gets a little further along. Next week I'll have a breakdown of all our cost for you. Right now we've spent $400 US Dollars. The chickens will provide extra eggs and meat for the orphans at the orphanage, a nice steady income to provide money for our crops and crop inputs, plenty of manure for fertilizer for the crops, and a possible chicken farm that could grow to thousands of birds in the next couple of years. Wrap your mind around this project. The God that we serve took a one rack crap idea and turned it into something amazing that will last and provide. I'm living on Proverbs 3:5-6, "Trust in the Lord with all your heat and lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight." I trust that God will cover the cost of this project. I don't know how, but he has assured me not to worry, but to trust that He is Lord. Everything on this earth is His and He will bring the funds to my checking account to fund this operation. If any of you would be interested in partnering with this project you can send checks to my dad or give them to him. Our Address is 1003 S. Barker Rd., Champaign, IL 61822. Please pray about this! Hope you enjoyed the email and are as excited as we are about the project. I promise more updates and pictures soon. Your loving brother in Christ.

Melusi