Chick, chick,chick,chi-i-i-i-i-i-icken

As I am truly English I will talk about the weather first! It has warmed up a lot this week after a cool one last week. The trees and grass are greening up after a few showers but the real rains haven't arrived yet. We are hopeful that these will come next week so that Dave (not him personally) can get the maize planted. The men at 1BD site have dug 36,700  holes and put in fertilizer ready for the seeds! That's a lot of holes.. 5 acres of land in all.

They are now trying to complete the house ready for Tendai and Taurai to move in. The wall are being painted as we speak, but not by me, this time thank goodness! I have, however, been painting walls all of last week as a young man moved into our cottage in the garden yesterday. He is a friend of X and was wanting some independence from family. He is a member of New Creation church and seems a really nice guy and has a company car so living this far out isn't a problem to him. We would have loved to offer accommodation to a member of our church but we live the opposite end of the city which would have taken them out of their community and made getting about difficult for them.

The new broiler shed. The far end is sheeted up ready for chicks

Dave (yes he did a lot of the work) has just finished building a new broiler shed at Edmund's house. Last week we put in 350 chicks in his old shed and then 4 days later 500 chicks into the new house. The netting isn't in place on all of it yet as the lady who weaves it hasn't finished! She has a type of loom and makes it for a living. How cool is that!!!

You can see how cold it was last week as the little girl in the front is wearing a dragon suit and a coat!!! But the sun still shines..



Dave and Edmund unpacking the chicks from their boxes

There is a massive market for chicken here at Christmas so that's what these fluffy little things are destined for- -  A Christmas Feast!!    So far the chicken project hasn't made any money as there is always difficulty in getting people to pay up. They take chicken on the promise of payment the next week and next week never comes, so we have learnt the hard way! But we are beginning to build a market with a Supermarket and Hotel, so we don't think we will have any trouble getting rid of this present batch and getting paid.



500 little dickie birds sitting on the floor, one named...



As you can see they have a special drink (which is yellow), during the first few hours to help their stress levels. (I wonder if it works for humans??)     

 

 

The congregation at St Peters meeting in Anna's home (tent)

Church is going fine and we are managing to organise  things so that each week someone can get over to St Peters to preach. Graham and Sarah Giles will be the main contacts as they have a real heart for the people there but they are in England for the next 2 months so it is quite challenging for a small church like ours. Its also quite surprising to find that the tin shacks that the people of St Peters vacated are again being lived in by others. 



Playing musical chickens!

 

Lastly, Kidz Klub is still going well and being enjoyed by the children and adults! Here are a couple of pictures from last Saturday. We had about 70 kids this week and quite a few were new ones which was great. So I'll sign off here until next time......

 

Tendai and Ruth are chickens!