Jinja, Uganda

Five months ago I came before Equip Intl. to ask to be sent to a mission field for three months that I may see what a missionary is, and to experience the poverty on a longer time scale than a church based mission trip. I figured three months to be long enough to get past the happy go lucky feelings and to sit down into the poverty. I have never been on a mission trip before and never seen a missionary work. This is an important first step towards being a full time missionary. Jinja is the result of my request. It is the second largest city in Uganda. Located on the banks of Lake Victoria, Jinja is at the headwaters of the Nile River. It thrives upon agriculture, and reliable rainfall. White water adventure rafters frequent this town for its intense rapids. I must remain prayerful and submissive to God through all of this, so I don't damage the ministry of the missionaries already at work. It is so easy to hurt when you're trying to help. I will observe and shadow Chris Sperling, an Equip missionary, who is implementing an agricultural process called Farming Gods Way. This is a no-plowing prayerful way to farm which yields unparalleled crop results! I have raised $640 dollars towards a goal of $3,000 that is Equip's estimate at this point. I added $1,000 to the cost for vaccinations and an extra $500 for visa, passport, health insurance and any extra surprises that may crop up to bring in us to a grand total of $4,500 for a three month mission trip to Jinja. Not bad for getting across the Atlantic, but the figure is subject to change. I need your prayer right now this moment, that God may send out His Holy Spirit to go before me to prepare a place for Himself in the hearts of those He calls, that He may use me a lot, in Jinja or wherever He calls me.

Matt 28:18-20

- 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." - NIV

In Christ the son of God,

David Greene

Missionary Education Part 1 C.H.E (Community Health Evangelism)

This week I have been attending full day classes with Equip Intl. learning the basics of mission work. The class was taught from 8:00am - 5:00pm.  Each hour was a different lesson. It is very difficult to put a class like this into words. Topics were always open for discussion and the multiple solutions for problems were what we as a group of 10 evangelists could think of. Every answer was written on a board, no matter how well thought. The class was arrayed in a circle with no tables or podiums. Our leaders, Harold Bracken II and his wife Brenda, sat in different seating arrangements every day to keep us from a feeling of their authority. The whole process Harold and Brenda were modeling is a teaching strategy to use in other cultures. We learned as much or more from each of the missionaries' experiences as we did from the curriculum. This made the assimilation of mass quantities of knowledge easy. I took several pages of notes that earned a special place in my black journal. I used pictures I drew alongside the notes for further retention; scrolls were for verses of valuable scripture that I needed to memorize. Spider webs were networks I can use and such like that. I learned how easy it is to hurt when you want to help. When we sent shoes to Haiti, we put the local cobbler out of business and the same with food and clothing handouts. I learned that you need to assimilate with the culture and learn the language (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11bxy9bSYG4 ß a funny demonstration of why). It would take two weeks to post all the knowledge and experiences I had in one week of CHE. Definitely the best education I have ever received! The classes at Equip are so on key with what is practical in the field. We need a delicate balance of meeting peoples' physical needs: water, medicine, food, and sanitation and their spiritual needs: evangelism, follow up, and discipleship. Equips' main focus is to meet God where he is working. Their main goal is Christ’s Kingdom. Thank you, Lord, for sending me to this place! In a few weeks I plan to pick up a missionary trade to take to the field. I am hoping for Pumping water tech taught by Keith Larrimore, and if I have the funds at that time, a well drilling class will be added. But in all this I must remember "A man may plan his ways, but the Lord prepares his steps". I need to spend time in prayer to see if this is the direction of the Lord our God.http://chenetwork.org/index.php

Prov 16:9 In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps. – NIV

In Christ,

David Greene

EE-Taow! The Mouk Story

This is the powerful story of missionary Mark Zuck and a Papua New Guinea tribe called the Mouk people, a must see for those with a soft spot for evangelism. The celebration when the Mouk people come to Christ makes me cry every time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFQQ5TvrzsU&feature=related and this is the "follow up" and discipleship of the Mouk people. EE-Taow! the next chapter... the villagers teach the story of Jesus to other tribes.

Rev 5:9-10
"You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth." - NIV

In Christ,
David Greene

It's Official, I Am A Missionary!

Dear David,


With this e-mail I want to officially welcome you as a member of Equip effective today, February 24, 2012.


We're glad to have you as part of Equip, and we'll be looking forward to your 3-month short-term trip to serve under Equip in an overseas ministry, possibly in Uganda, in the near future.




In Him,


Harold L. Bracken II
Director of personnel
Equip

The Rabbits & Permaculture

Over the summer I came upon a great idea from a man at my church named Stan Smothers, the idea was simple... one female rabbit with heavy breeding could in one year produce as much meat as a cow, and he puts it "They come in meal sized packages." I found this hard to believe so I looked it up and it’s a true fact. Wikipedia stated around 800 offspring. But you never know. Stan's old college had a self-sustaining ecosystem project using rabbits, a garden, and a worm bed. The system went like this... a rabbit cage with hardware cloth for flooring perched over a worm bed next to a vegetable garden would with a little catalyzing take care of its self. The droppings from the rabbits fall threw the floor into the compost pile  (rabbit pellets are like solid gold for a garden). Then once mixed up by the worms it can be shoveled into the garden to grow vegetables. You eat the produce and then the scraps get fed back to the rabbits,and occasionally when the cage gets crowded you eat a rabbit. Of course, the rabbits need more to eat than scarps from the garden, so I figured they could eat the grass around my house. (Rabbits can eat almost anything plant material wise, as long as its not poisonous). I researched this and put it into action. The missionary Keith Larrimore at Equip with whom I was working at that time had informed me, that mostly you need to use scraps in third world countries as opposed to fresh building materials. So I dove into my father’s scrap lumber pile and in a day or two had a very nice rabbitry with some help from my brother Aaron. The rabbitry stood four feet off the ground with a box below for catching the droppings and hardware cloth for floor and sides and an air tight breeding box filled with straw in the back. I had a steel pot for feeding the rabbits some pellets when needed, and two water feeders so they could stay hydrated. I bought two large snow-white New Zealand rabbits and kept them in the cage and they seemed to like it. They were more like pets than livestock. Then my brother Aaron who helped me a lot during this process found two more rabbits - a New Zealand male and a mystery brown female rabbit who turned out to be a mutt of some very rare and very valuable species of meat rabbit - Chinchilla, Champagne d'Argent, and Californian. I named the male Buck as he was the tamest and let him run around in the yard. He followed me around like a dog on a farm and used him to breed the other rabbits. In a month’s time the brown rabbit gave birth to eight baby rabbits, five of which survived infancy and are now rather large and crowding the cage, and one white female just gave birth yesterday to a litter of naked little baby rabbits sitting in a white nest of the mother,s fur. No major problems have occurred during the whole project other than a bear break in or two. The manure doesn’t smell too bad, because its just dry little pellets. That is unless it gets wet, which it does under the water feeders, yuck. I take the manure and place it on my Hugelkultur garden or permaculture garden (richsoil.com/hugelkultur) which is just a pile of rotting logs and debris that break down over 20 years to release nutrients and create a underground sponge, like how under the forest floor its always wet. It also adds benefits like... how the dirt partial compaction is less on a domed structure rather than a flat mono-crop garden allowing for less strain on the roots and a variance in sunlight for different plants depending on the bed’s position to the sun. I will plant crops on my garden during the spring that benefit each other such as carrots, that draw nutrients from down deep for the plants surrounding them due to the long tiny root they send way down. I have completed the Hugelkulture garden, but due to it being winter I won’t start the cycle until spring planting season. As well, the rabbits have already eaten every green weed, grass, and plant I could give them. They cleared out a plot of impenetrable weeds behind the chicken feed house (my father raises chickens on our farm) so this winter the rabbits are eating into a project deficit at 10$ a bag of feed. The total project has cost 75$. I will post a photo album of my project when I can; my computer is not synced with my printer at the moment. I did all this with the thought of one day using a process similar to this in the mission field if it is God’s will, or even in some small way, use it to His glory.

 - Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

In Christ

David Greene

The love God has given me for the people of South Sudan

December 12, 2011
During my time at A-B Tech I was given a writing assignment about secession. It was an open subject,and South Sudan having just seceded from Sudan after a relative total of 50 years of civil wars on July 9th, 2011, I decided would be the most interesting and relevant. God used this time to inform me of the lives of the South Sudanese. Four million people were displaced, two million died and nine million total remain, half of which only survive because of US aid packets. Yet they sit on some of the most fertile soil in Sub-Saharan Africa. All the produce sold in the public markets is imported. The new government is doing well though. They have a finance ministry that is increasing the country’s wealth and a strong leader in Salva Kiir Mayardit, the ex-leader of the SPLA Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army.
Although they have a fine and growing government around the capital and main cities, most of the people on South Sudan have no concept of government, themselves having never met each other. Guerrilla forces such as the LRA, Lords Resistance Army, run amuck in the bush. They kill, rape, and take what they want from the villagers. God used this to illuminate the troubles of the world to me. My heart goes out to them in Christ. The nation is split between three religions. The civil war was fought with the Islamic controlled north, over their neglect of taking care of the people of the south. The north took all national revenues and put it towards building up the nation’s capital of Khartoum. When the split happened as a result of the 2005 peace agreement the north lost the bulk of their oil wells, which were located in the south.  However, the south has no way of exporting the oil and the north does. So for the moment both sides are biting their tongues and are hopefully going to work together. But history may repeat its self once more and war may start again.

-Please let me know if any information is incorrect.

Philippians 1: The end of 18, - 19 “Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and the help that has been given to me by the spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance.” 

In Christ,

David Greene

My Current Goal

December 10th, 2011

I have been talking with a missionary organization named Equip about a short term three month trip into the mission field to learn and serve. I have submitted my paperwork and am praying that I may fulfill God's will for my life daily. I pray he blesses this web log. This will be my first experience in another country as a missionary, although I have ventured to Italy and Greece in 2008. I have been privileged even at a young age to carry Christ’s name through my scholastic enterprises and will continue to do so.

I will keep you posted on how things turn out. I need your prayers on this matter,

- Philippians 1:21 For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. 22 If I am to go on living in the body this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I chose I do not know.

In Christ

David Greene