Water crisis causes us to close down our vegetable production

This week tough decisions had to be made.  Ian and I are not afraid of making tough decisions, but that doesn’t make them any easier.

On Tuesday, Ian sent this letter out to our US and Canadian Boards of Directors.  It read,

“Dear Boards Members,

Due to the current drought that southern Africa is suffering through right now we have had to prayerfully make the decision to stop all vegetable growing on Project Canaan, effective immediately.

There have been a few days of light rain, for which we give thanks, but it is not nearly enough to moisten the land or fill our dams. 

We stretched the water as far as we felt reasonable, without jeopardizing the domestic use from the borehole (dam #2 is an indicator of the water in the domestic use borehole), and we now know that we must stop growing vegetables.  The dairy and egg laying projects will continue.

This decision has not been made lightly as it will not only impact 40 employees (and their 13+ each dependents), but it impacts our income projections for 2016 and beyond.  

Living on a farm with nothing growing in the fields is discouraging to all and hard on morale, but it is a direct reflection of what the whole country (region) is going through.  Our people are suffering, food prices are escalating (the maize staple have increased by 66% this year!), and there is still no food in the school system.  

There is no doubt that our focus now must be raising the funds to bring the water from the springs at the top of the mountain in order for us to become “water secure”.  There is no guarantee that the rains will fall in the next rainy season (which starts in November) so we must direct the water that the Lord has provided on this land for His work.

Please keep us all in your prayers. This is a tough week at Project Canaan and surrounding communities.

Thanks,

Ian”

The line from the natural, year-round springs and the dams that we need to fill.

That’s what is happening here.  Please pray for all involved and please pray for the funding needed to bring the water down from the top of the mountain so that we can become “water secure”. We need a total of $800,000 (yep, a BIG number) to install 8,000 yards of piping and it will take us 6-8 months to build the pipeline once we have the funding. In the meantime, we pray daily that our last borehole does not go dry.

Live from Swaziland … I will never take water for granted again.

Janine

PS  Update on last week's blog. We got all the funding needed for Isaiah and Seth's ear surgeries!  Here is a photo of them with their passports!  Their surgery is April 6th in South Africa.  Thank you Lord for your provision!

Isaiah and Seth