Farm visits


 The farmer we visited today prepared a meal for us. It was rice, gravy and the meat was a species of rabbit found in the jungle. It didn't taste too bad. It's been more than 24 hours and I'm not sick so I think I'm okay.

We stayed overnight at Elder and Sister Dustin's house. One of the members of their branch just received his mission call. He had to go to the Dustin's to open the electronic letter. He is going to one of the Nigeria missions. He was very excited. Nigeria is actually a much nicer country than Liberia. It will be hard on him when he comes home.

We spent all day Friday and part day Saturday visiting farmers who had attended our farm training class.  Some of them required quite a bit of hiking. This little footbridge at least had hand rails. Most did not. These are not Cheryl's favorite type of bridges.

All the farms were very impressive.  In addition to the training they were given a reference notebook, seeds, fertilizer, pesticide, pesticide sprayer, a watering can and some hand tools. Based on these first 10 farms we visited it seems like the training was very successful. There was a total of 168 farmers in the class, we'll have to visit a few more farms to get an idea of how well the training went.

It was surprising how important the little investment in equipment and supplies was to the farmers. Most of them would not be able to come up with the funds to purchase them initially. The plan is for them to make enough from their farm to be able to replenish the supplies for the next crop.

The farms we visited were very impressive. We saw a lot of Liberians working very hard. Given some opportunity they show great ingenuity and dedication. I left feeling pretty hopeful for the country. If the government can just run things a little bit better and not siphon off some money due to corruption things could improve quite a bit.

This is how bamboo grows in the jungle

These are cashew nuts.

This is the remains of the tanker that exploded a few weeks ago. As of last count over 100 have died.

This is the mass grave from the tanker explosion. Most who are in it were not able to be identified. Our church building is in the background


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