VisionTrust

From Matt Storer: Trip to India to research possible project to help children that have been forced to work and live in rock quarry as "slaves".

2012-01-18T06:23:00.006-07:00

The following are my notes (not edited, just my quick typing of notes) for the first few days of my trip. I hope to send the second set of notes on the details of the project tomorrow.

Tuesday Jan 10 – Background and Goal of Trip to India
Left from Colorado Springs at 8 AM, headed for Chennai, India connecting through Chicago and Frankfurt. Why? Main objective to is visit a project dedicated to saving children from the doom of human trafficking. What does that mean? In general, Human Trafficking is the practice of forcing people to work as slaves and the possible trading/selling them as property to do as the owners wish. In our case, nearly 3,000 children are currently under the ownership of rock quarry owners in the state of Andre Prahdesh, India. My job is to research how they got into this situation, evaluate the local Christians on the ground dedicated to freeing the children and then make the following determination: Is this a legitimate partner and will VisionTrust commit to helping transform the children to live freely and live for God?

Wednesday Jan 11 – Almost to India
Ernie Taylor, CEO and Founder of VisionTrust accompanied me on this journey. We Arrived in Frankfurt on Jan 11 at 5:25 AM, then fly to Chennai (used to be called Madras) at 10:05 AM. 11 hours later, we landed at 11:30 PM. We cleared immigration and then wait another 45 minutes for our six bags to come out. Next task was to get through customs without any issues because Ernie and I had our carts stacked with bags and two carry-ons each. One of our bags had two big “C” chalk marks on it to raise the awareness of the customs guys. We had nearly 300 pounds of school supplies for our children – mostly donated through school supplies drives in the USA. I’ve been praying the whole journey that we can make it safely and with no problems. By the time we made it through the line and got to the official, somehow, miraculously a wet wipe had appeared and cleaning that bag. The man just flagged us on through. Praise the Lord we made it through. Our director, Merwin Joshua, was there to pick us up.

Thursday Jan 12 – Still traveling to Final Destination
Instead of driving another hour to our regular hotel called Breeze Hotel that we use while staying in Chennai, Merwin found one called Mars Hotel, just 15 minutes from the airport. I noticed that Merwin locked the doors of our vehicle as drove through the almost completely unlit neighborhood. By the time we checked and got situated in our rooms, it was almost 2 AM. Ernie and I shared a queen bed (better than a double!). The rate for our room that had warm water and A/C was $72. We needed to stay close to the airport because our wake-up alarms needed to be set for 4:30 AM in order to make the next “in-country” flight from Chennai to Vizag at 7:15 AM.

We flew on SpiceJet airlines for about 90 minutes and landed in Vizag around 9:30 AM. This coastal town, North of Chennai, is a port city with a lot of large shipping containers and industry. We grabbed breakfast at the airport, a #1 combo that had 3 chutneys, a dosa, idly and a Vada. $3. Finally, around 11:30 we grabbed a taxi and headed for the train station. Merwin secured us 3 seats in the A/C car for $4 each. We rode on the train for a little over 2 hours to a town called Kakinada. This is the home town of Praveen, the pastor that leads Christian work in the state and has accepted the responsibility of caring for 330 newly released children for their live of slave labor in several slate quarries. Praveen met us at the station and drove us to our hotel called Royal Park. I highly recommend this place as it is clean, good food and service and affordable. Our rooms were $70. I called it an “oasis” at this point in the trip. About 7 PM Praveen picked us up at the airport and drove us to his father’s house were a couple hundred children are staying with them. Upon arrival, we had a grand welcome by the children and connected with Roland Bergeron (President of Water of Life – he invited us to come and knows Praveen) and Jim Moorhead (Executive Pastor in Austin TX and son of my friend Fenton Moorhead, mission pastor at Brookwood in Greenville, SC). We ALL participated in serving food to each child. These children are from difficult backgrounds, some from quarries but most have been abandoned. We didn’t come to work with this set of children….at this point. We still had another 12 hour drive ahead of us the next day to meet them.

In bed by 10:30 PM after an AWESOME hot shower.

Friday Jan 13 – Twelve more hours by mini-bus to Final Destination
We left the hotel at 9 AM and headed for Kadapa area. We stopped about 2 PM for lunch in a town and ate shrimp curry, mutton roganjosh, nan, pollo fish, dal and rice. Good and HOT spicy. Eat with your right hand. We kept driving for another 6 hours. We arrived at 8 PM in a remote area where Praveen has been able to house about 300 of the children since Christmas. The place had five rooms, each 14’x21’. They gave us one of the rooms to sleep on the floor with woven mats, a towel, sheet and pillow. Very nice. However, this means that each child had about 3.9 square feet to use to sleep and have indoor activities. They graciously served us food around 9:30 PM and then we set up our spaces for bed. Ernie and I each brought a super lightweight cot that you put together. We were glad. That night, the temperature had dropped from mid-80’s to about mid 50’s. A sheet was not quite enough. The children had to be cold too. The Ambien didn’t work for some reason…bummer.

Saturday Jan 14 - Observation, Interviews and Quarry Visit
After being up most of the night, I just laid on my portable cot trying to catch a few more minutes of rest. We were all up and outside by 7 AM or earlier, ready to start our day. The 330 children were up closer to 6 AM as I could hear them in the room next to ours, laughing and talking – it was a pleasant way to wake up. This location, called Johnson Campus, was nearly 60 km from the closest town large enough to have a public high school and closest village is named Buttapalli Village. The property has a borehole (drilled well with casing and a pump), but did not have any toilets. Keep in mind that 330 children plus about 20 pastors and widows equals a lot of human waste. This is a huge problem.

Breakfast was cooked on open fire in large caldrons by several widows volunteering from a nearby village. They were cooking millet and sambar (like a broth with a few chopped veggies).We started serving the children the food around 8:30 AM. After breakfast, we prepared to have about 50 of the older girls meet with us and ask three of them to share their story. Ernie did a great job of having fun first and telling the girls about himself and me, all to get them more comfortable with us. We knew that asking them questions about what had happened to them would be very emotional and difficult. Sunitha Johnson helped us get organized and translated English to Telugu. She currently runs an orphanage for about 60 children, but has recently agreed to help Praveen take care of the 330 children with hopes of doing it full-time.

The first girl we talked with was named Aruna(meaning-sunrise). This 17 year old girl has 3 sisters and 1 brother. Her parents have died. When she was 7 years old, her parents had borrowed money from lenders to help pay for things. The lenders were from a rock quarry, targeting families like Aruna’s, hoping that they can’t repay the 5,000 to 10,000 rupees (typical amounts borrowed equivalent to $98 to $196). The interest is nearly double the amount borrowed and the repayment schedule is three months. If the family can’t repay, then one of the most frequent options is to take one or more of the children and force them to live and work until the debt has been repaid. For Aruna, the debt never seemed to be repaid and she lived in a slate quarry for 10 years. The quarry managers forced her to work from early in the morning until sundown – giving her one bottle per day and one meal per day. She witnessed children and other people working in the quarry suffer horrible deaths by accidents. The children were motivated to work by beatings and of course, other forms of abuse were regular. Ernie asked her what she enjoys now that she is saved from the quarry. She said learning new things, playing, singing and being free. Her favorite food is dal rice.

Imagine the tears from everyone listening….

The next girl was named Dhrakshavalli. She is 14 years old and has 5 sisters. Unlike Aruna, her parents are still alive, but they work in one of the quarries and do not want to raise her. Caught in the cycle of working in the quarries for nearly no wages, she was eventually forced to work to cover her parents debt, just like Aruna’s story. Dhrakshavalli wants to become a teacher. One of the challenges for her, and most of the children, is that they haven’t been to school yet…ever….

The final girl was named Priscilla. This 18 year old has 4 brothers and 1 sister – she being the oldest. She worked in a quarry for 7 years. Again, debts incurred by her parents were collected by taking her. She suffered from one particular manager abusing her at the quarry. Her family lived about 15 km away. So close, but no one would come to rescue her until now. Her village name is Madlikadachudrapadu (yes, try saying that three times fast).

As you might imagine, there stories were super emotional and exhausting for everyone.

After a short break, we spent the next 2 hours talking with Praveen, working out some communication challenges and expectations that we’ve experience over the last couple months and the last few days. The main issue is trust – Praveen is not sure who VisionTrust really is and thinks of his past experience for fraudulent non-profits WHILE our team is trying to verify that facts and determine if Praveen can trusted. This is why we get paid the “big-bucks” right? As the evening moved on, we drove about 40 minutes out to two of the rock quarries where most of the children had been slaves. Now, all of the children at these two locations have been released to Praveen (only paid workers are now there as a result). It really was chilling to see the area, touch the rock and see the crude shelters where the children lived. Then we returned to Johnson Campus and spent the rest of the time playing games with the children and eating dinner. In bed a bit earlier, but another long night loomed.

Sunday Jan 15 – Remote Village Visit
Up again super early, closer to 5:30 for most of us. Walked about 10 minutes to a private spot to use the restroom. Washed up with hot water heated by the widows and brushed my teeth using bottled water. No shower now for a couple days…nor a real toilet ;-) For the next couple hours, we interacted with the children and each other – always learning more about the situation and exploring ideas on how best to care for the children now and long-term. We never ran out of anything to discuss.

We left for a village visit around 9:30 AM. The village, called Banavdei (meaning “Arrow Village”) was about 2 hour drive and is the target of money lenders operated by quarry owners. We needed permission to walk this area and permission to enter the village. One of the reason is that the quarry owners control who comes and goes. They have already made nearly 20 loans that are due by the end of February in this village alone. That means that 20 more children may be taken if they are not repaid. After driving down a dirt road, we parked and then walked another 30 minutes or more. All along the road side were signs of viper snake pits and many animal prints in the dirt. As we entered the village, I saw two bore holes (water wells) and thatch huts. This location appears very similar to the villages I’ve visited in many of the African nations. We were welcomed by a small group of children and adults sitting in the “courtyard” area of a family group of huts fenced in to protect against tigers, bears, wild water buffalo and other animals. As we were sitting down to be formally greeted, I saw several children just stop, pee and go, regardless of location. Most of the children under the age of 8 or so were not wearing pants. The adults seemed to be fairly clean but the children were wild and filthy.

The children and adults sang two songs, then we prayed with the people and Ernie, Merwin and Roland spoke a few words, sharing about Jesus. We had a couple people share their stories. Of note, one man named Caleb said he has been the pastor for the last several years and that he is one of two people that have gone to school from this village. He finished 7th grade. The closest primary school, if I understood this correctly, is about 45 minutes by vehicle. At this point we were invited to eat the lunch that we paid for (meaning we provided funds to feed the group)…serving everyone at the meeting rice and Indian gravy – super spicy. No forks…or napkins…right hand….

People don’t have and therefore do not use pit toilets (latrines). Their homes are made from thatch walls made from bamboo strips, thatch roofs and dirt floors. I spoke to a family named Nagana and learned that in their compound area they have 20 people living in 3 huts (one hut sleeps 12). They build their own houses. These 20 people represent a set of grandparents and 3 families. Each family has about 2 or more goats, however all of the goats are in a group and stay in the compound along with some “free range” chickens. This family said that the main medical problems they face are TB, malaria and Chikungunya (an insect borne disease). Regular meal is based on what the children/young adults find in the forest including rabbit, seeds, berries, leaves and they make millet (a grain).

I prayed over the family before leaving and then they asked me to pray for a baby that was ill and they asked Jim to pray over a baby named Grace whose father just recently died. We left around 4:00 PM and arrived back at Johnson Campus at 6:30 PM.

Why did I visit this place? I wanted to see where the children enslaved come from and learn a little more about their life before the quarry and why their parents take the loans. Why do they take the loans? Mostly as an advance to simply survive in hopes they can repay by selling an animal or something.

Merwin, Ernie and I packed up our things and then we all met for another hour to flush out our next steps being: pray and see what the Lord leads us to do and then contact each other on Monday night. So we said goodbye to the children and adults around 8:30 PM and drove back to Chennai. Arrived at 3:30 AM. LONG drive! Praise God we made it safely as the roads are narrow and have flush with bus traffic, animals and pedestrians. Our driver stayed awake!

Monday Jan 16 – Prayer, Debrief and Decisions
Ernie and I checked into the Breeze Hotel at 3:30 AM and I was delirious at this point - ready for a hot shower and a real bed. I think I stayed in the shower for 20 mins. I crawled into bed a little after 4 AM and slept until 10 AM. My first, real, solid night sleep since leaving home 6 days ago.

After another long hot shower (at this point, you can’t have too many), I started working on documenting my trip up to this point. Throughout the meetings, interviews and observations, I’ve been taking notes and trying to draw conclusions as best as possible. A little after 12 noon, I met with Ernie for a meal at the hotel and then got right back to work on documenting and planning.

By the end of the evening, Praveen and Merwin talked on the phone and we agreed to move forward to work together. We will work on a simple short-term and long-term strategy to make sure that the children’s immediate needs are met and that we have a sustainable and proper solution for them going forward. Now we just need to hammer out the details…now the hard part begins!

Tuesday Jan 17 - Back in Chennai
Today I continued to work on the framework of the new partnership, describing ideas and expectations and drafting a new Ministry Agreement that formalizes expectations of financial accountability, beliefs and management expectations. It is 11:36 PM here. Hopefully these documents will be ready to email to Praveen and friends by Wednesday.

Wednesday Jan 18 - Spend day with Staff and Bishops of ECI
Business meetings with our longtime partner are planned on this day here in India called Evangelical Church of India. VisionTrust has an office, director and staff managing 1600 children in 26 project locations at the moment. Ernie, Merwin and I took the staff out to a great India lunch to say thank you for all of their hard work.

Thursday Jan 19 – Heading Home
Left from The Breeze Hotel at 7:30 PM for the dinner near the airport in Chennai. At 11:30 PM we checked in for our 1:45 AM to Frankfurt on Luftansa, headed for home!

Lise - A Special Girl from Malawi

2011-12-16T19:24:00.006-07:00

Taken and edited from Matt Storer's 2011 Malawi trip notes (Nov 29 to Dec 7)

A knock on my door at 7 woke me up. I took the opportunity to shower because the water was available and ate a great breakfast of fried eggs with onions. By 8:15 am Tila and I were I in the Toyota with our driver, Amon who is a Muslim. We drove to the Ngoni tribal area to about 52 km to a community of 21 villages called Katsekera. (Tila is a Malawian who VisionTrust is considering hiring as a program lead for a future project in Malawi. He and I are researching Katsekera as a possible location.)

The drive took two hours on a dirt road through the low mountains where agriculture is the occupation. Corn and Irish potatoes are the main crops. The language spoken by the Ngoni people is called Chichewa – it is also the national language in addition to English. The Ngoni have a history of being heavy beer drinkers and having multiple wives. I found out that one their favorite non-alcoholic drinks is called Tobwa, you guessed it, made from corn. I tried it and don't necessarily recommend it - let's say it is an acquired taste.

My main goal on this trip is to find out the truth about the real needs and challenges faced by children living in one of the poorest and hardest hit with AIDS areas in the world.

One of the places we visited was home to two girls, Eva who is 15 years old and Lise who is 12 years old. Eva dropped out of school in standard 3. Lise is still in standard 6. Eva works in the fields to survive. They eat 2 times per day a meager meal of corn flour or potatoes. I asked Lise what subject in school is the most difficult. She said Math. I agreed ;-0 Then I asked her what subject was her favorite and she said English. Next I asked what she would like to do when she finishes school. She said, “A nurse so I can help people who are sick.” Lise does a lot of the cooking which is a big task as that means she makes the fire and gets the water. Like David, these two children have inherited a garden (land). Most the land is just passed down from generations. I asked who lives next door to them and found out that Eva’s older sister does. She is 23 and has a baby. Her husband left. She dropped out of school at standard 6 when she was a little girl. In addition to this sister, I found out that two aunts also live next door (by the way, Eva and Lise’s home doesn’t have a literal door). One aunt just died (has no husband) and the other aunt has AIDS.

It is a bit painful for me to press on with questions and dig for answers and how things work, especially when so much tragedy is involved. However, isn’t is interesting to discover that there is always more information to learn before drawing conclusions. For example, had I not asked Eva and Lise about other family members (aka who lives next to you), I would not have discovered that she has an older sister living next door, or that the aunt with AIDS and the older sister both have gardens too. And…they don’t work together on the gardens, they each work their own. Wow! When I discovered that they don’t work together, I was shocked. Why not? They need each other so much but in their culture, the norm is to do it separately. We will evaluate this behavior later and challenge them to work as a team to support those who are weaker.

A little about Village Housing:
The homes are small rectangular huts made from homemade clay bricks with either thatch or tin roofs. Most huts in the poor communities have dirt floors. The older style of huts are round. Most of the round huts are for the kitchen or storage or used by the super poor. As an example, Eva and Lise use a round hut that is about 6 feet in diameter – the length of your bed.

P.S. GREAT NEWS!
We will be starting a VisionTrust project in this community this January! More information on the proposed solution can be found in the Malawi Trip Notes 2011 (Dec 1-4). We will need start up funds for a motorcyle, office setup, a solar panel solution for electricity, and funding to support at least 40 children for the first 6 months. Total amount needed is $31,000. If you would like to support this project, go to www.visiontrust.org and click on donate. Then complete the description field with "Malawi Startup". Thanks!

Malawi Trip Notes 2011 (Dec 5-7)

2011-12-16T19:23:00.000-07:00

Monday, December 5, 2011

Do you want to know the key to sleeping in an a place that is completely different than what you are used to and in a different time zone? Work super hard all day, pray, read the Word before going to bed and take a sleeping pill. Yep, that is my secret. Seriously speaking, this strategy has really helped me be ready for each new day of making friends and discovering the beauty and uniqueness of the Malawian people living in the villages.

Tila and I were out of the door by 8 am – on our way back to the village area that we were on Saturday. Amon our driver did a great job driving through the fog on the dirt road congested not with vehicles, but women, children, men cows, goats and dogs. The 2 hour drive was different today than on the weekend. People were out working the fields, working hard plowing by hand, planting seed, fertilizing, etc. (I am not a farming so forgive me on the details here). About 30 minutes into the drive, I was in a haze as the road seemed to feel harder on my spine today and the fog made it hard to see out. But then, out of nowhere, to my right a boy about 13 appeared on the edge of the field. He was looking at me, holding his hoe across the back of his neck with the other arm hanging over it. His red scarf was blowing and his eyes seemed to penetrate mine. I was frozen for some reason…then quickly I scrambled to get my camera but the vehicle was moving and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know whether to stop and go back or miss capturing this amazing and beautiful image. By now we had really gotten further down the road and so I gave up the idea of stopping. Why am I noting this? Because, even as I write this, I can see him clearly, the image still moves me.

Eventually we made it to Katsekera. Tila and I were greeted by the chairman of the CBO (Community Based Organization of the surrounding villages) and a few other people. Our goal today was to personally visit the Under 5 Feeding program that had been started by the CBO, then visit the Secondary School (high school) and finally, visit one of the three Primary Schools.

Under 5 Feeding Program
The Under 5 Feeding program is supposed to feed children at-risk of malnourishment 5 days a week and provide some development activity. I wasn’t sure what to expect. As we pulled up to a boarded up square hut, there were about 40 or so children squeezed on the “porch” or, more like stoop, half of them crying and most of them with runny noses. Two women stood next to them and one of them had register (a book that lists the children by name, age, etc and tracks their attendance). Tila and I greeted everyone. I asked to see the book. I quickly noticed that the register was falling apart, as if it had been used so much that it was disintegrating. However, upon closer inspection, Tila and I could see that only 2 weeks of activity have been were recorded (The CBO, with the help of some outside donations for the food, restarted the program in October). At a glance, the attendance checkmarks looked to be about 65%. I asked if the children go inside or stay out on the “porch”. They said, “No.” Then I asked what if it rains, what do you do? They said, “We don’t meet.” Tila and I looked at each other as if were knew what each other was thinking, “really?”. I asked to see the kitchen. The women took us around back to a round “kitchen” hut. I asked what were the specific ingredients in the big iron cooking pot on the ground over a fire. They told me it was corn meal (nsima) mixed with soya beans. For you and me, think grits with a porridge consistency. I asked what other ingredients was in there and what else to they eat. Nothing…and nothing. They were should have had green beans somewhere according to Tila – but we didn’t see them and they didn’t mention them. All in all, this is why Tila and I are planning to shut it down. Then we can open a new concept called a Learning Center at the nearby Primary School for these at-risk children, many who are orphaned. This new program would be run by VisionTrust and be the beginning of a long-term holistic development program that will not only do nutritional support correctly and consistently, but provide early childhood development and spiritual mentoring – all the way through Secondary School (high school).

Secondary School Interview/Visit
From the feeding center, we walked to the Secondary School. I asked Tila if we could “walk” the village so I can get a better feel for the village and get some badly needed exercise. (flights+meetings+driving for hours = very sore body). The school was about a 10 minute walk, just down the hill. We had a gracious welcome and we found ourselves in the headmaster’s office. I am not if I’ve mentioned this yet, but there is no electricity in this community unless provided by some localized source like solar, wind or generator. So, the office and school does not have electricity for lighting or information management on a computer. This little office was crammed with paper records and charts stuck to the walls listing facts about enrollment, who is responsible for what, lessons about seed germination, etc.

Tila and I spent the next 60 minutes quizzing the headmaster, named Mr. Pierce, about everything. He is in his first year at the school and lives with is family in the only teacher housing available. In villages, and some other areas, it is a common perk for teachers to have housing next to the school provided, much like the old days in the US. The pay is not great, so free housing makes up for a lot of lost opportunity. But the biggest reason for housing is that the teacher housing is usually the best in the area compared to the usual hut style buildings with dirt floors and thatch roofs. In other words, the way to attract a decent teacher (or for that matter any teacher), the community needs to provide housing. Most people are trying to get to the bigger cities where there is some infrastructure like electricity, running water and public transportation.

Back to Mr. Pierce. He said they have 150 students and 8 teachers plus one volunteer (18 students to 1 teacher)
Form 1 (9th grade) = 55 (30 boys / 25 girls)
Form 2 (10th grade) = 46 (25 boys / 21 girls)
Form 3 (11th grade) = 27 (15 boys / 12 girls…not sure on this number)
Form 4 (12th grade) = 22 (11 boys / 11 girls) IN 2010, only 8 of 20 students passed national exam for graduation. 1 who failed chose to repeat. The others quit.

Notice the dropout rate from Form 2 to Form 3, almost 50%. One huge reason is that the students must pass the national Junior Certificate exam to continue on in to Form 3.

School starts at 7:30 am breaks at 9:30 for 30 min, then breaks at Noon for 30 min, then finishes at 3:30 pm. The children bring water to school in pails/buckets if they want a drink and bring a snach/lunch. I didn’t get to find out the details, bummer. There will be a water source near the school. I walked down a few minutes to it. It is a “shallow well”, meaning, it is hand dug like a pit latrine, brick up with a cement top and pump (in these case). It is dug out, but nothing else has been done. The school has the cement and bricks to brick up the inside. Then they will wait for Concern Universal to install a hand pump and safe cover (these guys are an NGO contracted with grant money to repair boreholes – deep well with casing and a pump – as well as providing some new shallow wells.). The bummer is each school should have a borehole is possible due to the hygiene and high volume demands. As I inspected the well, I asked does it dry up during the dry months? They said, “Yes” and smiled. While the shallow wells are super cheap to do, they don’t make sense in this case for the reasons that I’ve stated.

Sports, Extra Curricular:
Boys like to play soccer and the girls “net-ball”. For the arts, they only have a variety type show. No music, no choir, no art, no, no, no.

I asked Mr. Pierce what his biggest challenge was. He said, “Having qualified teachers and keeping them.” He is the only one on staff that has a diploma in Education. The other 7 teachers completed Form 4. Three of them are trying to go to school for Education during the breaks between terms. Teachers at this school earn about $80/month compared to bigger city teachers at $150/month (qualified teachers in the city). In addition, he told me that they don’t have the teaching staff or materials for science (no books, lab or lab materials). Then I asked him why does he want to stay at this school so far from anywhere. He said is that he is called to improve education in the villages like this one. Tila asked Mr. Pierce what he likes the most. He said, “The school has a great relationship with the community.” He also told us that his students perform very good in Math and English.

School Funding Sources:
The school is funded from student tuition + Textbook Revolving Fund ($2.50 is once per year to assist with buying text books.). The standard tuition is $10 per term, they attend 3 terms per year. The $10 goes to the following expense:
1) $2.50 goes to Malawi Ministry of Education
2) $2.50 goes to General Purpose Fund (Parent Teacher Organization decides how and where to spend this)
3) $2.50 goes to pay the teacher salary
4) $2.50 goes to Development Fund (No idea where this goes)

In addition, the students must pay for peripheral items like supplies, uniform, and national exam fees, of which there are two:
1) Junior Certificate to go from Form 2 to 3 at a cost of $4
2) Malawi School Certificate of Education (basic high school graduation) to go from Form 4 to 5 and then on to college at a cost of $8

So, on average, a student in Form 1 to Form 4 needs to have approximately $32.50 to $40 + uniforms and stationary + lunch.

Primary School Interview/Visit (this is the central one, closest to the health center)
Tila and I walked from the Secondary School back to the center of the area where one of the Primary Schools is located. This walk took about 20 minutes. I enjoyed this time of seeing things from a different perspective and it gave me a chance to take some pictures as well as interact with some of the children in the area. It also gave me a feel for how long a walk it is to the Secondary School from the other two, more distant, Primary Schools – I bet at least 60 minute walk away or more.

Upon arriving at the Primary School, Tila and I were quickly whisked over into the worst room of all of the rooms at the school complex. It was the school office. Very narrow, dark and the walls were cracking and the roof has many small holes. Like the Secondary School office, this was THE place for all of the paperwork, reports, books and resources. Unlike the Secondary School, we had about 10 people in this meeting, sitting in close quarters. I enjoyed the open atmosphere and smiles. The headmaster of this school was the same gentleman that joined us on Saturday for our Community Based Organization meeting.

Soon we jumped into the details of the school. The complex had 4 buildings with two classes each, for 8 grades (called Standards). The older children had the newest rooms and the youngest had the worst. The community tore down one of the rooms on the end of the oldest building because it was ready to collapse. Honestly, the remaining two classrooms and office (where we were meeting) looked dangerous too. 10 teachers (including the headmaster) teach from 7:30 am to about 4:00 pm. They are trying a pilot schedule mandated by the government to balance the children out to improve the ratio of teachers per class.
1,2,3 got from 7:30 am to Noon and are split into 2 classes each,

Student to teacher ratio is 108 to 1! The classroom sizes are so large in the younger grades that they have to sit on the floor…all day….because you can only fit about 50 students with desks – if you are lucky.

Enrollment:
1080 children, 492 boys and 588 girls.
Standard 1 = 236
Standard 2 = 152
Standard 3 = 165
Standard 4 = 152
Standard 5 = 133
Standard 6 = 107
Standard 7 = 61
Standard 8 = 74
236 are in Standard 1 and 74 are in Standard 8. More than 66% of those who started in first Standard have dropped out by the 8th Standard.

In 2010, total enrollment was 1,487 children, nearly 33% reducation in attendance compared to 2011.
In 2010, 392 were in Standard 1 and 77 were in Standard 8. More than 75% of those who started in first Standard have dropped out by the 8th Standard.

OVERALL, I don’t think we need to guess if we should or shouldn’t work in this area…do you?

Funding:
Opposite from the funding model using by the Secondary School, the Ministry of Education funds the almost all of the costs for the school. The exceptions that we undercover, after over an hour+ of meeting, include a 25 cent stationary fee charged by the Parent Teacher Association for the Development Fund (meaning, they collect money in coordination with the headmaster and spend it on photocopies, extra chalk and other supplies.) This only comes to $270. If they collect it. We discovered that this fee isn’t successfully collected! In addition, the government sends (hopefully at some point in the year they told me) $420 for a total of $690 to buy supplies - for the whole year for the whole school! If the Standard has books for a subject, it an average 6 students to one book.

Each student finishing Standard 8 must take a national exam and pay the school about $3 some-time during the first term to cover the actual exam and extra time spent at school (Standard 8 stays the longest at school in an attempt to get them ready for the exam.)

Students are responsible to pay for the uniform, notebooks, pencils, etc.

Teachers are paid an average of $60 per month directly from the Ministry of Education into their personal bank accounts. The closest bank is back in Ntcheu, 2 hours by car, 52 km away. THIS means that these teachers who make only $60 per month have to spend money to travel to the bank a far way off to get paid. In addition, they have to travel on a business day when the banks are open. THIS means that they close school that day while they go get their money. THIS means in addition to any other holiday, or super bad weather, they will miss close to 12 more days of school because of this government solution. Again, Tila and I short of looked at each when we discovered this and the teachers smiled. Like they know this is not a good idea. But can you do? (I think we can do something!)

Drove all the way back, 4 hours to Lilongwe, the capital and spent the night at ABC, had a great evening with Tila and the Spencer family. Prepared for the next day’s chapel sermon until 11:00 pm.

Tuesday - Wednesday, December 6 & 7, 2011

Tuesday morning up at 6:10 am, breakfast with Tila at the Spencer’s and then I had the privilege teach the chapel sermon at 7:30 pm to a group of around 200-300 college students attending ABC. It was fun and the Lord I believe spoke through me. Amen! Then off to the airport, flying back through Johannesburg, South African, then to Franfurt, Germany, Chicago and finally to Colorado Springs (I am sending this email from Chicago…ready to board the final leg to Colorado).

Glory to God for all things!

Malawi Trip Notes 2011 (Dec 1-4)

2011-12-16T19:20:00.001-07:00

Thursday, December 01

I had a big headache that started in Colorado Springs and now I had to get on the third plane from Frankfurt to Johannesburg - it was the second overnight flight on this trip. Before boarding, I asked the gate people to check on my seat. She let me look at her screen and choose one that had the “promise” of no one sitting beside me. After I boarded the plane and they shut the door, I was so happy that the open seat was still there. If you travel on these long flights, you know have valuable that open seat is because I didn’t have someone leaning into me or fighting me for the armrest. Also, I could spread out my work and eventually try to squeeze all 5’8” of me across two seats to sleep. At some point on this 10 hour flight, I feel asleep and woke up without the headache. Praise the Lord!

I only had 75 minutes between this flight and my 4th plane – the final leg to Malawi. I rushed through the airport and made it to my gate just as they were boarding. I arrived in Malawi 34 hours later without my 3 70lb boxes I told you about. Not sure what happened to them – perhaps they never made it out of Colorado Springs. Most likely, they didn’t make the connection in Johannesburg. Steve Spencer, a missionary that runs the African Bible College in Malawi picked me up from the airport and we drove about 20 minutes out to their campus. He and his wife, Marion, were very gracious. We discussed their mission and the history of ABC. Later in the afternoon Steve gave me a walking tour of their school, college, radio station and hospital. This facility is a huge positive for the community and would make for a great potential launching pad for a future VisionTrust ministry office. The guest accommodations are the best I’ve stayed in, very comfortable and have hot water and electric and spacious. The hut I stayed in could sleep four easily. After a little computer work and a quick shower, I walked back to the Spencer’s for dinner and more conversation about what their mission – specifically about their mission with impoverished or orphaned children. Lights out at 11:00 PM.

Friday, December 02

Breakfast at 6:45 am of French toast cooked by Mateo, the cook on staff to help out Steve and Marion. Super good! I enjoyed spending a little time with their children at dinner the night before and at breakfast – made me a bit homesick for my family ;-( Marion’s dad, the founder of ABC asked me to speak in Chapel on coming Tuesday (just before I leave for the airport to go home). I agreed. After chapel service, I met Tila for the first time. It was fun to find him without knowing what he looked like. Then we spent the next 30 minutes preparing to drive South to the mountain area of Ntcheu, about a 2 hour drive. We loaded up on three 5 gallon plastic containers of fuel that Steve had stockpiled for us because there is a massive fuel shortage in the nation. In addition, I borrowed a sleeping bag, pillow and tent just in case we’ll need them and on the way out of town, stopped at a 7 Eleven (I am not joking) for several gallons of drinking water.

Tila and I spent those 2 hours in the car talking about Malawi, his work with children from babies through high school students. By the time we arrived in Ntcheu, I was impressed by the sound thinking, openness and listening ability of Tila. He is the main reason for my trip: To see what he is doing and to see if VisionTrust can provide assistance to do more and do it even better.

Our first stop in Ntcheu was a house Tila rents for himself and 5 teenage boys attending secondary school (high school). The boys are from a community that doesn’t have a good school and are currently on “scholarship” paid by a few Americans to help them be successful. In addition to the five boys, another house is rented to help five young girls complete secondary school. A woman lives with them and is a their caregiver. I did not visit the girls home. (THIS is one dimension of Tila’s work. He has two other components discussed later).

We spent the remainder of the afternoon at Tila’s parents house discussing his work and I explained the mission, strategy and concepts of VisionTrust. Around 1:30 pm we had a sandwich that Marion from ABC packed for us. Tila’s pastor and the pastor’s wife came for a visit and dinner along with all of the boys and girls being cared for by Tila. We enjoyed conversation. The pastor asked me to preach on Sunday. I told him I would pray and then give him an answer on Saturday as I wasn’t sure if I would have time to prepare. We concluded the day with dinner at 9 pm. I washed my face and went to my room and spent the next 2 hours writing my notes and catching up on email that I had downloaded at ABC. I was a bit concerned about not having a mosquito net, so we kept the windows closed and I had sprayed on the spray. Lights out.

About Tila Chikufenji
Tila’s dream as a young man was to be a journalist, but due to certain circumstances, he graduated from Malawi College of Accountancy with an accounting degree. His first job was an accountant with AFROX and then after three years they transferred him to do marketing. After two years in that position, he wanted to do work that helped his nation through community development. The Lord gave him a position at FINCA Malawi where he learned how to do micro-lending. After that, in an effort to further develop his skills, he was contracted to assist doing a GAP ANALYSIS to compare the national education system to the more successful private schools with the end product of making recommendations on how to bridge the gap and improve the national system. Tila is number 8 of 8 children, is 33 years old and engaged to be married next year. He attends the Charismatic Redeemed Pentecostal Church (started in Malawi).

About Engagement/Marriage and Polygamy
I asked Tila about the engagement process. He said that in order for a man to ask a girl to be his wife, the man has to ask the uncle of the girl’s father or mother. Then the uncle discusses it with the girl’s parents and they must all agree. Once they agree, a formal engagement date is set and a party is thrown, usually paid for by the girl’s family. Any time after this engagement is ok for the marriage to take place. The wedding is paid for usually by the man, the girls and a “committee” of ladies that may include family members and friends. In Northern Malawi, dowry is to be paid to the girl’s family, but in Central and Southern Malawi, dowry is not common. I asked him about polygamy. He said that in the North it is still practiced, but not as much in the Central and Southern areas. The exception is Muslims. They may practice it all over.

About Food
The key staple item is corn flour called nsima. Casava is eaten in lower quantities, but mostly at breakfast with the exception that in the North, they may eat it more than corn flour. Traditionally, for those that can afford to eat, they family likes to have breakfast, lunch and dinner. However, for the extreme poor, the people that we want to help, they are lucky to have one meal per day. The planting season starts in late November. The temperature can get as cold as 6 degrees Celsius in their winter which is in June/July.

Saturday, December 03

A knock on my door at 7 woke me up. I took the opportunity to shower because the water was available and ate a great breakfast of fried eggs with onions. By 8:15 am Tila and I were I in the Toyota with our driver, Amon who is a Muslim. We drove to the Ngoni tribal area to about 52 km to a community of 21 villages called Katsekera. The drive took two hours on a dirt road through the low mountains where agriculture is the occupation. Corn and Irish potatoes are the main crops. The language spoken by the Ngoni people is called Chichewa – it is also the national language in addition to English. The Ngoni have a history of being heavy beer drinkers and having multiple wives. I found out that one their favorite non-alcoholic drinks is called Tobwa, you guessed it, made from corn.

We arrived around 10:30 am at one of the three primary schools in the area to meet with the Community Based Organization. This group is comprised of representatives from 14 of the 21 villages. We met until 1:30 pm in one of the classrooms. The Group Village Headman (big chief) sat in the front alongside of the school Head Master, me and Tila. A moderator opened the meeting and we did a lot of greeting and introductions. They asked me to explain who I was and why was I there. I thanked them said I am here in the name of the Lord and that he is the God of truth. I explained openly that I am working with Tila to learn about the goals and needs of the community so through prayer, we may determine if we can provide assistance. Tila and I told them that we are not committing to financially supporting anything, we are doing research. In general, I took the opportunity to share about our primary goal to transform the children to live for God and love people.

Once I was done, the Group Village Headman welcomed me and encouraged Tila and I that we can freely meet with people and do our research. He said please support the children as I see fit and come back to visit (I discovered why he wants me to come back later on in the day. Essentially, he wants me to hold Tila accountable for things we hope to do. By coming back, I can see if they’ve really been done or not. This concept comes from past experiences with NGOs not doing what they are supposed to do). From this point I got to ask them questions about their goals and purpose of their Community Based Organization (CBO). They explained that together, they want to advance their villages by working to improve opportunities and become more self-sustaining. They said they need assistance with the number of orphans in the community as a result of AIDS. In addition, the children in the community have limited access to the secondary school because of fees and the secondary school is very weak in the quality of education. Finally, they said they are committed to work with us ;-) This is VERY cool. I’ve seldom been in poor communities where the community itself is motivated and open. However, this attitude is also misleading in a way because deep inside most of them they just assistance, or resources, or something. Our challenge will be to use what they say against them meaning that we will need to train them to truly believe that they can become responsible for their own outcomes. It will take time and patience. The door is open!

The conversation continued on a specific project that Tila is currently training them on: Savings Group. Here is the background: Using his experience from working in micro-lending, Tila started to challenge the CBO on just how do they plan to become self-sustaining and grow their resources. They concluded that they must start to save money for emergencies and to invest putting them on the trajectory to have access to credit for the purpose of growing economically. The CBO asked Tila and I how we could help them with training and ideas on what to invest in. (This is the SECOND project that Tila is currently working on).

Next I asked them what skills, businesses and goals to they have. Several people attempted to answer my question, but I did not get clear answers initially. I think it is because they wanted to answer the question correctly, meaning, they were trying to guess what I wanted to hear. However, after we pressed a bit and waited, they began to share more. Regarding SKILLS, one man out of 14 villages represented had welding experience and that same man had construction/building experience. I am not 100% sure that he is the only one in the area, but that is how it came out. I asked what skills are needed. This is a trick question designed to come at the issue from another angle to try to uncover information, or the truth. They said they would like to have more welders, carpenters and builders. On to the BUSINESSES in the area. They told me that farming the land was the main business and that for the most part, people either owned their land or rented it. This is super big asset for a poor community! Most communities we work in don’t own much land if any causing a huge challenge to advance economically. That was it for businesses according to them. I couldn’t believe it, so pressed more and then they said a few people have retail storefront (like a corner market) and a few people bake bread. And then again, that was it. This is a tough crowd ;-) On to their GOALs. Again, this is a tough question – but I would hope they would have a few clear goals because the CBO is an organized group trying to advance their community through a savings program. The answers were vague in that they want to improve the HEALTH of the children through supporting the orphans and build CAPACITY, meaning they want to help the community do things that they currently can’t do on their own. I pressed more on this topic and then the Chairman of the CBO shared a common problems that families face with respect to a lack of “capacity”. He said that when the people sell their potato crop, the money they have should be invested in some sustainable business venture so the family can have income over a longer period of time and the cash from the crop isn’t quickly wasted.

Then I asked them to ask me questions. Several were asked, but I only wrote down the following;
1) The school Headmaster asked if we could find a solution to help younger students that are orphaned or destitute earn a living (as they as child-headed households).
2) A village representative asked if we can do a feeding program for all students at the schools.
3) Another representative asked what assurance do they have that we will actually do something. (Tila and I restated that Tila is already doing work, so we’ve already started ;-)
4) Finally, they mentioned the Under 5 years old Nursery Center (Tila’s THIRD project). They observed that it is not consistent in the delivery of food nor does it cover a broad enough territory. What can be done about it?

In summary, I’ve never such a good community meeting. We had a snack at 1:30 pm or so of warm coke and a small doughnut called mandasi. Then we drove to two different child-headed households in two different villages.

David’s home was the first one we came to. He is 15 years old now and takes care of his two brothers and two sisters. He dropped out of school at standard 3.
Brother: Pemphero, 12 years old, in standard 4
Sister: Melida, 10 years old, in standard 4
Brother: Stonard, 8 years old, no schooling
Sister: Yankho, 4 years old, no schooling

Their mother went insane shortly after their father left, the children about been on their own since 2005. The mother moves around the area (which is how the four year old came about) and causes family trouble. David’s grandmother (a widow) lives nearby. His uncle lived next door and helped them but he has passed away. He has other relatives in the area but they aren’t helping. They survive because David works the family land growing potatoes for income and a few vegetables to eat. He also raises rabbits and sell one for $2.50. He is enterprising! Their home is a dirty mess as you might imagine, they have very little. They use a pit latrine and the closest water access is about ¼ mile away. See photos attached.

The next place we visited is home to two girls, Eva who is 15 years old and Lise who is 12 years old. Eva dropped out of school in standard 3. Lise is still in standard 6. Eva works in the fields to survive. They eat 2 times per day a meager meal of corn flour or potatoes. I asked Lise what subject in school is the most difficult. She said Math. I agreed ;-0 Then I asked her what subject was her favorite and she said English. Next I asked what she would like to do when she finishes school. She said, “A nurse so I can help people who are sick.” Lise does a lot of the cooking which is a big task as that means she makes the fire and gets the water. Like David, these two children have inherited a garden (land). Most the land is just passed down from generations. I asked who lives next door to them and found out that Eva’s older sister does. She is 23 and has a baby. Her husband left. She dropped out of school at standard 6 when she was a little girl. In addition to this sister, I found out that two aunts also live next door (by the way, Eva and Lise’s home doesn’t have a literal door). One aunt just died (has no husband) and the other aunt has AIDS.

It is a bit painful for me to press on with questions and dig for answers and how things work, especially when so much tragedy is involved. However, isn’t is interesting to discover that there is always more information to learn before drawing conclusions. For example, had I not asked Eva and Lise about other family members (aka who lives next to you), I would not have discovered that she has an older sister living next door, or that the aunt with AIDS and the older sister both have gardens too. And…they don’t work together on the gardens, they each work their own. Wow! When I discovered that they don’t work together, I was shocked. Why not? They need each other so much but in their culture, the norm is to do it separately. We will evaluate this behavior later and challenge them to work as a team to support those who are weaker.

Visit to “Katsekera Health Center”
The next stop in the Katsekera area was the health center operated by K. Chathyoka. His labeled as a Medical Assistant. He has two other staff that are Midwifery Nurses and leverages a team of 12 volunteers that live in the community and have been trained in community health “surveilence.” They see about 53 patients each (nearly 1,600 per month) and the clinic provides all medicine and services for free, meaning the government uses taxes or international AID money. Overall, I was impressed by the clinic at first but as I dug deeper I discovered that while everything is free, they don’t have access to all of the medicine they need. (This is why USA should stay away from gov’t run health system!). In addition, the staff to people ratio for the community is 3 per 15,905 (compared to the Malawi national average of 3 per 10,000). The clinic refers an average of 45 patients to the closest hospital that is in Ntcheu (52km away, 2 hour drive in private vehicle). The clinic serves 21 villages in the area made up of 2,647 households. The clinic reports that 82% of those households use pit latrines.

The most common issues treated are first malaria, Upper Respiratory Transmission Infections (U.R.T.I.) and diarrheal problems. The clinic is required to test people with malaria symptoms. For worms and shistomyosis (spelling? Parasite that has a symptom of blood in the urine), they are NOT required to test before administering medicine. This is good because we’ve run into issues in Zimbabwe where they require testing but don’t have the tests! This clinic recommends deworming activities and vitamin A for children under 5 two times per year. They are not doing it however. Maternal care is one of the focused services provided including Pre and Postnatal as well as “integrated” care which means they will treat woman for health issues during pregnancy to reduce maternal and newborn death rates. They are equipped to test for TB and treat it with follow up care. Each month, they currently test and average 4 patients with 1 out of 4 being positive. Yes, you got it right, that means that 12 people test positive per year that are seen by clinic.

With respect HIV/AIDS, the have treated 805 patients this year and have 550 on average who come on a regular basis for ARV treatment and consulting. Finally, the clinic has both solar and wind energy. The wind energy solution was donated by the Chinese. They are one of the few locations in the area with a borehole well (drilled with casing and pump).

Amon the drive, Tila and four people from the village left the area around 3 pm. We dropped off the four people at various intervals and made it to Tila’s parents home at 5:15 pm. Long-day! I quickly got a shower because they still had water, worked with Tila on possible ministry concepts that VisionTrust should help with until dinner at 8 PM. After dinner I took notes and did some computer work until 11:30 pm. Super long day!

About Village Housing
The homes are small rectangular huts made from homemade clay bricks with either thatch or tin roofs. Most huts in the poor communities have dirt floors. The older style of huts are round. Most of the round huts are for the kitchen or storage or used by the super poor. As an example, Eva and Lise use a round hut that is about 6 feet in diameter – the length of your bed.

Sunday, December 04

Up at 7:15 am, another quick shower to get the mosquito spray and sweat from the night off of me and wake up! Tila and I enjoyed a bread, instant coffee and a bowl of corn flakes. Then off to his church. We returned home around noon and worked on a ministry design and budget until dinner at 8:30 pm. I tried the corn millet drink – you’ll have to try it yourself to see what it tastes like. I also tried the blackjack which tasted like greens from the South. At 9:15, I returned to my room and began taking more notes and writing out our ideas.

New Program Design Recommendations (6 month pilot commitment with review in June)
Because the existing under 5 program is in one location among 21 villages and is poorly run by the CBO (community based organization), Tila and I recommend that we shut it down and replace it with a Learning Center (early childhood development center/preschool) at each of the three Primary schools. This is better because the under 5 years old children and preschoolers can attend a program that is closer to where they live and reach more children than currently. The Learning Center will start with feeding and basic care due to budget constraints. The program will eventually include preschool learning, Biblical teaching (for little ones), health management (that includes a nutritional meal designed from local products that works, proactive deworming and vitamin A administration.) The center will be a Child Sponsorship funded program starting with 40 of the neediest children at one of the Primary Schools. As we have funding, we will open the second learning center and then the third. Child Sponsorship will work well as the children can grow up in the new ministry system and over time, we can work with them all the way through secondary school – Lord willing. Once the Learning Centers have been operational and are running well, we plan to extend the program into the Primary School grades and eventually into the Secondary School. Tila and I discussed ideas like having the community do a community garden that is designed to support the Learning Centers in some fashion. Perhaps we can introduce new crops/planting techniques and use the garden for demonstration as well…lots of ideas…

Tila will continue to coach and train the CBO on the Savings Program. This program is needed to provide direct training to the community as they seek to become more self-sufficient.

In order to do a great job developing the new Learning Centers and the CBO savings program, Tila will relocate to Katsekera. He is excited to live in the community and believes this is what it will take to be successful. I agree wholeheartedly. Initially, Tila will rent a place and make it his office/house/etc. He will need to make improvements to it including solar power, sanitation, minor repairs, furniture, etc. Within one or two years, we would like to build a “phase 1” residence for him and a future assistant that also has a kitchen, office, living area, simple guest house rooms (one for men and one for women, and indoor bathroom with showers. In “phase 2”, we would like to build a training hall. Tila and I identified that he will need an assistant soon that has formal education degree and experience or early childhood development degree and experience. We also identified that we will need to form a partnership with a church or Christian teachers that can provide assistance with doing the spiritual mentoring.

With respect to the Educational Support program in place today run by Tila that supports 10 Secondary School students, we plan to keep it in place for the current students and then slowly phase it out as the students graduate. We decided that the program is helpful but very expensive and not sustainable.

We agreed to make the next 6 months a pilot, starting in January and then re-evaluating our relationship and progress in June. To get started will we need start-up funding that includes costs to start and run the first Learning Center, the rental house, basic improvements to the rental and an inexpensive motorcycle to give Tila mobility. Tila and I created a budget proposal and are ready to share it with those interested.

In bed early tonight at 11 pm.

Malawi Trip Notes 2011 (Nov 29-30)

2011-12-16T19:18:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, Nov 29

My wife Cheryl dropped me off at the Colorado Springs airport 1:45 hour before my scheduled departure for Lilongwe, Malawi. I wrestled three 70 lb boxes out of our Explorer and carried them into the check-in area, one at a time. The folks working at the African Bible College in Malawi got word that I was coming and asked if I would bring several items with me due to the difficulty of international shipment. These boxes took all of my allowed luggage and I was happy that we weren't charged extra. I went outs one more time to say goodbye to my wife of 20 years and grab my things - a backpack and a roller board carry-on. In the last several years, I've had to learn to pack light and take my personal items with me because I seem to be the one left at the luggage carousel waiting for bags that never show. When traveling to remote places in Africa, it is always a good idea to have few creature comforts like clean underwear, flashlight, knife and soap.

My check-in process was not filled with good news. My flight plan was to go from Colorado Springs to Chicago to Frankfurt to Johannesburg to Lilongwe. The united person told me that my flight to Chicago was delayed making the connection for the flight to Frankfurt impossible to catch. Needless to say I was deflated and stressed. I shut my eyes and prayed. God brought to my memory of my 10 year old son, just the night before, giving to God his fears and anxiety and asking God for help. I prayed a similar prayer and a spirit of thankfulness came over me. The United person quickly snagged a seat on a flight to Houston and then another seat from Houston to Frankfurt, allowing me to connect in time to the original plan going on to Johannesburg and then on the Lilongwe.
This process took about 30 minutes and the flight to Houston boarded 30 minutes earlier than my original departure time - meaning I had only 30 minutes ledt to get through security and to the gate. Meanwhile, two of the three 70lb boxes got flagged by TSA. Before I ran to security, I watched them cut open the boxes and proceed to slowly remove each item and then check each item by first cutting the packaging material away.
I mentioned to them that my flight leaves in 30 minutes, could them speed up the process as I can't afford to lose these boxes. This request made them work slower. I asked one worker who was just standing if he could help. His response was "No". Once I saw that one of the boxes was being taped back together, I headed for security fast. I was now down to 20 minutes.

I made it! God is so faithful.

Please pray that the boxes make it completely intact all the to Malawi with me and that all of the items are safe. Also, ease pray that upon arrival in Malawi, the customs officials will let me pass with a of the items with no problems.

Wednesday, Nov 30

Groggy seems to sum up this day for me. After the 9 hours overnight flight, I arrived around 11:30 AM in Frankfurt and don't' fly again until 8:30 PM - another overnight flight about 10 hours. I found my way through the airport to the Lufthansa Business Lounge. Within the first 10 minutes or so, I was able to take a hot shower and get woken up for the day. Counting my blessings...this is one huge blessing. The rest of the day was spent working on email, catching up on scheduling things all the way out through July 2012 and planning the details of things scheduled that are soon to hit my desk like staff the major end of year all-staff meetings in Colorado Springs during the second week of December. I am ready to get to Malawi and begin learning about the country, the people, the children and how God wants to use VisionTrust. ;-)

PRAY LIST for Matt Storer & Scott Couch: Upcoming trip to Liberia

2011-09-08T09:39:00.002-06:00

Matt Storer (President) and Scott Couch (Director of Project Management Services) will be traveling to Liberia next week. VisionTrust is currently developing 4 schools at the moment in Liberia, reaching over 700 preschoolers and students with the gospel, regular Bible teaching, education and health. They fly out of the USA on Sept 13, Tuesday and return home on Sept 22, Thursday.

Please pray for the following as their schedule is super full:

1 - Taking 500 backpacks, 2 truck shocks, office supplies and VisionTrust sponsorship materials among other things. Please PRAY that all of the luggage makes it and we don’t have any issues getting through Liberian Customs.

2 – Meeting with ELWA (SIM ministry) asking them if we can take over the operations of their Guest House. It continues to be an issue to house (me) our guests and the place is currently a dump and poorly managed. PRAY that they give us favor to do this. It is a long-shot.

3 – Meeting with Water of Life (well drilling ministry) to build partnership in Liberia to encourage them to drill wells and manage them at our 4 project locations. Pray for quality, heart-felt partnership.

4 – Submitting building plans for a new 17,000sf school building to the Ministry of Planning for approval. This school needs to be get started ASAP. We have almost 500 children attending in the old place. The new place will support up to 900 students, using 2 shifts per day. PRAY for government favor to approve plans quickly and without bribes. We will also be interviewing/hiring a Liberian construction manager and begin materials acquisition. PRAY for a quality person, we will need discernment!

5 - I will personal be life-coaching Robert Sondah, our Director of VisionTrust Liberia to help him manage and develop all areas of his life. Please PRAY that God gives us both wisdom and understanding and the discipline we need to make improvements/changes. Robert is doing a great job…

6 – Evaluating progress on school #3 and #4. Both of these are in early development stages.

The list is longer, but these are the biggies ;-)

Terra Nova

2011-08-12T10:24:00.003-06:00

I am excited to have the priviledge of speaking at Terra Nova this weekend. My son Matthew and I went to the Dominican Republic with their first VisionTrust mission team last week to serve orphaned and at-risk children in the community of Comendador (a Haitian border town). We need to sponsor another 20 children in this project this weekend. The $35 per month sponsorship gives every child a nutritional meal each day, attend school, receive medical care and learn about God.

If you are in the Columbus, Ohio area, please come - I would love to see you!

To find out how to get to Terra Nova, click on http://www.terranovacc.com

-Matt Storer, President of VisionTrust

Microsoft Friends - Thank you!

2011-07-21T08:26:00.003-06:00

Last night, Dan Shepherd and I met with nearly 20 very special friends from Microsoft Corporation in Denver. We appreciate their support of VisionTrust and passion to help orphaned and neglected children around the world grow into healthy, educated leaders truly equipped to make a difference in their own communities.

It was great to have their encouragement as well. Most of these folks were our contemporaries when Dan and I worked at Microsoft in the past. Having their support built up our commitment even more to do this work.

Thank you guys!

Sincerely,

Matt Storer
President
VisionTrust.org

Have you wondered if God is really real?

2010-10-27T08:37:00.004-06:00

Have you wondered if God is really real? Or asked yourself, “Where is God?” Even though we have faith, these poignant questions can still come when we face personal tragedy or witness outright injustice. For many of us, we go so fast through the motions of life that God seems to slip from the driver seat, to the middle seat and eventually to the rear seat. Why is it that our faith can become so brittle? One reason may be that our “God Experience” is limited in an intellectual experience.

Through the years, most of us have been taught, either intentionally or unintentionally, that our God Experience is developed by going to church, reading the Bible, and praying. These activities are necessary to grow our understanding of God, but they tend to be inward oriented – representing only one half of our God Experience. When this happens, we can’t see His miracles which make it hard to see God at work in our lives. When we don’t see Him at work, our faith may become brittle.

To combat this feeling, we must build our faith by being on the offensive – by doing good works. In other words, I believe that we will see God at work in our lives when, in faith, we do good works for others. This outward oriented posture takes the focus off of ourselves, creating opportunities for God to work through our lives. When our faith is put into action, we will see miracles happen. This is an action experience that you can “do and see”. It brings glory to God, builds our faith and creates a complete God Experience that goes beyond the intellect.

God Experience = Intellectual experience + Action experience

James said it best, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2:17). The Word of God gives us hundreds of instructions to defend and rescue the weak and the fatherless, to speak up for them and provide for them. When we obey these instructions and take action, we balance our God Experience equation – building a strong faith that is ready for life’s challenges.

I challenge you to balance your God Experience equation by taking action today. You can rescue a child in need by sponsoring them for $35 a month. You can mentor that child by visiting them on a mission trip. Or, you can advocate for these children that live so far away, right in your home town, by collecting supplies or encouraging others to sponsor children at work or church.

Matt Storer receives Fellow nomination from Microsoft Alumni Foundation

2010-06-24T06:36:00.003-06:00

For more information, please visit the Microsoft Alumni Foundation at .

Mission Team Update from Cotui, Dominican Republic (Ernie Taylor)

2010-02-19T09:51:00.001-07:00

We just concluded Thursday in Cotui. It has been a great week with the team from NY.
They spent Sat and Sunday without me but the schedule was great for them. Sunday they had a special open air service beside Milagros house. Hundreds of children and adults were there. A pastor on the team preached, several others gave their testimonies and there was lots of music. They also did a walk thru the community stopping to pray with people and sharing their testimonies.

Monday through Thursday we worked laying concrete blocks for 2 of the classrooms. It was blistering hot in the full sun. The women had almost a hundred children each morning for the VBS program. It was a wild time but when they shared the stories about Noah, Abraham and Adam and Eve, the kids were attentive and quiet.

This team includes people from three churches. We also had two men here who had been part of the church who sponsored the first 13 VTI children in 1997. They had never met their sponsored child before so it was a real emotional time for them.

TANZANIA Update: Matt Storer, Jim Ross and Stacey Davis

2010-01-31T06:48:00.006-07:00

Matt, Jim and Stacey completed 3 days of work in Morogoro, Tanzania. This new program is the result of a partnership with Pastor Alex of Morogoro Baptist Church. Because this project is new, we spent most of the time working on fundamentals and ministry foundational principles to ensure that will have a soid partnership in the future. In response, the team signed a Partnership Agreement that outlines 4 pledges: Ministry, Management, Finance and Beliefs.

The programs in Tanzania serve nearly 400 children in two projects. Both project sites are beginning with children from pre-school age and are in their early stage of development. We have a long way to go to bring a high quality of health, education and discipleship - but we have a great team on the ground!

Thank you for praying.

Matt Storer & Jim Ross in Zimbabwe and Tanzania

2010-01-26T14:01:00.005-07:00

QUICK UPDATE: Jim and Matt just finished 4 very hot and long days in Zimbabwe. They have established a new partnership in a village called Zunga that is about 1 hour south of Masvingo. It is 1 of 17 villages in the area served by our new project. Currently, the project has 240 double orphans (that means the child has lost both parents). Approximately 400 additional single orphans need assistance in this area as well. It is hard to comprehend the mass volume of orphaned children. AIDS and malaria are the primary cause of death among adults and children.

They leave for Tanzania Wednesday, Jan 27th. VisionTrust began a new partnership there last August so they will be doing training, establishing structure and communications.

Please pray for safety, health, wisdom, God’s leading in all things, patience and clear communication.

NEWS: VisionTrust's Response to the Earthquake in Haiti

2010-01-13T11:41:00.001-07:00

While VisionTrust does not work directly in Haiti, we do have programs in the neighboring country called the Dominican Republic. Nelson Paulino, the VisionTrust Dominicana Executive Director, reported that, “The DR side of the island is pretty much ok, almost everywhere we felt the earthquake and it was scary, today [Jan 13] in fact many schools are not open in case there is a second one today that may affect us harder, but so far we are ok. After the movement is was difficult to make a phone call, so it was not until later last night when I was able to confirm that everybody was ok on our programs.” Our ministry in the Dominican Republic includes many Haitian immigrants. One program in particular serves primarily Haitian refugees in the Haiti border town of Comendador.

VisionTrust is not providing direct relief support in Haiti at this time because we do not have a ministry presence there. However, we do anticipate that the Haitians participating in our Dominican programs will soon be asking VisionTrust to help them help their family members that live in Haiti. Please remember to pray for the Haitian leadership, the international relief agencies and the people of Haiti.

If people would like to help these families, they can go to https://portal.visiontrust.org/donate/default.aspx and then select General Donation and write “Haitian Family Support” in the comment field. VisionTrust will make sure that these families will receive your gifts.

Liberia: The Action (Day 3)

2009-10-29T18:14:00.005-06:00

Wednesday, Oct 28 2009
Our VisionTrust Director, Robert, dropped Don and I off at Kathleen and James' new library at 8:45 AM. Then he drove Tim back to the school where Tim was to spend the day at Prime System School installing old-fashioned pencil sharpeners and talking with folks in the community (escorted by Principal John). Don and I visited with James and Kathleen because they are missionary friends we've made since we started working in Liberia (thanks to Jill C.). After catching up for about 30 minutes, we found ourselves in a heavy discussion for the next hour about how to leverage land for farming, training, to generate funding, etc. James and Kathleen have worked in Liberia for many years - James a native and Kathleen from Canada. They have extensive knowledge of "how to" and "how not to" run ministry programs in this country. After much debate and discussion, I concluded that this is such a broad and challenging topic that if they can't tell me, "Oh, just do this, then that, and you're done!" then perhaps no one can.

Kathleen drove Don and I back to the VisionTrust Liberia office where we met my next appointment, Pastor Vaye and his wife Rose. Pastor Vaye is a visionary and has worked super hard to plant Baptist churches throughout many parts of Liberia. I met him over 2 years ago when he and his wife shared with me their burden for the orphan and marginalized. Every time I come to Liberia, I meet with him and his wife to discuss their ideas for how to help orphans through the church and leverage the VisionTrust program. So this trip is the culmination of many talks.

We rented an old Toyota 4Runner for this trip up country to Todee District in the Northwest area. Robert, Don, Pastor Vaye, Rose, the driver and I got into the truck. Sounds easy right? Well Vaye, Don, Robert and I were all in the back seat. When we stopped to get the Mayonnaise Jars filled with gas to fuel up, I quickly volunteered to get into the far back cargo area with the cooler and bags. The trip would include a series of roads where each was would be in worse shape than the last. After 2.5 hours we got stuck in the mud. We got out and some men were offering to help push us out. Ironically, where we got stuck was the end of the road for us, we were at the village of Jawajeh.

Pastor Vaye walked us about 100 feet into the village and we sat in the front porch area of the local pastor's house that Vaye is working with. I sat on a bench along with Don and Robert…and waited for "instruction" on what to do next. About 40 people crowed in to participate. Vaye let us sit for a little while, somewhat in an awkward silence. When he was ready, he spoke up and quickly introduced us and our purpose. Then he looked at me and said like, "Ready?" The conversation got going slowly. For example, I asked how many people are in the village. The acting village chief (the pastor is the acting because the real chief is out on business in another village) said that the population is 64 people. Then others chimed in: no make that 130, no…make that 90… Well, I'm not real sure. We counted 15 huts and estimated an average of 7 people per hut so I am going with 105 people for now.

I proceeded to collect facts about health, schooling, economy, social structures, tribal information, religious beliefs, diet, water and sanitation. Then I asked Pastor Vaye to share with me what their plan was, what did they want our help with. He said the community is building a church on 25 acres of land that the village donated and wants to build a school, like a traditional mission school compound. As I looked around the outdoor meeting space, I noticed that about 15 children were wearing a school uniform. So I asked Pastor Vaye and the other villagers how many of these children DON'T go to school. Only 2 kids out of about nearly 25 that were there with us don't go to school. They told me that they go to Nye #2 Primary. After much discussion, I learned that the school was opened just 2 years ago. So this was the first school that these children have ever attended. This started a discussion about why start another school. My observation was that the village had enough resources to send their children to school without the help of an outsider - they definitely didn't need their own school. The village pastor told me that children from the surrounding village won't go to the public school. I asked why and one of the widows answered. She said that the "harman" will take her children and poke out their eyes for rituals and do other bad things. This needs a little explanation. Jawajeh is one of 8 villages in the surrounding area that has a remote location and is steeped in traditional beliefs like the Heartless Man, or the "harman" in Liberian English. Robert said to her that is not real, those are stories of old. Wow, did the discussion just get more alive at that point. Robert broke out in Kpelle tongue (his native language that these spoke too) and soon the conversation settled back down.

The conversation continued a bit more. For example, I asked, "What does your diet consist of?" They said, "Rice." I said, "Is that it?" The reply came, "Yes." Then I asked again, "What do you eat?" Then they said, "Oh, cassava and cassava leaves." Then I asked, "What will you eat tonight for dinner?" They replied, "Maybe a little fish from the stream where we get our drinking water." They eat more than rice as you can see. This is one of the challenges in working cross-culturally.

After we finished learning about each other, about half of the crowd walked with us about 15 minutes to the donated 25 acres. This is when I realized that Pastor Vaye wanted to build the traditional mission complex out here. I was thinking that what these people needed was training on how to grow better crops and teach them to work hard, planning and market information. It didn't seem that they needed "free" schooling in a traditional mission school. I could be wrong however. One thing I know for sure is that Pastor Vaye and his wife are super people and have a servants heart.

My initial reaction to this project? The VisionTrust concepts of simple and low-cost, empowering way of helping children didn't match his more traditional way of buildings and starting new organizations. While this was disappointing, it was good to come to a conclusion after 2 years.

The drive back was long and a bit grueling on me…I was in the very back again. By the time we made it back to our guesthouse, I had a super bad headache. After dinner, I showered and laid down and tried to relax for a couple hours, then read for an hour…and finally tried to sleep. It wasn't a fun evening.

Liberia: The Action (Day 2)

2009-10-29T16:52:00.003-06:00

Tuesday, Oct 27 2009
New project research day! Exploring potential project sites and meeting new people is really my favorite part of my job. While it is emotionally, mentally and physically taxing - it is where the rubber meets the road so-to-speak. We drove to the Red Light market (it is not what you think) and met up with Dennis Aggrey a Liberian church planter with a goal to help his people help themselves, including educating village children and helping orphans. I met Dennis' wife when I jumped into the front seat of his classic safari type Land Cruiser complete with a water crossing package - you've got one don't you? You know, the auto package that allows you to cross small rivers?

Project 1: Woupugiyema Community School
Dennis drove about 40 kilometers in 90 minutes and arrived in Kpondah Town comprised of 7 villages. The school is named Woupugiyema Community School after village that it is in and is made from adobe bricks, sticks and sheet metal. A total of 58 children attend this little dirt school complete with 4 classrooms at this point: ABC class (pre-school), Kinder (kindergarten), 1st-3rd graders; and 4th graders (only 2 kids in the 4th, they share the same teacher with the 1st-3rd graders who is also the pastor of the local church). A church in the United States is helping out by paying the teachers $50/month. More interesting to me is that the community has worked hard to build the school. They've contributed 5 acres of land, some money and labor. They even conducted a "fund-raising" project like making charcoal and selling it to buy the materials for the school. The nearest primary school is a Catholic school 30 minutes away that charges expensive fees.

Village School Facts: No water, No electricity, No Restroom, No windows or screen, No books, No teacher resources. What they do have? Dirt floor, Dirt Walls, Open Air Construction. None of the kids would go to school if this school did not exist.

My initial reaction to this project? This has VisionTrust written all over it. It is community driven, simple and serves 7 villages that have no other alternative. The religious belief of the children are split (guessing 25% Christian and 75% Muslim/Animistic.)

Project 2: KTOE Comfort Orphanage
We said our good-byes and jumped back into the truck and drove back toward Monrovia for about another 60 minutes. When we pulled up to the front door of a war-torn white-washed building with a small sign that read Ktoe Comfort Orphanage, named after the women started it. Comfort and her husband, Peter, recently died (KTOE is the last name). Comfort's daughter, named Mary, is now running the home for 25 girls and 30 boys. The older children are in the home as a result of the recent war. The girls and boys live at opposite ends of the house: 25 girls in one room with 9 beds and 6 mosquito nets / 30 boys in one room with 11 beds and 6 mosquito nets. The youngest is 5 years old and the oldest is 14 years.

The home has a generator for lights but it has not run for days because they can't afford fuel. The home is poorly lit - I could not see what I was stepping on as I walked down the hallway to the bedrooms. I peaked into the locked storage room and praise the Lord, they have a food supply, although not large but sufficient at the moment. Currently, Christian Aid Ministries is donating enough food of 40 children each month. I also got a peak at the staff quarters, one room for 4 caretakers - all women. Mary has her own room. The children looked happy for the most part and seemed in good health given the situation. This was encouraging to me. Mary took us outside to see the new kitchen provided by Christian Aid Ministries. It is not complete, but in good shape for preparing food of 55 kids and staff. The grounds included 4 latrines and one hand dug well. Mary told us (and we inspected it) that the well water is not good to drink but can be used for washing clothes. It also dries up in the dry season. They carry drinkable well-water from about 150 yards away from the home. Imagine carrying enough water to care for 55 kids everyday - morning, noon and night.

To compliment the program, the founders started a small school just across the yard of the orphanage. I met with the Vice Principal named Micah. He explained to me about how the "footer" ditches between the sheet metal school and the orphanage will become a real cement block school someday. The current sheet metal school included classrooms without doors or windows, highest point inside was 5'6" - yes I would hit my head on the ceiling made from twigs complete with long nails coming down. The roof was made with rubber sheets that have been tied down. They are struggling to say the least. They have ABC, Kinder, and grades 1st through 6th. A total of 153 children attend the program, a mixture of children from the orphanage (free) and from the community (pay 475 LD$ or US$7).

I asked Micah, the VP, and Mary, the head of the orphanage, if other schools exist in the area? They told me that the closest school is too far, about 1 hour walk. This information seemed to conflict with my observation on the drive in - I saw a public Primary to Jr.High about 15 minute walk away. In addition, I saw one other "private" school just down the road too. I also asked if the community was involved in any way. For example, did they help put up the temporary school or dig the footer for the "hopeful" new school? Micah told me that they don't help at all - the family running the orphanage and school has done all of the work. He said, "In fact, some people here have told me that they will not send their children until it is a real school with real walls."

As we wrapped things up, I got to play around with some of the children. Don Lampe and Tim Debold from Calvary Church were with me too. Tim spent some time talking with one of the older boys to learn more, in the process he started a running race with a few of the kids - it was great to watch them play.

My initial reaction to this project? The people are good people at the orphanage and they are doing a good job with what they have. They need the kind of help that VisionTrust can offer. However, I am concerned that Mary may not have the "calling" that her mom and dad had. Will she have what it takes? Regarding their school start-up, I don't think that the are being wise in starting the school because it is a large burden for them - spreading themselves too thin. The children in the orphanage could just go to the public school and receive tutoring at the orphanage to help them succeed. The community appears to not need another school. More needs to be researched and clarified.

About 4 PM we got out of the hot sun and jumped back into the Land Cruiser, and headed back to the Red Light market to get Robert's car. We arrived at the guesthouse at 6 PM…just in time for dinner! Don, Tim and I talked while I did some work on the computer. After my daily night-time shower, jumped into bed and started reading the autobiography called "This Child will be Great" by the current president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Lights out at 11:30 PM.

Liberia: The Action (Day 1)

2009-10-29T16:42:00.005-06:00

Monday, Oct 26 2009
I was just about asleep around 12:30 AM when my bed shook - like someone put their hands through the window and grabbed my bed. Needless to say I jumped up and didn't know what was going on. I had earplugs in my ears so I wouldn't hear Don (my roommate) snore or hear the roosters at night, so I realized I wouldn't hear a person sneaking into our room! After my heart was put back into its place, I realized that no one was there. I inspected the bed and found that the foot of the bed in the right upper corner was broken. That foot slipped out of place while I sleeping and made the bed drop. Oh, you may think that was funny…did I say something about my heart popping out of my chest? I found a can of dry peanut butter (a gift from Don to folks for later in the week) and put it under my bed. That worked, mostly.

To save money, the guesthouse cuts the generator off at 1:00 AM. So waking up in the morning with no electric is no surprise, but it can make shaving a bit of a challenge ;-) My travel companions and I had a breakfast of oatmeal and fruit with some of the strongest instant coffee I've had in a while. Anyway, Robert Sondah, the director of VisionTrust Liberia, picked us up in his borrowed "1980" Nissan Sunny (small four door sedan like the Nissan Sentra in the US). This car has about 2 months of life left before it goes to "car-heaven."

We drove about 20 minutes to the first VisionTrust project called Prime System School of Christ located outside of the capital city of Monrovia in Paynesville. Most of the people that live around the school are from the Kpelle tribe. I got out of the car and met John the principal. We strolled through the school's courtyard. This school has 450 children from preschool through 8th grade. After a time of laughing and playing with the kids, it was time for them to eat (they eat mid-morning). This was an awesome sight - they were using the new outdoor kitchen made from cement block. More than a year ago, these children didn't get any food to eat at school. That may not sound tough, but they don't get breakfast at home, nor lunch. Just dinner. So this meal is super important to help them grow, develop their brains and give them better attention in the classroom. This program has improved so much in the 18 months we've been involved. The children are healthier, the teachers are happier, the facilities have been improved, and we've added grades 7 and 8. We have a lot more to do here…like build a new school. The average number of children per class in the lower grades is about 50 students to one teacher. God will provide in the right time!

Soon it was time to go to the VisionTrust Liberia office just down the street and review Robert's budget and questions for me. Hey - this part is mission work too!

Ok…I've got one for you. About 2 years ago on my first trip to Liberia, I had lunch at Mousu's and ordered a Cheeseburger. The waitress brought me two large "homemade" buns with a slice of cheese - no meat. I asked her where the meat was. She said, "You ordered a cheeseburger and that is what you have." Well, this time, believe it or not - I think the same lady took our order. I was smart this time and ordered the hamburger. About 25 minutes later, our food came out one plate at a time and everything was correct! Wait, the story isn't over. I asked her for salt. She rolled her eyes as if I had asked for the moon. Needless to say - the salt never came.

In the afternoon we all discussed the idea of using land to do three accomplish three objectives that we have: 1) Produce food for the school; 2) Produce food to make money; 3) Provide a place to teach Life-Skills to the children. This conversation was a brainstorming session that focused on what to grow, where to grow it, what is profitable, what is in demand, what life-skills could we teach, ….needless to say it was a brain burner because the topic is broad and difficult in a land of so many challenges.

We made it back to the guesthouse at 6:30 PM, dinner had been waiting for us for sure as some of it was cold. Factoid: The owner of the guesthouse the daughter of the past President of Liberia, William Tolbert. He was killed in 1980 by Samuel Doe, along with William's two brothers who were in power and the entire cabinet except Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (the current President of today). After checking email and working for a couple hours I went off to bed, read the Psalms and went to sleep (with the help of Excedrin PM).

Liberia: The Arrival

2009-10-26T16:24:00.005-06:00

Saturday, Oct 24 2009
At 6:30 AM the alarm went off, so I hit snooze for another sweet 10 minutes in bed. Why are were there minutes so sweet? It's not what you think. I knew that those extra few minutes of laying next to my wife would fill the void created by my travel. Those minutes were quiet, precious and sweet. Within 90 minutes I was at checking into at the Denver International Airport, I had made good drive time from Colorado Springs. About 9:00 AM, Ed Luminati called me to talk about our plans for improving the Health of children in Central African Republic. While I was on the phone, I booted up my laptop to sync-up email one last time before leaving the US. By 9:45 shutdown, packed up, hung up with Ed and proceeded to board my flight. I talked with my bride until the airplane door was closed - then flew to Washington DC.

Upon arriving in DC at 3:50 PM, I went straight to the Red Carpet lounge where I can work in a quiet place and get a "free" drink and snack. I called my mother (as I usually do when I leave the US and when I arrive back in the US). Then off to make catch my flight at 5:50 PM, I walked to the gate and boarded immediately. 7 hours of fly time!

Sunday, Oct 25 2009
After another red-eye flight from the USA to Europe, I found myself sitting in the Belgium Beer Café at 6:30 AM in Brussels waiting for a noon flight to Monrovia, Liberia. I dug down into my overstuffed backpack looking for some Euros from a previous journey and then stepped up to the bar to order the Express Breakfast: 1 Hot Drink and 2 Pastries for €5.50. Because I haven't had anything to drink for about 5 hours, I ordered a water along with the special of the day. The total came to €8.70, or approximately $13.05. Let me tell you, that water was the best $4.80 bottle of water I have ever had…or will have most likely!

I sat alone along the back wall of the bar and enjoyed my cup of European style coffee, the two pastries and eponymous water, remembering to take the daily Malarone to mitigate the onset of malaria I will get in Liberia. Because my job requires over 125,000 miles of travel each year, I get to see people from just about all walks of life at airports throughout the world. Some look confident and experienced while most look a bit confused about where to go. Of course, in the background, I hear all different kinds of laughter - from a Belgian's deep and well grounded heaps of joy to a dainty little snip of an Asian. I often wonder where everyone is going and why. At times I seem to slip into the backdrop of a seemingly organized chaos called the airport.

After I finished my cup of coffee (no refills here), I opened the New Testament with Palms and Proverbs that Cheryl, my wife, gave me to read when I travel. The book of Psalms was crying out to me because I often pray for protection, for resources, for God's favor in the face of many adversaries. Near the very end of the short first chapter, the Message reads, "God charts the road you take." The itty-bitty phrase was what I needed today.

As one of the leaders at VisionTrust, I am always telling our global staff along with our supporters that God is the one leading us. He is the one in charge. However, honestly, someday my faith runs thin and I begin to control the direction of VisionTrust attempting to solve my own problems in my own timing. The week ahead in Liberia is going to be hard. I will be worn out from struggling to follow and lead conversations from morning to night in broken English; worn out from praying and seeking discernment while I evaluate new project sites; worn out from the Spiritual warfare that seems to run deep in this country; worn out from trying to balance the application of the gifts and talents God has given to me with allowing God to lead and show me what to do. "God charts the road you take." Wow…that was exactly what I needed to be reminded of today.

I am so thankful that I am traveling with two other men: Don Lampe and Tim Debold from Calvary Church in Muscatine, IA. I met up with them in the T terminal a couple hours before our flight to Liberia. It is a huge blessing to have companionship while traveling. It provides encouragement, protection, counsel and conversation in English ;-)

Praise be to the Lord, we landed in Monrovia, Liberia at 9:00 PM. I must say that after traveling for two days, Psalm 4 from the MSG really hits home: "At day's end I'm ready for sound sleep."

Matthew Storer, President

http://www.visiontrust.org/

Liberia: The Launch

2009-10-24T15:04:00.003-06:00

Matt Storer, Tim Debold and Don Lampe are traveling today to the country of Liberia. (All of the updated are being written by Matt Stoer...me!)

Here are a few things that we would love prayer for:
1. Traveling Sat/Sun (Oct 24-Oct 31) to Liberia. My flights all work on time and that my luggage makes it when I arrive.
2. Spiritual protection over me and two other men traveling with me (Tim and Don from a Calvary Church in Muscatine IA). This country is a spiritually dark nation.
3. Wisdom and discernment: We will be reviewing 3 prospective new projects in a several hour radius including an orphanage, church-based program and a remote school.
4. Encouragement: I will be reviewing our existing school project called locally, Prime System School of Christ. It serves 427 children from 3 years old through 8th grade.
5. Insight/Favor: I will be considering a new idea that is an Agricultural Vocational Center that will be self-sustaining, provide food for our programs and equip older children with skills. THIS is a critical component to my trip. Essentially this involves land acquisition, expertise, creative thinking (like we may have to "produce" our own chicken feed to raise chickens), security…all in a "for-profit" context so that the project doesn't require money to keep it running.

Thank you for praying! I hope to provide updates throughout the week if I have access to the internet. ;-0

-Matt Storer, President of http://www.visiontrust.org/

Report on Trip to Obregon, Mexico

2009-10-09T17:27:00.006-06:00

Project Name: Casa Hogar Manos Unidas
Site Visit: Oct 8 and 9, 2009
Project Director: Eric Alexander Lappe Diaz
Number of Children now: 28, max 40
Location: Suburb of Cuidad Obregon called Esperanza

I arrived at the Obregon Airport the evening of Oct 7th, one day after my wife's birthday. Eric and Daniel arrived to pick me up about 7:00 PM and drove me to the Yori Hotel. The next day a missionary named Terry Lingel (International Gospel Ministries) came from Hermosillo with Pastor Daryl Butler to spend the next 2 days talking with Eric about a new partnership. I finally arrived at the Casa Hogar Manos Unidas (United Hands Home) at 11:45 AM on Oct 8th.
Terry, Daryl and I were greeted by Eric and Adriana (Eric's wife). They gave us a tour of the facility. The orphanage is a series of typical one story Mexican housing structures made from bricks, cement and concrete. The houses have been purchased over time - walls have since been removed or erected to make for a better place for the children. The primary living areas include a large common area for dining or entertaining; a large kitchen with professional style stove, oven, two refrigerators, washing area and large prep area. Currently all of the girls sleep in one room and all of the boys sleep in another room. Just recently, Eric made two new separate rooms for his biological boys and girls to protect them. Eric and Adriana also live in the house and have a separate bedroom and bathroom.

The property also has 3 large school rooms to teaches three groups of children: Pre-kindergarten in one room; 1 and 2 in another room; and 3, 4, 5 and 6 in another room. The property also has an office, bakery (under construction), computer room with 4 computers and printer, and large food/clothes storage area. In addition to these spaces, Eric has recently acquired a small broken down house built into the side of their orphanage. Along with this space, he has purchased more adjacent property that is currently used for storage, workshop and a "grocery" store that is no longer operational. To my understanding, the orphanage owns all of these properties. He still owes 80,000 peso ($6,153) for the "grocery" store property. All of the other spaces are free and clear. (Special note: The orphanage has several acres of land in the region. These are available for farming, etc)

Currently they are caring for 28 children, 10 boys and 18 girls. The youngest is 3 years old and oldest is 16 years old. All of the children attend school at the orphanage up to 6th grade and then go to the public school (I am assuming). They have a regular daily schedule of chores, eating, going to school and playing. All of the children go to church on the weekend and they receive some Bible training using Spanish study guides. I didn't have time to drill into the educational materials or visit the public schools. We also did not have time to explore alternative concepts to the K-6 schooling vs public school.

Eric employs 9 people including himself. He and Adriana do not take a salary, they just live in the orphanage and have their primary needs met that way.

I was told that the children in the orphanage and in the greater community are healthy with no major diseases like TB, AIDS, etc. For immediate care, the children are taken to the local hospital about 5 kilometers away.

Through our conversations, Eric shared many ideas about small businesses to make money to help support the orphanage. Some ideas include a bakery, grocery and farm project.

On Friday, Terry, Daryl, Eric, Adriana and myself spent a few hours reviewing the sponsorship concept and what kind of expectations we all might have together. We poured through the example VisionTrust Partnership Agreement. This was a very good discussion that allowed all of us to talk about spiritual mentoring, education, health, long-term goals for the children, finances, budgets, etc.

Overall, my impression was that we have a good possibility of working together. I have a few concerns that still need to be resolved. I left Eric with a request to pray with his wife and then tell us later if they want a sponsorship program and if they want to work with us. I also told Eric that I would be reporting back to Calvary Church and that we all would be praying too. Then in a 3-4 weeks, we should all make a decision on what to do next.

SEPARATE IDEA:
I did explore other ideas with Terry about partnering with Pastor Pedro in Hermosillo - using the church there as a VisionTrust Learning Center that provides spiritual mentoring, educational support and health care to some of the poorest children in the area, along with having the children in the orphanage attend. All of these children could be in a sponsorship program for example. The Christian community could be expanded as well by starting a Learning Center near the dump area instead of a proposed feeding program. This center would run like the one just proposed, but instead of the location first being a church, this location starts as a "center" and over time could become a church.

Obregon, Mexico | New project evaluation

2009-10-08T11:45:00.002-06:00

Today I am in Obregon, Mexico (Matt Storer) getting ready to visit an orphanage supported by Calvary Church out of St. Louis, MO. Please pray for me and the team here as we review the prospect of this becoming an official VisionTrust program. You can see where I am by clicking the following Google Maps link: Ciudad Obregón, SON, Mexico: <http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=Ciudad+Obreg%C3%B3n,+Sonora,+Mexico&sll=19.305328,-99.076208&sspn=0.010733,0.019205&g=obregon,+Mexico&ie=UTF8&cd=1&geocode=FWd_owEdHnBy-Q&split=0&hq=&hnear=Ciudad+Obreg%C3%B3n,+Sonora,+Mexico&ll=27.488477,-109.940872&spn=10.32054,19.665527&z=6>

It's Hot!!!

2009-10-07T07:52:00.003-06:00

Bob Nowe and Matthew Storer in the Dominican Republic, July 2009.

For more information on short-term mission teams, visit www.visiontrust.org

Great Coffee, A Great Start to a day!

2009-09-23T14:33:00.005-06:00

Great coffee! Tom, Ed and I left the guest house this morning at 7:30 AM for the Grande Cafe "downtown" Bangui. We took a break from the daily grind and enjoyed a cup of Cafe au Lait and a pastry. From there we scurried back to the guest house to pick up Rebecca, Christophe and Luther (Rebecca is the nurse in Bangui, Christophe is the one responsible for orphan program in Bangui and Luther is the one responsible for orphan program in Berberati). We had a 9:00 AM meeting with the leadership of the city's only hospital for children, National Pediatric Center.

The 6 of us met with 6 representatives in the Assistant Administrator's office until 10:45 AM. It was another great meeting where we built new relationships between the our staff and the hospitals officials. These relationships are very valuable because we send our orphaned children to this hospital for care ranging from broken bones to AIDS treatment. Having a relationship with the leadership reduces hassels in the admitting the orphans, making payment, and getting help in the communities with their social programs.

During the meeting we discovered that this one little hospital is "caring" for 1,342 HIV positive children, in addition to all of the other children they serve. The World Bank is providing ALL of the AIDS anti-retroviral drugs at the moment. For them, the challenge is not access to these drugs, but the limitation of the number of beds (patients they can accommodate) and the amount of follow up work in once the child returns to the community (to make sure that they continue to take the meds and take them properly). Interested fact: One of the reasons that hospitals in the developing world struggle so much that 90% of all the fees charged for service go to pay for contract staff. That leaves very little for operating income, improvement, etc. In this case, the government does pay for most of the basic operating costs on a monthly basis. (see inset photo of hospital).

One of the people in the meeting shared with us that issues do exist for people diagnosed with HIV in some communities. For example, if you are HIV positive, you qualify for the drugs and some food from the World Food Program. However, the family may decide to "kick out" the HIV positive person or child. So to survive, the person sells some of the food to survive thereby weakening themselves at a time when they need that nutrition urgently.

Off to another meeting at 11:00 AM with one of the 10 regional Ministry of Health centers. The one we met with is in the North side of town and is responsible for 2 states, Ombella Mpoko and Lo Baye, covering a combined population of 676,435 (11% of country). Most of our 8 centers in the city of Bangui are in these areas so this was a strategic meeting. The meeting was with a man named Fidel and it was extremely valuable - praise be to the Lord! We learned that this man would connect us to all of the programs happening in the region for vaccinations and health training. For example, we learned that just recently, every child can have all of the core vaccinations for free, like DPT, polio, yellow fever, BCG, etc. Rebecca was excited to say the least. We learned about how the regional office works so we can leverage this information in other regions of the country as well.

This was also a great lead as this center is responsible for sanitation - including water works, latrines, sewer and garbage. We have an immediate issue with contaminated water in Kiamba. We hope this new connection can help us make progress on getting issues in that area resolved.

Around 1:00 PM we made it back to the guest house where we all had lunch and then took a break until 2:00 PM. Are new focus was to boil down all of our findings to 2 of the most important things we need to improve/fix and then work on solutions that don't include budget increases or major changes in staffing, etc.

After about one hour, we decided that we can best improve overall health by doing the following 4 things:
1. Implement a standard Grow Chart Record, tracking height and weight quarterly.
2. Implement a semi-annual Parasite Management plan, October and April.
3. Complete the vaccinations as needed for all children.
4. Begin to develop a Community Health Training program.

Tomorrow, we will be working on improving feeding through frequency, community training for small gardens micro-nutrients and identification of higher nutrition value foods. Since dinner, Tom and I spent some time working on budget issues and then I worked on these notes until 9:30 PM. Another 13 hour work day ;-0

While finishing this, the power went out - I am sitting in the dark typing on my laptop.

-Matt Storer

Update for Tuesday, Sept 22, 2009

2009-09-22T14:39:00.007-06:00

Ed and I started today out with a walk across the street to see the old large Catholic Cathedral here in Bangui. We spent some quite time there and then a gentleman asked us to leave and proceeded to lock the front doors rather abruptly. We continued talking on the front steps about our past and some of the similar perspectives that we have about God and our walk here on earth.

About 9:00 AM, we were back at the guest house and began to summarize our findings through all of the data collection activities that we've done since our arrival on Sept 17th. We concluded our immediate actions should solve a chronic parasite issue and increase feeding with more nutritional food. In addition, we concluded that long-term health solutions in the communities where our children live depends on educating and equipping them to improve washing methods, cooking more nutritious food, wearing shoes, techniques for mitigating malaria, etc.

Around lunch time, Christophe, Tom and Luther were added to our discussion. We drilled even more into what they think the priorities are related to the health issues we've uncovered. Christophe echoed the same concerns and recommended that we address the same priorities.

On a related subject, we discussed the idea of implementing ID badges to assist our program with identity management and facilitate a child's access to local clinics, school etc. Christophe and Luther suggested several positive reasons that an ID system should be used. They shared that the concept of an ID is well understood and accepted in their culture. At 3:30 PM we headed out to the Mercy Orphan Care Center to finish our time learning time with Rebecca and find out her views of what the priorities are related to the health issues we've uncovered.

At 6:00 PM we left to visit Rebecca's sister whose Husband's father just died up country. We gave them coffee, sugar and tea, shared our condolences as we all sat outside for about 45 minutes. Tom Peters (ICDI) shared a Bible verse from Psalm 62 and we prayed together.

About 7:15 PM we made it home for a dinner of left overs and fresh bread. Like almost every night, I plugged in to begin working on regular VisionTrust work - it doesn't stop while I am out of the country.

Praise the Lord, I got the internet to work tonight after being down for 2 days.

Why work in Central African Republic?

2009-09-22T13:57:00.003-06:00

VisionTrust is working in Central African Republic because it is the most lowly ranked nation in human development in the world ranking - that means that the level of poverty, education, social development, health and GDP are some of the worst in the world. We were invited to participate in this work through our partner called Integrated Community Development International (http://www.icdinternational.org/) in 2004, just 1 year after the country's most recent revolution. Since that time, we've been able to work with 729 of the neediest orphans in two cities.

Today, our task force (Tom Peters of ICDI, Ed Luminati, Matt Storer and 3 others) visited a primary school in the Northern part of the capital city. We met with two different school administrators, each responsible for about 1,800 girls. The first 1,800 meet in the morning and the second group meets in the afternoon. I doubled checked the statistics from these administrators with the statistics that I found at http://hdptcar.net/blog/education. For more part, this school was a reflection of the nationwide numbers. For example, the average teacher to student ratio is close to 1:120. In classrooms where there are benches, the was enough seats for only 90 children - if you put 5 children on each bench! (See picture of Matt and Ed sharing one bench).

Regarding water and hygiene at the school: Imagine 1,800 children attending school for 4 hours with NO access to drinking water or water for washing AND not having functioning latrines. This is a typical situation for the government run schools.

The situation on the ground here is grave and frankly, disturbing. But these are just a few of the realities of the world that the children in our programs face. These are the reasons that VisionTrust exists. We are coming alongside of Christian workers who want to help their own orphans and make it possible for them to improve their education and health while spiritually mentoring them. One of our staff responsible for the program in the capital city told me today that the key to these orphans growing up to be good citizens is learning the Bible and finding faith in Jesus Christ. He compared poor children he knew growing up that completed University: Ones that weren't taught about God with those who were. He concluded that the ones who did not know God squander their new wealth received through better employment while the others, the ones with God, tend to give back to their community and help people move ahead.

This evening we met with one of the orphan groups called Asana, project CR-002. I met a young man named Oscar. He just completed his national high school exam and passed! He is 21 years old. He is excited about the possibility of going on to University and has already committed to being a volunteer teacher in the VisionTrust program to help other orphans. What an amazing story!

-Matt Storer

Broken Infrastructure: Central African Republic

2009-09-20T14:40:00.004-06:00

Ed, Tom and I drove out to the Mercy Orphan Care Center, about 15-20 North from the ICDI Guest House. We met there with Madam Rebecca, the nurse for the orphan program. Ed talked with her about her training and experience, and learned about how she teaches the children about water and other related health concerns. She employs an animated flip chart that has Sangho and French words. For example, these are simple tools to encourage the children (and their caregivers) to find good sources of water that don't include run-off from areas where humans or animal deficate.

I've said this before, the problems in Central African Republic rival few other places because it seems as though all basic infrastructure is broken: water, sanitation, schooling, food sources and social. The water is broken to the point that public water sources in some communities in the capital city have been closed. We've approached the city officials to get permission to drill wells in these locations only to be strongly turned down because that is the "business" of the water company. They don't want to approve because that will take away from the water company's sales (remember, their distribution point is closed!). Even if the water company approved the
well, and they opened their distribution point, there would still be a water shortage. Everything is done by the bucket. In communities where the distribution points are open, people line up as early as 4:30 AM because most of them close by 8:00 AM and then reopen later. Pure water is the CORE to good health.

Sanitation is poor. While most houses use an pit, they have the pit right outside of their home and their homes are right next to each other. In most cases, the pit is no more than 15 yards away from their hand dug well. A good latrine should be about 5 feet wide and 10 feet deep, yet above the water table.

Schooling is a challenge because the governmental system experiences servere inconsistencies with paying teachers and providing the basic infrastructure necessary to teach students. The statistics paint a grim picture of a system in a shambles: there is one teacher for every 92 children at the primary level and nearly half of all teachers in CAR are parents with either very basic training or none at all. Net primary school enrolment rates have nearly stagnated for the past 15 years at 55%; and only 31% of children end up completing primary school.
However, even these numbers do not truly reflect the gravity of the situation: in Haute Kotto prefecture, for example, there are only 14 trained teachers for over 29,000 children in need of primary education. (taken from http://hdptcar.net/blog/education/).

Food security (or the level of access to food) is low. Recent information says that 2/3 of all people make less than $1/day while another 20% make between $1 and $2 per day. Given the level of poverty and the increase in food prices, the average number of times a person eats per day has dropped from 1.8 to 1.3. Yes, that is right. About 1 time per day. In addition, Ed and I have confirmed that THE meal eaten in homes at night includes a mush made from boiled casava flour dipped in casava greens with a little bit of palm oil. This offers some caloric intake but hardly any nutritional value.

The social challenges are vast. The concept of the "Limited Good" is an African concept that, on one hand it offers community and family support. On the other hand, it dramatically limits investing for the future and positive change. It is commonly held in traditional societies like CAR, that there is a limited amount of "good" to go around. In other words, the amount of good luck, money, etc. available is held to be finite, so every time one person profits, another loses. Societies that subscribe to this philosophy tend to display strong levels of equality among members and to be strongly resistant to social change. This seems to prohibit any one person
standing strong to invest in long lasting change - like large plantations, forestry projects, fish ponds, etc.

More to come later,

-Matt Storer

Pure water riddle: Why wouldn't a poor African boil water to purify it?

2009-09-19T08:04:00.001-06:00

I met 2 young widows today

2009-09-18T17:31:00.001-06:00

I met 2 young widows today. One cares for 17 people in one household, including 11 children. The other one cares for 6 of her own children. I also met 2 sets of grandparents, both caring for their children's children - about 13 on average. Their average income for the month is around $30! Where am I? Bangui, Central African Republic (CAR).

As Ed Luminati and myself (Matt Storer), went from house to house visiting the orphans in our program, our goal was to sit and talk with the caregivers and learn more about social, health and educational issues they face.

You see, in Central African Republic, the VisionTrust program in partnership with ICDI, works purposely to keep orphans living with their single parent if they still have one, close relatives or Christian families in their community. Why do this instead of building orphanages? The primary reason is to encourage children to grow up in a "family" environment and participate in the community activity like normal children. This concept is natural to most African communities (the orphanage was introduced by European and Western culture). This "Community Based Care" program is also less expensive to operate and therefore allows more children to receive assistance. For example since late 2004, we've been able to open 11 locations that serve 729 orphans. The program registers and pays for schooling and provides for food, health care and spiritual mentorship.

While this solution is ideal, it requires very good supervision by local staff to monitor the orphans, much like social workers in the USA. We continually work to improve the health and well being of the orphans. This is why Ed and I are here in CAR now, investigating how we can solve some tough community issues like mitigating the spread of disease including malaria, TB, and AIDS.

Please pray for us while we continue to complete our research from now until Sept 24th.

Thanks!

-Matt Storer

Ed Luminati and Matt Storer make it to Central African Republic - by Matt Storer

2009-09-17T14:41:00.005-06:00

Traveling from the USA to Central African Republic (CAR) is not a terrible trip, but it is a long and exhausting one. Ed and I (Matt) left the USA Tuesday morning from Colorado Springs for Chicago and caught a red-eye flight to Paris, France. We arrived on Wednesday at 9:30 AM. Tom Peters from ICDI met us around noon. We boarded the next flight to Bangui, CAR at 11:20 PM. Another red-eye, arriving at 5:30 AM Thursday morning.

After waiting 30 minutes to clear immigration, we waited another 90 minutes for our 5 bags full of internet and power gear and school supplies. 2 bags didn't make it - 1 was the internet gear and the other was my personal suitcase. I am now stuck with nothing but my computer and the clothes on my back for the next 7 days.

After filling out lost baggage forms in French, we all made it to our partner's guest house (http://www.icdinternational.org/) for breakfast and 2 hours of sleep. At noon we met with Jim Hocking and a few other ICDI staff to discuss the status of the mission to over 700 AIDS orphans and explain our goal for the week related to health care.

From that meeting we went to another meeting at the Mercy Orphan Care Center to meet the staff that work directly with the orphans. This is the HQ if you will of our ministry. It is the central distribution point for 8 program in Bangui and houses the offices of our staff. The facility built by ICDI has food storage, training room, medical clinic, wood working shop and sewing school. The staff gave us good reports on progress we've made in helping the children do better in school, receive medical treatments and dedicate themselves to following God. We spent time planning the week out in detail as we hope to interview several caregivers, schools, medical professionals, etc. throughout the week. We finished at 6 PM.

From that meeting we went back to the guest house for dinner and then met more with the leadership until 9:00 PM. Ed and I are tired ;-)

What world do you live in? In my world, a precious 9 year old just died from AIDS.

2009-09-15T15:44:00.001-06:00

A precious little girl named Verline Mbodekette died from AIDS on 8/20/2009 in Central African Republic. She was 9 years old and was born with HIV. During the last month of her life, the VisionTrust staff admitted her to the local hospital for care. Within hours, workers at the hospital determined that she had died in their care. Verline’s caregivers took her home and when they arrived at the house many people were crying and making noise. Apparently she was not dead because she "woke up." She was rushed back to the hospital and put on an IV. Sadly, she died the next day.

Perhaps for you, your world is defined by a fast-paced schedule and your personal relationships with family, friends and co-workers. However, Verline’s world was defined by 729 other AIDS orphans under the care of VisionTrust, a broken health care system, a non-functional school system, and the death of parents and close relatives.
In Central African Republic (CAR), life is…

… not about getting a job that is exciting, but simply finding paid work for one day.
… not about fixing up the basement for entertainment, but simply finding suitable shelter for a family of 11 made from clay, sticks, rocks and tin.
… not about buying another car for sweet-sixteen, but simply walking 2 miles to the nearest public grade school.
… not about buying organic meat because it is healthier, but simply finding enough food to survive for today.
… not about finding super deals during back to school sales, but simply trying not to damage the one nice shirt when washed in a creek and hung to dry in the bushes.
Together with our partner in CAR called Integrated Community Development International, we strive to create a better world for the orphans in our care. A world defined by love, trust and consistency through providing basic needs like shelter, food, medicine, education and spiritual mentoring.

As I write this, I am preparing for a trip to CAR with our Director of Health Services, Ed Luminati. Please pray for us. We will be meeting public school officials, the Minister of Health, and local medical professionals in the community. In addition, Ed and I will be conducting an extensive review of the fundamental issues blocking the advancement of basic health care like religion, social structures, politics, awareness and lack of training. Our primary goal will be to improve the foundation of basic health care knowledge among the people in the communities where we work and co-develop a plan to take proactive steps to properly care for all of the AIDS orphans in our program.

This deep level of work requires an incredible amount of time, talent and treasure: It also requires you.

If you want to help children like Verline, I need your participation this fall. Our biggest need right now is to have enough money to continue building that “better world” for the thousands of VisionTrust children throughout the world. In response, we’ve established the Better World Fund. Would you consider donating a special amount each month to this fund? You can also help by volunteering in your church or community to raise awareness about children in need, or you can commit to praying for VisionTrust and the children we serve. Please take action this month by completing the enclosed response card. You can learn more about how to get involved or donate online at www.visiontrust.org. Thank you for your participation!

Defending the fatherless with you,

Matt Storer