Our thoughts and values guide our everyday life and decision we make. The same applies to farmers and pastors.
“You’ve never been a farmer so you may not know, but that tiny piece of land of his could never have anything good grow out of it!” said a pastor to our project staff, Pui Shan, after visiting an impoverished Palaung family in northern Thailand and saw their backyard. If you were that farmer, you might not want to pick up that plow again after hearing the pastor’s words.
In the past two weeks, we have examined two farming methods that could help restore the land. However, the nature is not always men’s ally. When abnormal weather happens, what could impoverished farmers do to help themselves?
Drought is a frequent occurrence in central India where climate changes have caused great damages to the local farmers due to scarcity of rains. Climate change is one of the factors that drives farmers into a corner. In 2015 alone, there were over 12,000 farmer suicide cases due to severe financial difficulties in India [1]. Our partner in India, EFICOR, said countless farmers and their families suffered from hunger, and were forced to sell their livestock, or leave their hometowns in the hope of finding a job in the cities. This showed men had completely lost their hope for the land.
Did you know that the tiny creatures living in the soil are beneficial to plants?
Living in a metropolitan, we seldom pay attention on agricultural development. In fact, our lives are dependent on hard working farmers. Could you imagine what would happen if farmers all over the world take a one-week holiday?
Affected by chronic internal armed conflict, northern, southern and southeastern parts of Myanmar faced harmful consequences leading to destruction of community livelihood and land. Family can hardly stabilise their income, whereas many children were malnourished.
CEDAR’s partner, Myanmar Family Development Company Limited (MFDC), has been teaching community representatives from these areas organic farming methods that would restore soil quality and improve crop yield at their training centre near Yangon. In recent years, the training center began to apply teachings of the Bible to teach community representatives from these areas to practise crop rotation, in order to preserve Sabbath for land, recovery of soil quality and yield improvement.
Continue reading Week 2: Crop Rotation: Sabbath for the Land
Lent refers to the 40 days period (excluding Sundays) preceding Easter, during which Christians would involve in practical exercises such as praying, fasting, penance, abstinence, almsgiving, and practising self-denial to reflect and adapt a sacrificial, minimalistic, and caring lifestyle.
In the past few years, CEDAR has promoted the same idea of simplistic-living through different events and articles, encouraging brothers and sisters to live our lives on the foundation of Christ’s salvation and rebuild our relationships with God, with ourselves, with each other, and with the environment.
We will continue the practice this year and focus on the mission to reconcile with the land. We are going to reflect on our commitment in “liberating the creation from its bondage to decay and bringing it into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21) through a 6-week ePrayer series, featuring CEDAR and its partners’ work examples.
Continue reading Week 1: Why Should We Reconcile with the Land?
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
Hong Kong people in middle-aged or above are familiar with a song of Sam Hui in the 70’s describing the hardship from water suspension; and remember the day we shouted ‘Hey My Neighbours below, turn off your water tap!’ Nowadays with the steady water supply from Dongjiang, we seldom need to worry about water shortage. Instead we often hear people advocating today for a simple lifestyle for environmental sake. In fact this is easier to say than to do. The easiest way maybe is pushing the government, manufacturers and logistics industry to take up their responsibilities in environmental protection. However, what they supply every day is merely for satisfying and stimulating our unlimited material demand.
