Pray With Us

We praise God for continuing to protect us and our families, along with the whole Plant With Purpose family, and for the recovery of our national director. We praise him for the birth of a son to our economic empowerment coordinator, Emile, and his wife. The baby and mother are home and healthy. We pray for further protection during the month ahead, especially during this time of COVID-19. We pray for God’s protection over all our participants and families. We pray for our partnering farmers as they sow their fields and apply the new agricultural techniques they’ve learned during their most important growing season.

We praise God for the health of our staff, especially those who have overcome recent challenges with illness, including our spiritual renewal supervisor and executive director, and for the recent reopening of schools that have been closed for months due to COVID-19. We pray for our village agents who are conducting training using our Seeds of Change environmental curriculum in collaboration with technicians. We pray for some of our participants in the Kakumba watershed who have had to move from their homes due to recent armed group activity. We pray that our participants remain safe from COVID-19.

We praise God for the engagement of our staff members Tsigereda Birhan and Nigus Alemayehu, by Holy Communion of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, for a life together as one. We praise him for excellent conversations and lessons learned from other partners’ experiences shared at the IPPM, as well as successful expansion, scaling up, and multi-year planning activities of our Ethiopia program. We pray for good communication and preparation as our Ethiopia program transitions out of its pilot phase and towards regular operations, and for safety for the whole Plant With Purpose family.

We praise God for the reopening of seven new savings groups in the month of February: two in Puebla, two in Chiapas, and three in the Rio Grande de Oaxaca watershed. We praise him for the collection of pine seed that was successfully carried out in Peñoles and Mixteca, and for the nursery in Rio Manzanita that produces 3,000 plants. We pray for a good rainy season, so our reforestation efforts next quarter may be fruitful. We pray for the continued health of communities, promoters, and staff as our work continues, and specifically for the health of our colleague Juan Díaz, our Puebla program coordinator. We are praying for his full recovery from a severe COVID-19 infection.

We praise God for protection from the outbreak of a second wave of coronavirus, and the good health of our staff. We give thanks for the recent rainfall that we’ve received. This is well-timed, as farmers are practicing newly learned techniques on their farms that can help them improve their farm yields while being friendly to the environment. We pray for protection against the pandemic for our global family, and for Neema Missana, who is mourning the loss of her young sister, Sara, and our Wona Program Officer Marango, who recently lost his father. May God comfort them during this hard time, and may the peace of the Lord be upon them.

We praise God for the success of the IPPM, involving over 60 participants, eight countries, and at least six different time zones. We are so thankful for the absence of major technological issues, and the new possibilities that this meeting has opened. We praise him for the successful first months of Katherine Padgett and Will Scheel as new members of our team. They have settled into their new roles with enthusiasm and are already making our work stronger. We pray for God’s continued comfort after the passing of our beloved team member and friend, Kirstie Hibbard. Our staff were able to participate in various events to celebrate her life, and we pray that we continue our work with her same spirit of love for people and creation. We pray for residents of Texas who are recovering from major power outages and water cutoffs after a severe ice storm damaged infrastructure throughout the state and region.