shared by Cindy May

Last year, a teenage boy came to the Nkumba school begging for help.  He had no parents, no money, no way to attend school or eat.  This sadly is not an unusual scene.  But something John told us about this boy stuck in my mind.

When John took him in to give him food, he gave him an egg.  The boy told him that he had not had an egg in 5 years.

Although eggs cost the same in Uganda as they do here in the U.S., eggs have not been a part of the diet at the Nkumba schools/orphanage, because there hasn’t been money for eggs. Well, all that is about to change!

The chicken coop is ready…and waiting.  There’s room in this inn!

The next part of the swap-it project is to fill the inn with 2,000 laying hens.  Our goal is to supplement the children’s diet with one egg a day.  This will be an important protein source, as well as a welcome addition to their taste buds!

For reasons of efficiency and because someone needs to live at the farm to care for the chickens, we need to start with at least 1,000 chickens.

So, we have a special request for you.  Will you take one month with us (Jan 18-Feb 18) and see just how many chickens you or your family can donate?  Each chicken is $10.  By cutting areas of our spending for one month, we can provide a sustainable food source to more than 1200 children for a lifetime! Here are a few ideas:

• Dinner out: $50-$100 = 5-10 chickens
• Pedicure: $40 = 4 chickens
• Weekend Road Trip: $100 (fuel) = 10 chickens
• Golf Outing: $50-$150 = 5 to 15 chickens
• Ski Day: $100= 10 chickens
• RICE NIGHT: $10-20= 1 to 2 chickens (eat rice instead of a normal dinner at home)
• Concert: $50= 5 chickens
• Valentine’s Day Flowers & Gifts: 12 chickens (The average person spends $123 on Valentine’s Day gifts)
• Brown-bag lunches for a month: $80=8 chickens
• Find something to sell on Craig’s List: ???
• Clothes shopping: ???

Of course we could also make these trades and others to supply urgently needed relief to the people of Haiti.  And as representatives of Christ, we should.  I was looking this week at the GDP per capita (PPP) of both Uganda and Haiti.  The people of both countries have an average purchase power of $1300 annually.  While a $47,000 income (the US avg PPP) may not sound like an unusually large salary in our context, it is staggering wealth in comparison to either Haiti or Uganda.  36 times as much. Imagine what we would think if in a neighboring country, the average annual wage was $1,692,000. THAT is staggering!  I would certainly hope my neighbors could spare enough to send me disaster relief and a few chickens.  We are wealthy beyond wealthy.

About 10 years ago, a friend of mine returned from a trip to India and was telling me about it.  She said, “I am rich. I am filthy rich.”  I will never forget that, because she had less than I did, and I honestly thought she was nuts.  I know now she isn’t nuts.  I just didn’t have global eyes back then.

School in Uganda starts in the beginning of February.  Wouldn’t it be a wonderful surprise for all of the children if they came back to school to find they would enjoy an egg each day? Whenever I enjoy an egg for breakfast, I think about Jesus’ command to love my neighbor as much as I love ME. I want to provide eggs for all of my little African neighbors 🙂

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