{"id":5945,"date":"2019-10-03T10:07:24","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T10:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coreyandkatie.org\/?p=5945"},"modified":"2019-10-03T10:13:55","modified_gmt":"2019-10-03T10:13:55","slug":"poking-a-hornets-nest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coreyandkatie.org\/index.php\/archives\/5945","title":{"rendered":"Poking a hornets\u2019 nest?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With our teammates\u2019 departure, the medical surveying and\nhealth education visits to each household in the village were no longer\npossible, so Corey started investigating other ways we can help the community. For\nseveral months, we were working towards a water project, but in the end the\nSenegalese government rejected our consultant\u2019s suggestion to change to an electric\npump from the failing diesel powered one, and ended up providing a new diesel\npump, which did solve the problem of frequent water cuts. As we were considering\nwith the chief what we could do next, he suggested we restart a community\ngarden project that folded over a decade ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We do not normally try to resurrect other organizations\u2019\nfailed projects, and were wary of getting involved in this one. At the same\ntime we saw some real possibilities \u2013 much of the infrastructure is still there\n\u2013 so we started to consider it. Corey has taken a lot of time over several\nweeks discussing with people in the village what happened and found that there\nwere many factors that contributed to the original garden project\u2019s failure,\nincluding the main water counter to the garden malfunctioning (marking too much\nwater which resulted in huge unpayable bills for the farmers) and the water\ntower falling over during the first year of the project due to faulty\nconstruction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in addition to the physical problems, there were also\ninterpersonal problems within the village related to this project. As Corey\nspent time talking to the different people involved, he found that there are a\nlot of broken relationships and residual hurt and anger over things that were\nsaid and done during the original project. He has asked a lot of questions and\nexplained that we are only interested in helping with a new community garden\nproject if we can do it in a way that brings blessing and increased peace for\nall members of the village. He refers often to the four kinds of peace that\nAdam and Eve experienced in the Garden of Eden: 1) peace with God, 2) peace\nwith each other, 3) peace with the land, and 4) internal peace rooted in knowing\ntheir identity and purpose. A community garden project that only brings peace,\nor increased blessing, in one area (for example, through increased vegetable\nproduction from the land) but which brings discord in the other areas can not\nbe considered a success! Corey has been visiting all the stakeholders asking if\nthere is a way to do this project that would bring blessing in all four areas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday he was talking to five or six villagers who farmed\nthe land before the project was organized and things got really \u201chot\u201d (as they\nsay in Wolof) with lots of angry yelling and arguing. Some men were angry at\nCorey and yelled at him, accusing him of favoritism \u2013 the original project was\nrife with divisions along family lines that go back to previous feuds. Others\nsaid things like, \u201cIf this project happens, I won\u2019t let anyone in my household\neat the produce of the garden!\u201d and \u201cI am going to die fighting about this!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is kind of crazy that wanting to help the chief rebuild a\nfenced enclosure for a garden to bless the whole village could incite such strong\nnegative emotions! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We share all of this to ask you to pray with us. Pray\nspecifically for the meeting Corey wants to have with those landowners on Friday\nafternoon (4 October) at 5 p.m. GMT (that\u2019s 1 p.m. EST). Some of the men have\nalready said they are going to boycott the meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pray for the Lord to give Corey wisdom and clear guidance.\nIs this an opportunity for God to show His power to heal relationships and to\nteach about forgiveness? Or should we abandon this idea, despite the chief\u2019s\ncontinued prioritizing of this project? Is there another type of project we\ncould do to help? Does the Lord even want us to keep trying to work in this\nvillage at all? Pray for God to answer these questions and for us to be\nfaithful to obey His directives, even if we don\u2019t like the answers or if it\nisn\u2019t easy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With our teammates\u2019 departure, the medical surveying and health education visits to each household in the village were no longer possible, so Corey started investigating other ways we can help the community. For several months, we were working towards a water project, but in the end the Senegalese government rejected our consultant\u2019s suggestion to change […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5947,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coreyandkatie.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/IMG_20190614_172951290.jpg?fit=4096%2C3072&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pnGvI-1xT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coreyandkatie.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coreyandkatie.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coreyandkatie.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coreyandkatie.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coreyandkatie.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/coreyandkatie.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5949,"href":"https:\/\/coreyandkatie.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions\/5949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coreyandkatie.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coreyandkatie.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coreyandkatie.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coreyandkatie.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}