May the Lord give you increase more and more, Psalm 115:14

July 2018

Earlier this year we were contacted by the High Commissioner of Barbuda to ask for our help in rebuilding this Caribbean island. Barbuda was devastated by Hurricane Irma in September 2017 and most of the buildings were completely destroyed. This included the hospital.  At the time of the disaster we felt unable to help. We had no contacts in the area and we were not clear how much support the Caribbean islands would require due to the immense international support given at the time.

Alistair and I were able to travel to London to meet the High Commissioner and the Prime Minister of Barbuda. We gave a short presentation about Jacob’s Well Appeal and how we can help them and also spoke to the people running the Rebuild Barbuda Appeal fund.

Hurricane Irma  hits the Caribbean and Barbuda is devastated. 95% of the buildings are destroyed.

Barbuda has received very little financial help from the international community and the Rebuild Barbuda Appeal had set aside money to fund the shipping of a medical container and also to buy second hand equipment such as an ultrasound machine and portable x-ray equipment. Alistair has spent several weeks locating these items and a container full of medical supplies such as dressings, gloves, syringes, catheters and walking frames as well as hospital beds and a baby incubator and the other equipment purchased has now left Beverley on its way to Barbuda.

Alistair looking smart travelling to London on the train……

….and the container leaving Jacob’s Well Yard.

The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. Numbers 6:25

August 2018

I do hope that everyone in the UK has enjoyed the hot sunny weather. We have been truly blessed.     We have also been able to plant several more fruit tree orchards over the summer – 6 with pastors around Bobo in Burkina Faso and a further 5 with our partners in Ouagadougou, also in Burkina. These plantations are planted in communities or schools and the fruit will then help feed the communities and, hopefully, provide a crop to sell at market. The vitamin A in the mangoes helps prevent blindness in the children and the trees are environmentally friendly! Ghana has native mango trees, but the fruit is very woody and indigestible. The mangoes we grow are highly prized.                                                        We also have planted a further orchard in the Nadowli-Kaleo district in the Upper West Region of Ghana in memory of Sandra Scantlebury. Sandra was a volunteer worker in Ghana for Jacob’s Well Appeal who sadly died last year. She came from Manchester but wanted to volunteer abroad to help those less fortunate than herself.

Sandra had worked for Jacob’s Well Appeal since 2009 running our community projects and helping to clear our containers of medical aid through customs and getting them to the hospitals that needed the equipment and donations. The York Viking  Rotary Club has, over the years, provided support for Sandra to help her community work and they have generously donated towards this project.

Nadowli is on the edge of the sub-Shararan region of Africa and is one of the poorest districts of Ghana. 80% of the population are involved in agriculture and of these 83% of the population are engaged in subsistence farming and live in poverty. 50 mango seedlings were giving to the community and 50 mango seedlings were planted at a school in the area. The hard work of watering and keeping the mangoes safe from goats and fire now starts. It takes up to 5 years for the trees to mature enough to start producing mangoes and by this time they are established and need much less work. We must pray that the mango trees make it to this stage. We are so very grateful to our partners in Ghana, Coalition for Change (C4C), and especially Ruby Yap, who are all working so hard to make these projects in Ghana successful.

Community of Nadowli- Kaleo District planting the mango seedlings.