This is a crowd of the villagers watching the bee movie. The purpose of our trip was to introduce this village to bee keeping. To show a movie on bees to hopefully eliminate the village's fear of having bees. This was the first visit to this village.
"That's how it's done across Africa. You attract wild bees. So we've baited 104 hives. The bees are swarming between now and September, looking for a new places to live. We're asking people to join us in praying for just over 5 million bees to come and live in our hives." Exciting eh! This is sunset shot. I do not have any pictures of myself out with the bees. Although I thought it would be interesting for you guys at home to know what I am doing. The program coordinator said " We didn't tell the women they would be receiving free beehives and tools until the last day of training. We thought they already knew but they didn't. So when they found out they spontaneously burst into song. They were singing praises to God for about 20 minutes. It was wonderful." Africa is so different and in many ways refreshing. Can you imagine getting good news about something in your life and just start out in song?

This is a village road. We headed out to the village for the bee project. It was really interesting and nice to be out in the village. The Mercy Ships Community Development Services has started the bee project as one of the micro-enterprise initiative for women. They select poor women who would benefit immediately from a new source of income. It is an exciting project and seems to be succesful thus far. The women they train are to in turn to train other women ensuring the initiative will continue after Mercy Ships departs. Also an interesting to know for us Cornerstone supporters. Two prison officials were also trained and will teach the skill to female inmates, providing them with a source of income upon release.