Pray for the MICRO LOAN aspect of TMP, the main-stay of this ministry. This is our long-term, permanent help toward self-sustainable enterprise to solve family and personal needs.

Pray for the FIVE LOAVES program of TMP including seeds distribution, food aid, and cooked meals for slum dwellers. This addresses the short-term food crisis in Uganda. People need more than one meal a day.

Pray for Pastor Kasaija, the TMP Trainer in Uganda. His work is critical to TMP success.

Pray for Prayer Supporters, Financial underwriters and Board Members.

Pray for Wyatt's REPORT on his trip to Uganda, 21April to 12May, 2009.

Praise that TMP has finished its ministry in one church and have added another.

Give thanks for God's blessings on this project.

03 March 2009 Update

• The whole of this mercy ministry is dependent upon God’s leading and blessing.

• Training TMP recipients is of critical importance.  Our Ugandan trainer is Edward Kasaija.  Pray especially for Ed.

• TMP is overseen by a US Board of Directors that meets usually each year.  The next meeting is in March, ‘09.

• Our 2008 Budget was not met.  The Board had budgeted $68,400.  Our receipts were $58,014, but that was an increase over 2007.  Pray for blessing on those who give to TMP, and on those who pray for TMP.

• Pray for the spiritual health of all TMP recipients, and for their involvement in their churches.

• Each church that has the TMP loan program has a support group that meets at least monthly for training and for encouragement.

• The economy of East Africa has taken a hit due to the troubles early in ’08 in Kenya, and the world-wide economic down-turn.  This will surely impact the pay-back efforts of our borrowers.

• Wyatt is to travel to Uganda this April 20^th to work with TMP leaders in Uganda.  Pray for his many preparation activities, and for his family and church in his absence.

• Pray particularly for those who prepare to receive Wyatt in Uganda, that this visit will be beneficial to them.

• Ask that God be glorified in all that TMP does.

Also, you may find these recent letters informative for your prayer support:

Feb 11, 2009

Dear Friend,

We must be discerning in what we support. The TentMaker Project may meet your requirements. If so, please consider a monthly support of a modest amount. Here is an example of what your money will accomplish, the story of Frank Tabayete.

The TentMaker Project was introduced in his church in 2001, Frank borrowed $135 to boost his brick-making enterprise, each brick made by hand.

This was Frank's situation at the time. He and his wife lived in poverty, except that they were rich in Christ. They lived in a two-room adobe-type house with a rusty roof of corrugated tin. They had two very young preschool-age girls. The couple had two acres of low-land that mostly was not cultivatable except for a small garden, due to wetness. In addition to the vegetable garden, they had (and still have) 8-10 varieties of fruit trees, a small bunch of chickens, ducks and a few pigs, all which provided food, their entire diet. Also they had a water source for brick-making and drink, after boiling.

His tiny brick-making business produced enough for taxi-fare to church, minimal clothing, charcoal to cook with, occasional medicines, and not much else. There was no money for up-coming school fees, and his wife never had anything but used dresses that she could buy. Frank's work-clothing was a little better than rags. I remember his embarrassment in 2001 when we met.

Frank sold his bricks on the side of the road. He spent his full-time time stomping mud for bricks and forming them with wooden, hand-made forms, stacking them for drying and buying hardwood to bake them well. Hardwood trees did not grow on his land.

But he had a vision: expand his business, send his girls to school, and add a room to their mud-house (or build another) with the excess bricks beyond his sales, and buy some furniture, etc. So far he had never been able to do that. But he loved Christ and worshipped faithfully at his Presbyterian church.

So, through TMP he borrowed to boost his business in 2001. When I went back to see him a year later, he had five part-time workers making bricks and he was spending half his time go­ing to home-owners who were building additions, selling his high-quality clay-bricks at competitive prices. The clay came out of his pond and run-off trench!!

And, guess what? By that time he had the brick supply to build his own new house, a real brick house with four small rooms, each about the size of a large US walk-in closet: a kitchen, sitting room, and two sleeping rooms! His girls were out of rags, and were attending school. Christian faith, vision, $135, plus hard, smart work was producing good returns.

Then he applied for and got an additional loan to buy a brick-making device, hand-operated, that made the bricks in a uniform way, that builders preferred over the hand-made varieties. The device improved his brick-making volume also.

The 3rd time I visited Frank and Pauline, they had added brick and cementfloors to their home, floors that were smooth and shiny with throw-mats, a propane or charcoal fired cast-iron stove to her kitchen and several pieces of real furniture. She served us g-nuts (ground nuts that we call peanuts) and papaya juice, from a real coffee-table!

Frank has repaid all his loans, including a third, more recently. He is now a deacon in the church and sits on the TMP committee there, helping other people with their loans and businesses. In 2007 I saw him at work with that committee. Frank walks with God. He employs workers and contributes to the church. His brick products are in demand.

There are many other stories of TMP services in Uganda, East Africa. Not all are as highly successful as Frank's, but most have been successful. When recipients improve their businesses, provide for their families, give to the Lord His tithes and repay their loans in order to help others, we call that success. Since in this way your contributed dollars are recycled, you too might call that success.

I would return to Africa each year if possible just to meet such "giants" who are servants of Christ. There is no better motivational school to attend than to visit people like Frank Tabayete and his family.

Thank you so much for reading this letter. Consider helping make The TentMaker Project in 2009 a useful tool to help your brothers and sisters who have need. We would especially value your prayer!

Yours in Christ,

J. Wyatt George

PS— The cost of living in Uganda has increased about 25% in the last year, which is a fairlyconservative estimate. Your prayer for the Church there is important. Thank you! 

DECEMBER, 2008

Dear Friends,

Teo is a young, single woman. Eight years ago ('01) she applied through her church for a $50 loan to buy sweet-potato slips and hire a neighbor to work a small field. She had never had the funds to use that land properly. There, as here, if the seeds or plants are not of a high or standard quality, the output is minimal. Labor has to be paid and fertilizer bought. Teo was a teacher in a Christian School, and her wages were so low that she just barely could pay for her food and rented room, with none left for agriculture. She used the loan to take advantage of the land.

Teo, after a year, reported that she had hired her neighbor, an elderly man without work, to dig her field, set in the slips and cultivate. In the first year she harvested 3 crops of potatoes. (Remember, Uganda is equatorial.) That project yielded increased income for her, work for a needy neighbor while she continued to teach eager children.

Fast-forward. Last November ('07) I spoke at Nakitokolo Christian Day School. There among the faculty was a woman I thought looked familiar. I went over and spoke to her. It was Teo!! She's still teaching and still profiting from her potato patch!

Thank God for your support of TMP! You have given an opportunity for quite a few Teos of Uganda. Their
churches are benefiting too.   As their members repay their loans, the money is used to help others on the same basis.  At this point in the Ugandan economy, a $50 loan is rare. The smallest amounts are now in the $100 range, and the average several times that. The principles are all the same, however. A market-based enterprise needs capital to thrive. Thanks again for your interest and support. I hope you have had a blessed thanksgiving!

J. Wyatt George

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November 2008

Dear Friend of the TentMaker Project,

Thank you so much for your faithful prayers and financial support. In return, here is a field report:

Our trainer, Pastor Edward Kasaija in Uganda, has done an excellent service with the training and briefing of new and existing recipients of the micro business loans. We pay $700 a month to cover the trainer's gasoline costs at over $6.00 per British gallon, food for those who come to lengthy training seminars, a little bit of pay for those who help him with the seminars, and some miscellaneous expenses that vary from place to place. Training is the most vital part of the program, and its success is the biggest news of this year.

The lending of livestock instead of cash to some approved applicants is the second most important development. .. In the most isolated of rural situations, the economy operates mostly on barter. These people understand receiving two pigs and paying back two pigs. The TentMaker Project (TMP) buys the livestock from existing TMP participants, which helps them with their enterprises.

There is need for larger cash loans in the city and suburban locations, places where the Uganda Shilling prevails as the medium of exchange. As the economy has grown, what was done for $300 in 1999 would now cost $600. We appeal for your continued support.

The newest rural church we work with is in need of treated seeds for its neighbors. These extremely poor people cannot afford even $7 in treated garden seeds. The church desires to give out these seeds to approximately 140 families right now. The seeds will be given out on the biblical model of Matthew 25:14-30. If you can help with this specific project, send checks made to The TentMaker Project - Seed, 173 Lambs Lane, Murphysboro, IL 62966. Note that this is not a regular TMP function, this fund will be handled separately from the regular TMP funds.

Want to go with us to Uganda on April 20, 2009 for up to three weeks? If you go, you would communicate in English, live in a fairly modern place with shared bath facilities, sleep on decent beds under netting, eat well with some oddities, have long days, moderate weather, and serve with wonderful Ugandan believers. Email TMP1997@Juno.com with basic biographical data and Christian testimony as well as the answer to the following question, “Could you consider others better than yourselves (Phil. 2:3) among the poor and deprived of God’s people in Africa?

www.tentmakerproject.org