All about Abim

---

       Abim is a small district. home primarily to the Ethur tribe. It is an area that has had many struggles varying from almost annual drought and locust to the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Uganda. It is also the district with the worst rates of HIV spread. One thing that stood out in a visit we had there early this year was a weekly market. Weekly or monthly traveling markets are common in rural Uganda. Vendors will come with a variety of goods that are hard to find in the village areas. Most times dozens of vendors will pile their wares and themselves on to cattle trucks daily and head to a new place to sell their products. At the market we went to in a rural area of Abim there was one person selling household goods, one person selling clothes, and about 25 people selling alcohol!

      As a ministry, we’ve traveled to Abim about a dozen times beginning with food distribution in 2020 - when they were severely affected by drought and locusts. Abim has long been an area with inconsistent rainfall and food insecurity. In 2024, we created two test gardens for Farming God’s Way  with two of our discipleship students living in that region. We’ve planted corn, beans, sweet potatoes, sunflower, sorghum, peanuts. The differences in what we’ve already harvested have been huge! The harvest of corn from using the Farming God’s Way Method is 5-8 times more than what the local gardens produced. The beans we planted using the local method died due to lack of rain, while the Farming God’s Way did really well. So well, that when we took it for grinding, those there were shocked at how big the kernels were! The sweet potatoes did great as well. With our first harvest, we were able to distribute a few weeks worth of food to 38 families last August .

      Along with a farming presence, we have multiple discipleship groups that were started last year. With at least four active groups meeting weekly, our prayer is that with time many of the people taking turns leading the groups, will desire to go and start new groups within their own homes and communities. With all that we’ve seen this year, we’re excited about what is coming next. 

       Two of our missions interns and their families packed up their belongings and moved to a new land. As they settle into their new home, embrace a new language, and begin reaching out to their new community - we’ll start discipleship through two ways. First, they will continue training more people in the community about Farming God’s Way. This will help their physical needs as well as open doors to have more discipleship groups through the relationships they build. Secondly, Abim has a good number of churches, but their leaders have little to no training. Our desire is to bring groups of churches together for a one or two month basic discipleship training. After this is complete, we’ll continue working in relationship with the leaders who are actively discipling people in their churches and communities. We hope through discipleship, churches will become stronger not only through their leadership but also through church members who are actively studying and obeying God’s Word in community together.