aim for the sky

Stephan and I have a dear African friend who once told us, "Aim for the sky... and if you land in a tree, that is still very high up". The incredible wisdom of that proverb has struck us this week as Stephan visited our "Essential Oils" program. It could only be God's plan to help the poor through growing geraniums, extracting their oil, and processing for export to markets in South Africa and Europe. Essential oils are used in fragrances and cosmetics. World Relief certainly aimed high on this one, and the tree limb they landed on was a good one.

Here you see a geranium nursery. These geraniums will be replanted and managed by associations of farmers who raise them and then sell the leaves for distillation into oil. With geraniums, farmers here can earn ten times the price of tea. We are launching a company called "Ikirezi", meaning "precious", or "pearl", in the local language, to facilitate the production, processing, marketing, and exporting of the oils. We just received a generous government grant to continue our work here in geraniums.... Hooray for aiming HIGH!!