Zimbabwe (MNN) — In the southeast African country of Zimbabwe, inflation rose to 191.6 percent in June, up from 132 percent in May. The government will introduce new gold coins in an attempt to stall the economic crisis.
Many people in Zimbabwe live on subsistence farming, providing only for their own needs and not producing extra.
Christian World Outreach has worked in Zimbabwe since the year 2000. Greg Yoder says the financial crisis makes it difficult to plan. “Even looking at, ‘Okay, we’ve got this amount of funds we had available. It’s going to do less now than we thought it was.’”
Yoder recently spoke with the CWO Zimbabwe National Director, Onias Tapera. “He made the comment that it has a negative impact on staff morale. Because they always feel like they’re putting out fires and trying to help people with their physical needs.”
CWO’s work in Zimbabwe
CWO works with pastors and lay leaders in Zimbabwe to raise Jesus-centered churches.
This is all the more important because prosperity gospel teaching (saying Jesus will give people money) has become quite common throughout parts of Africa. Yoder says, “They’re begging us to come back. They make comments like, ‘I didn’t realize that the Bible applied to my whole life.’”
“And here’s your pastor, your lay leader making that comment.”
Out of that ministry grew a need to help orphans whose parents died from AIDS. Yoder says, “Now we look at it more as vulnerable children. We have the Our Kids program, where we’re helping keep the kids in school but also helping them find foster parents.”
The training has gone on long enough to see some of the kids graduate from college.
Ask God to give the CWO team wisdom as they serve churches and kids while navigating the economic crisis.
The header photo shows farmers in Zimbabwe. (Header photo courtesy of Domikatema, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
