{"id":291,"date":"2023-01-08T00:47:14","date_gmt":"2023-01-08T06:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5458.temp.domains\/~ivingse5\/?p=291"},"modified":"2023-01-08T00:47:14","modified_gmt":"2023-01-08T06:47:14","slug":"cyrus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/livingseedsinitiative.org\/?p=291","title":{"rendered":"Cyrus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cyrus – A giant of a man that carries a quiet authority, Cyrus is determined to change the mindset of his South Sudanese farmer friends with the intent that when they are able to return to their homeland, the land having had time to heal from their abusive farming practices will be brought back into food production with healthy, life giving, sustainable, regenerative methods.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cyrus and his family fled his South Sudan farm in 2017 when the rebel and national armies began pillaging the area farms and villages.\u00a0 Safety for his family was priority so he sought refuge in Rhino Camp in the far northern corner of Uganda.\u00a0 As a respected farmer and community member, he rose quickly in the leadership within the camp structure and became a leader on the council for refugee relations.\u00a0 His love though was for the land and farming but the dry, barren, forest stripped\u00a0 land of Rhino Camp was nothing like the rich fertile land of South Sudan.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cyrus heard about the Sustainable Ag School in Arua and applied to come.\u00a0 He was intensely attentive in class and took any opportunity outside of the classroom to practice what he was learning and to ask questions and seek more information that might empower him to be a successful farmer.\u00a0 He dreamed big, but also knew that what he was learning was counter cultural, and he would face resistance.\u00a0 He knew he would have to be quite dedicated in his practices and be confident in the outcomes.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After he completed the school in Dec of 2019, Cyrus went back to his home in the camp.\u00a0 It was dry season.\u00a0 Traditionally during dry season, the men spend their days sitting under a shade tree to play games, talk the day away, and drink their homemade brews.\u00a0 Instead, Cyrus went home to start preparing for the next farming season.\u00a0 He located manure from a night corral and hauled it by a wheel barrow to his farm.\u00a0 He located dried grasses from the dry swamps and cut the coarse grasses to haul to his farm as another resource.\u00a0 He built compost.\u00a0 He carefully prepared his land for planting.\u00a0 He endured many jokes and insults at his expense from the other men as they watched him work.\u00a0 They mocked him,\u00a0 insulted him, got angry at him and made up stories about him.\u00a0 He said it was very hard and he had to have much love and patience for these men, praying that later he would be able to show them and they would be open to new knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The rains came and his fields being carefully prepared with organic compost,\u00a0 planted, and ready to receive the rain, grew and prospered.\u00a0 His fields were weeks ahead of the neighbors and yielded a healthy abundant crop because of the practices he had put into place.\u00a0 The neighbors began to grumble against him and accused him of using witchcraft on the soil.\u00a0 They decided to coerce him to use his witchcraft on their soil so they would see bountiful crops in their fields too.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In his quiet and authoritative way, Cyrus brought out his Bible and began teaching them from Genesis 1:1.\u00a0 Soon, he had a class and began teaching the way that God designed the farm to be; abundant, fertile, producing a good crop and taught them about the life in the soil and how to use it to benefit your plants.\u00a0 His pastor listened to him teaching and asked him to take the Sunday school hour to teach the church.\u00a0 Word spread and other villages started asking for his teachings and other humanitarian organizations started asking for his input and training.\u00a0 At one village training, he had 120 people show up to the meetings!\u00a0 Farmers started changing practices and he is slowly seeing results.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rice is a staple food for them in the camp but is expensive to buy.\u00a0 He had an idea to grow dryland rice with one of his classes.\u00a0 He used it to train them in a certain method of planting called Farming God\u2019s Way.\u00a0 The rice prospered using this method and grew well.\u00a0 They had an abundant harvest, but now had the challenge of cost to transport the rice to a mill, have it milled and then transport it back to the camp for them to use, and they would have no guarantee that the rice they had carefully and organically grown would be returned to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0He formed a coop within the community and they started looking for ways to have their own mill in their community. \u00a0 They contributed from their own resources, applied for some charitable grants and before long had a threshing mill for the village.\u00a0 Now, they can raise their own grains and be able to mill them in the village as well as be able to mill for others as they learn to grow their own grains.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cyrus is determined to challenge the generations so that when they return to their homeland, their portion of South Sudan can be a model for the rest of the country to restore and regenerate their land.\u00a0 The sky is the limit for Cyrus and we have no doubt that his corner of South Sudan will become a model for many to aspire to.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a02022 update:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cyrus returned to Arua and came to the school to greet us and we asked him to give a greeting to the class.\u00a0 He stood up and began to give testimony of all God had done in his life, family and village over the difficult Covid years.\u00a0 The school gave him full attention as he shared and encouraged them in their future if they chose to follow the principles learned in the school.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He had recently returned and spent t time in South Sudan at his farm.\u00a0 His purpose was to explore if it was safe to return his family to the land and to resettle.\u00a0 After he got there, friends told him of a job that the Minister of Agriculture for South Sudan had posted looking for a Director of Agriculture over the entire Western Equatorial region.\u00a0 He went into the office to inquire and found that there were already 1500 applicants for the job.\u00a0 He decided he had plenty to do to start training in his village so went back without applying.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Weeks later as he was doing some training on the farm plot he had planted in a very public area, some men stopped to listen and watch.\u00a0 Afterward they asked him about his training and his level of knowledge in agriculture, chatting for some time about his experiences in the school and in villages.\u00a0 They offered him a job, the same one that he had not applied for.\u00a0 When he told them he hadn\u2019t applied, they responded that his garden and the training they saw was all the application they needed.\u00a0 He now is doing exactly what he dreamed of doing, challenging the generations of South Sudanese to steward and tend the land.\u00a0 He has been given full permission to speak freely of the God who designed it and teach His principles to regenerate it.\u00a0 We are excited to return again to hear more \u2018God stories\u2019 from this humble servant who is being used to transform a nation. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cyrus – A giant of a man that carries a quiet authority, Cyrus is determined to change the mindset of his South Sudanese farmer friends with the intent that when they are able to return to their homeland, the land having had time to heal from their abusive farming practices will be brought back into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/livingseedsinitiative.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/livingseedsinitiative.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/livingseedsinitiative.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/livingseedsinitiative.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/livingseedsinitiative.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/livingseedsinitiative.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292,"href":"https:\/\/livingseedsinitiative.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/livingseedsinitiative.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/livingseedsinitiative.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/livingseedsinitiative.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}