Andrew & Anne's Videos from Sri Lanka
First Video
This video shows several scenes of Lanka Evangelical Fellowship of Churches’ (LEFC) involvement with local schools and pre-schools, and a newly opened feeding centre for schoolchildren.
- Pre-Schools
- Jayakanth explains how the LEFC has taken over running many pre-schools—asked by the local community to step in after the previous organization left.
- A brief glimpse of Andrew preaching at Thampalagamam.
- Training session teaching songs to a gathering of pre-school teachers and some children using a CD. (Each pre-school will be given a CD player and a CD of English songs to learn.)
- Milk distribution centre next to pre-school
- A project financed by LEFC. The milk is collected and brought here every day—by bicycle!
- The children in the pre-school enjoyed showing off their counting abilities.
- State school in Veeramanagar
- We received a very special welcome here.
- This is a very impoverished area and the school finds it hard to attract teachers. LEFC pays for four Christian teachers at the school (out of a total of 13).
- As we met with the school Principal in his office, soldiers from the nearby military base came to check out what we were doing.
- At the school assembly the Principal expressed his thanks for the help he is getting.
- The boxes of toys you see being carried in are for the pre-school class.
- A glimpse into a classroom in another school in the very poorest part of this already struggling area.
- Here LEFC runs evening classes for local people.
- Opening of New Feeding Centre for schoolchildren
- The second half of the video is the opening ceremony for a new building in the nearby area of Neenarkeny.
- About 70 children will be catered for each day with the food being cooked at the house of a church member close by.
- You see the children washing their hands before eating (no knives and forks!) and the meal of rice, fish curry and vegetable curry being served.
Second video
This video shows some of the many rural projects that LEFC has worked to get running enabling local people to start businesses.
- Church at Veeramanagar
- Food is cooked for a feeding program for the children from the nearby school.
- The kitchen is the old church building which the congregation outgrew.
- Garden project
- Outside is a garden that is tended by the widows in the church and the food used to feed the children.
- They grow papaya, bananas, yams, beans, coconuts and chillies.
- Concrete block manufacturing
- Generates income and saves using precious firewood otherwise used to fire bricks.
- They are about to bring in a machine to form the bricks so that they can increase production.
- Proposals for new projects
- Local men present written proposals for projects that LEFC might take on to help them.
- Visiting some projects
- A project that is up and running: a barber shop. The little girl getting a haircut is not happy about being filmed!
- Next to the barber’s shop is a pile of rice straw used to feed the oxen who pull and ox-cart.
- LEFC provided the cart and oxen and now the man has a business collecting firewood from the forest and selling it. The cart can also be used for local haulage and even as a taxi!
- We call in at a bakery with an extraordinary tree growing outside. The bakery was built by an NGO but is on leased land which the owner now wants to sell. Jeyakanth hopes to buy the land so that the bakery can continue to operate.
- Another barber shop – with music this time.
- A general store, funded by LEFC
- Praying for the sick
- Now we meet a couple who were injured in the recent war and are still suffering. Andrew had the opportunity to pray for them.
- Visit to the North
- Now the team visits the north an area that has been badly hit by drought and crop failure.
- The pastor’s home is an empty container
- Solar lights have been donated and are used for a library for children
