neighbors

By Matt


Here is a picture of the family that we live next to (we share the same lot). From left to right is Doris´ daughter Alejandra (16), Noé (husband), Doris, her son Pedro (20), and Katie and I. We love living next to them. They take very good care of us, and give us lots of good advice for living in Honduras. Doris teaches Katie how to cook Honduran food, and recently Katie taught Doris how to make some great oatmeal rasin cookies. In this picture we are dressed up and ready to go to a birthday party of a friend of the family.

Garden Update

Look at these two pepper plants planted on the same day!



The pepper plants in the ground:


The pepper plants in the tires. The tires have better soil and hold moisture better:

Youth Leadership Training

By Katie

Last Saturday Matt and I worked together along with Roldan, our supervisor from Diaconia, to put on a youth rally of sorts on the topic of leadership and working together. Ecclesiastical training is one of the areas that Diaconia works in (along with environment, health, microcredits, etc.). This was our first opportunity to work in this area.



We met with youth ages 10-13 from about four different rural communities around Olancho. We had been a little nervous about the whole thing, especially about how our Spanish would hold up for six hours of talking about spiritual and other non-concrete things. That's no easy task if you are new to a language! But, we picked up a group from a community just outside Catacamas and as soon as I saw the kids, I knew we would be ok. I sat in the back seat with four very excited girls who were going into fifth grade, my favorite grade to teach. They were so happy to be there that I knew we couldn't go wrong.



For the day, we planned a bunch of games and discussions about group work and leadership. Thanks to some resources from our friends at Grace Adventures Camp, where Matt worked one summer, and Christy from Madison Square Church, where we used to be youth group leaders, we had some great games and even greater reflection on what happened. Matt also gave a talk and there was singing. The ladies of the community served us a wonderful lunch. It was an amazing time for the students to get together and feel totally safe to participate in everything. God blessed that time richly!







We are going back in January with the same group and we'll use the leadership/group work principles to plan and give a service by the youth for the community. We're excited to see what God has in store for this day too! Pray with us that these activities help the students grow and deepen their faith.

Graduation Ceremony

By Katie

Last Saturday evening Matt and I went to the graduation ceremony for the kindergarteners and sixth graders from Luz y Verdad, the school I work at. It was held at the church we go to in Catacamas. It was pretty normal as far as graduation ceremonies go, except that it was hard to tell whether the kids were dressed for graduation or a beauty pagent! The girls wore very fancy dresses, all had their hair done up or in tight curls and even the kindergarteners wore make-up. It was a very Latina experience. Enjoy the pictures.

Recuperación

My heart is a little heavy this week over what's going on in the Honduran education system (well, heavier than usual). This week is recuperación, which means that all the kids at all levels who did not pass their exams last week need to come back this week until they have passed. At my school, about a third of the kids needed recuperación. They are described as aplazados, "the defered", a word I refuse to use. It seems that these children see themselves as such. Every school in the entire country works like this, and there is no exemption from it for Christian schools. This is not how God sees his children!

In addition, the public school teachers were on strike for over a week earlier this year. The president said they would need to go until the end of November in order to make up for it. From what I understood from a radio broadcast, and what I see in the public schools in our town, it seems that the teachers have ignored this and quit school when they wanted to, shorting the kids of their right to be educated.

I have a new-found love of No Child Left Behind and the harsh consequences that go along with these laws in the United States!

Book Review: Communities First

By Katie

I recently finished the book Communities First, edited by Jay Van Groningen. It's a project in collaboration with Center on Faith in Communities and CRWRC. Our small group at Calvary had started it but Matt and I left before we finished. It had produced some great conversations and visions for what our church could be in the community.


The book makes a distinction between churches that minister in a community, to a community and with a community. We need to strive to be with the community, willing to work along side them, to shape them, and more importantly to be shaped by them.

The book encourages us to bring shalom to our neighborhoods, helping them to become more like heaven in the relationships people have, in the beauty of the neighborhood, in strong and accountable institutions, and in sharing and working together for the common good. It outlines possibilities for what this is and isn't, giving some practical advice to churhces and individual Christians wanting to make the most healthy difference possible.

Maybe you've been reading our blog and thinking this development stuff can only happen in foriegn countries. This book will help you think again!

Communities First books and workbooks can be ordered here. I also noticed on the CRWRC website that there's a conference coming up about this. Check it out here.

All Good Things

By Katie

After some tough days, we've had a bit of sunshine in the last two weeks. I've leaned on (or complained to) some of you and want to share that we are out of the valley! The electricity has been very consistant, the water man finally came and filled our tank, I made some killer oatmeal-raisin cookies, we went to Tegucigalpa and met with the CRWRC staff and Diaconia staff there, and got some things that we needed. There was a sale on our cell phone for calling the States, so we took advantage of that. Later, we got a mobile internet connection at our house which has made a lot of things so much easier, including talking to more of you (how great!) and actually helps us save money on our communication costs. It's been invaluable to use to research things for our work as well and has been a blessing to the whole organization. The modem for the internet ended up being free to us and we got on a deal that makes it only $15 a month and Diaconia will continue to use the modem after we leave. Not bad!

Thank you to those who pray for us. In a foreign culture, it is very easy to see that God provides for our every need. Your prayers for us do not go unnoticed by our Lord. Please, if there is any way we can pray for you, let us know.

Hogs and Moringa

By Matt

Diaconia is working on a pig raising project in the community of Guanabano. The Ag/Env program has nine sows and one boar distributed among nine farmers. Most of the sows are pregnant, and recently one gave birth to a litter of ten (of which nine survived). The idea is that the farmers can pay back the value of the original sow with from the profits of selling the hogs for meat.



The trick is to find cheap feed for these hogs. “Concentrate,” which contains soybean meal and other essential minerals for hog diets, is available in sacks locally, but it is quite expensive. This month we are planning a training session with a Honduran technical institute to teach the farmers how to make their own concentrate. This should provide a cheaper source of feed for the program. We are also looking into alternative ingredients that are available locally and at lower prices. This is the fun part!

In the midst of researching alternative feeds we were told about a program in Haiti that uses Moringa trees as hog feed. Moringa is a pretty amazing tree. The leaves are edible and high in protein as well as many other important vitamins. The seeds are also edible and high in nutritional value. It just so happens that earlier someone from the North American church had requested a packet of Moringa seeds for Diaconia from ECHO (a Christian agricultural organization in Florida). Well, we planted the seeds and they grew very quickly! These two photos show the trees 6 days after planting (about 1.5” tall) and 11 days after planting (about 8”).





We are hoping to include the Moringa as a possible alternative hog feed. In this way we would be planting more trees and providing more food. Moringa is also good for humans. The leaves taste quite good. Only the Lord knows how this will all end up, but it was very encouraging to me to see parts of the body of Christ working together, supporting each other, and sharing information to help bring some of our brothers and sisters out of poverty.

Tragedy in La Avispa

By Matt

Recently I traveled with some of the Diaconia staff to the community of La Avispa (the wasp). The long and bumpy road to this remote community cuts up into the mountains and passes some steep-sided valleys. A couple of months ago, just after we had arrived in Honduras, a disaster struck the community of La Avispa. In the valley above the village a large embankment of rock and soil had formed because of an earlier landslide. One night during a torrential rainstorm water built up behind the embankment until it burst around midnight. The wall of water trees and rocks ripped through La Avispa sweeping away houses and people. The water passed just in front of the Christian Reformed Church and many of the victims were members of this church. The first picture which looks like a dry river bed is where several houses once stood just in front of the church.



The purpose of our trip was to bring food and supplied to the people who lost their homes. In all we were able to supply 15 families thanks to donations from North American churches. It was incredible and humbling to listen to the stories of the survivors. Many people woke up to find themselves being swept away along with their houses. Others told about how after escaping the deluge they gathered on a nearby hill and prayed together in the rain and darkness. My understanding is that on that night 6 people died, including 3 children. In the next picture we are handing out supplies to victims in front of the church building.



The chronic deforestation of this part of Honduras played a part in this tragedy. Wealthy landowners have often hired the poor to cut down the forests of Honduras illegally. The lumber is harvested and sold, and then the bare mountainsides are used as pastures for cattle. The problem is that without a single tree root to prevent erosion the steep slopes give way after a heavy rain causing damage, and in some cases creating unstable embankments in the ravines. The pictures here show that the slopes above La Avispa have been almost totally deforested (some trees remain near the top). You can also see that the rains resulted in many new landslides.



The next picture shows a closer view of where the embankment burst and ripped out many large trees. One community member mentioned that the government is planning on reforesting some of the problematic slopes above La Avispa.



David and I are thinking about doing some tree planting activities in this area as well through the agriculture and environment program. Another more immediate need that we see is many farmers who lost all of their tools and supplies for working the land, planting, and harvesting. Hopefully we can work something out to help in that area as well.
This event shows that when people don’t take into account the well-being of the larger community, especially in terms of the management of natural resources, everyone loses. It also reinforced the importance of the Ag/Environment program at Diaconia which emphasizes our responsibility to be good stewards of Gods creation.