Front Porch Gang moves indoors

By Katie

Lately the Front Porch Gang has been testing their limits and coming inside the house whenever they see us around. Today I was working on the computer and noticed these two stinkers spying on me. Pretty soon they were inside reading a book. This is getting to be a pretty common occurrence. I guess our house is turning into a library that's open all waking hours of the day :)

Resources about the political crisis

By Katie

There's a lot of news and propaganda out there about the current state of Honduras. It doesn't take long to realize that this is a complicated issue and that reporters are giving us stories from all different angles. It's a little hard to decifer how we should analyze the problem and how to respond to it as North Americans.

One of my Honduran co-workers directed me to the website of the Association for a More Just Society as a great objective resource. I encourage anyone looking for more analysis on the situation to check it out, especially those of you who send regular church groups to Honduras. Among the great resources on their webpage there's a handy Prayer and Advocacy Guide that you could use for adult Sunday school classes. Association for a More Just Society is partner of CRWRC, just like Diaconia Nacional is.

AJS suggests the following prayer requests:
"1. Pray for a peaceful solution to the political crisis, and for wisdom and humility on the part of both the deposed and the newly installed presidents of Honduras.
"2. Pray that Honduras' leaders (elected officials, businessmen, etc.) will wake up to the fact that “democracy” as it has been practiced in Honduras for the last 25 years hasn't done much at all for the poor. Pray that Honduras will finally be blessed with leaders whose priority is the common good rather than their own self interest.
"3. Pray for world leaders (Oscar Arias, Hugo Chavez, Obama, Clinton, United Nations, OAS), for wisdom in responding to this situation."

Thank you for praying with us!

Journey to Colón

By Matt

There are also some Christian Reformed churches in the department of Colón up on the north coast, just north of the expansive department of Olancho (where I live). Some years ago Diaconia did a housing project up there, and the people are paying back the houses little by little. So, at least once a year Leti (the woman who manages the loan program) has to go and get the books all up to date. Jordan and I accompanied Leti and her mother Conchita on the 6 hour journey on mostly dirt roads through the middle of Honduras.

We passed through some of the beautiful hidden valleys of Olancho crossing several mountain ranges. As we entered Colón we started to notice it got hotter, more humid, and there were many more palm trees around.

After arriving in Bonito Oriental (the pretty east) and leaving our bags at a church member’s house we moved on to another town called Feo Oriental (the ugly east). The joke is that “Ugly” is actually more pretty than “Pretty”. Leti got right to the paper work and Jordan and I taught the people about Moringa and how to use and cultivate it and gave them some seeds. We also gave them some useful bean seeds and talked about what people grow on the north coast.

You farmers might be interested to see this corn shelling operation. A lot of corn is harvested by hand (since it is grown in the mountains) and then shelled later.

One of the men has an African palm farm. We talked about what he could grow under the palms instead of having to spray all the time to kill weeds. He want to try a green-manure cover crop of sword beans, so I’m going to send him some seeds with the missionary Caspar who travels up that way once in a while.

Here is a picture of the “heads” of fruit that come off the African Palms. They can weigh up to 100 pounds and contain a lot of vegetable oil. They are cut off the tree with a special tool at the end of a long pole. It is certainly a different world up on the north coast.

A new neighbor and more moringa

By Matt

When we arrived back in Catacamas we were happy to find a new volunteer living right next door with Doris and the family. Jordan Fox has been to Honduras before on short term trips with the Carpenteros and now is spending about 5 months here as a volunteer. I am happy to have him around because I have all kinds of ideas about how he could help us out with the agriculture program.



In fact, he has been helping out already by harvesting Moringa seeds. After we became familiar with the Moringa trees that were produced from seeds that came from ECHO we noticed that there were some very similar trees in the neighborhood. I took pictures of the leaves, seeds, pods, etc. and sent the data back to the scientists at ECHO to verify that it actually is Moringa Oleifera. We were happy to find out that yes these local trees were Moringa. The best part is that we now have a local (cheap) source of seeds for the program. Anyway, before leaving for the states I had told a local family that I would pay them for the seeds if they would harvest them for me. When we got back the kids came over and told me the seeds were ready. I was able to purchase them with a little bit of the money we raised with the greeting card fundraiser back in the US. Jordan and a few kids from the barrio helped to shell and sort the seeds.

We also found some moringa that had branches big enough to be cut and planted (producing a new tree). We paid the neighbor about $15 for 70 branches and brought them out to the folks involved in the hog raising project in El Guanabano. Moringa can serve as part of the diet for the pigs so, they are planting as much as they can right now.

We were also able to see how the moringa seedlings they had planted earlier are doing: at this point; Todo Cheque! (its all good!)