AUGUST 2008

Greetings from Project Talitha Cumi,

     This has been a great month! God has blessed us with many new activities.

We have a couple, Samuel and Sonia Aguilar, who have come with their two young daughters Sofia and Sarai, to be on staff here at PTC. They are bi-lingual Hondurans who have been in Christian ministry for 12 years. Samuel has been an assistant church pastor, pastor, youth ministry pastor, and has also trained pastors at a Bible Institute in Tegucigalpa. He has worked with North American teams coming to Honduras.  Samuel is an experienced bus driver, which is a huge benefit for us as transporting the girls back and forth to school several times a day is a necessity. Sonia has been a teacher, secretary, and bookkeeper for the Baptist Training Center.  They are both coming to love our girls through their love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Both Samuel and Sonia’s fathers have been pastors in ministry for years, also. 

     Several of our USA board members are coming in September, and we will present the Aguilars to the judges and the officials here.  The Auguilars have moved all their things in and have been working here full time as of this week. Please pray for them to get adjusted to country living.

Legal News

     I paid our land taxes and this next month we have to pay taxes on all of our vehicles.  We also got our tax exemption renewed for Honduras for the next two years and they waived the inspection!  That has never happened before; we usually are issued a card for one year only and with an inspection from the folks at the Ministry of Finances.  Usually, you have to drive to Tegucigalpa 4 hours away to pick up 2 to 3 officials and then drive 4 hours back to the farm and then drive the finance officials back to Tegucigalpa, spend the night and come home in the morning.  We are still trying to get our INFHA card (child welfare/DFACS operations card) finished.  They changed the format.  They wanted the work plan for the next year on an EXCEL format.  I didn’t have an Excel program until the other day and Samuel helped install one in the computer.  There is a lot of just operational stuff that goes on here apart from ministering to the girls, school, teams, farming, etc.

Doctor Jazz

     We sometimes have some different medical issues that happen to the girls.  This week one of the older girls came about 5:30am to my house and said she had a bug that had fallen into her ear.  It was crawling deeper and it was hurting.  So we tried to gently flush him out by using warm water in an ear syringe.  It didn’t work.  So I remembered that my mom and a doctor with emergency medicine told me that you need to put a few drops of warm olive oil to at least get him to stop trying to escape.  Well, it killed him and we tried again to gently flush him out, to no avail.  So I told her to wait and Mrs. B. would carry her and another flu/cold victim to the health clinic in Yamaranguila.  The doctor looked in her ear and said that she could see it fine, and then she turned to her new practicing nurses and said for them to get the bug out.  After arguing for a few minutes among themselves about who didn’t want to do it, they got a long wooden stick the size of a q-tip without the cotton applicator. They ended up scratching something important and her ear was bleeding slightly and she was really hurting.  They then thought to flush it with (hopefully sterile water) a syringe that looked like a turkey baster!  They jetted water into her ear and sent her home and told her if she started having pain or having dizzy spells for her to come back in two days.  When she arrived at the farm, I could tell she was hurting.  She told me what happened, so I carried her to a private clinic in La Esperanza.  I told the new doctor about the “stick” treatment, but I didn’t know about the turkey baster.  The doctor looked in her ear and said, “Well, they have poked the bug down further into the ear canal but I will try something”.  Then she took this turkey baster out and jetted the water so hard into her ear that water was spewing everywhere.  She told us, “It is a serious situation, but that if we had any more problems, come back on Saturday, and a specialist would be there.”   I remembered a Honduran connection that Dr. Harrison from Moultrie gave me.  I called Dr. Lou, and she set up an appointment with a specialist in San Pedro Sula.  Sonia Aguilar is from San Pedro Sula and she and Samuel knew exactly where to go.  The doctor had a camera that he used while he fished the little winged critter out of her ear.  We blessed the doctor with a hefty office call payment, and Dr. Lou with some of our farm grown coffee.

Other Helpers!!

     We are excited to have Sam Watson from Texas coming to help with the ministry  for a month in September.  We are looking for other couples or singles who would like to do the same. They don’t have to be bi-lingual (of course that would be a plus).  We need them to speak English to the girls.  We need folks who can be here with the girls while the rest of us, dropping the girls at La Esperanza to go to school, buy groceries, do legal stuff in town, run to the doctor and dentist, buying supplies for the farm and the constant school supplies for the girls that change from week to week.  We have the apartment at the clinic available and the mission house at this time.  If you can think of someone wanting to help, give them our website address, www.sikm.org, and tell them to get in touch with us.  We would love to talk to them.

Farm News

     Most of the projects that we have started are finishing up.  We finished fencing in the two farms in Las Harenas.  We are referring to them as The “River Farm” and the “Bridge Farm” or sometimes just farm #2 and #3.  These two farms are a remnant of the one farm we had when the Government came through with their road project.  We had to fence them in and put locks on the gates because we had a lot of people utilizing our farms and all the resources that are on them. It was also causing problems for our neighbors when the cows from the folks who were borrowing our land without permission were crossing over to our neighbors property and eating their crops.  It is a relief to have that done.

     We have planted potatoes and red beans on the River Farm.  They are also preparing the land to plant coffee plants.  We still have some coffee trees left from the upheaval of the road construction, but the other trees did not fair as well.  We are planting a tall grass that looks like sugar cane on the edge of the overlook so that we will have enough grass for the goats we hope to get this up coming month.  Milk is as high as it is in the States and, with 20 milk-loving girls; we are hoping to cut the cost by getting some milk goats.  The Bridge farm is where the goats will stay in the dry season because it has tons of pasture. 

     The 70 peach trees are being planted on the PTC farm this week also.  The girls love peaches and so they will have plenty to eat and we also hope to sell some of them to help pay for the feed for the goats, hogs, chickens, and other operating costs of the farm.  People here pay a dollar a pound for peaches.  That is pretty outstanding. 

     The coffee has all been hoed on the PTC farm and it is looking fabulous.  Even the coffee I had them plant last October when I was here looks like it is going to produce this year. They are going to fertilize it next week and then the girls won’t have to do anything to it until December when it is time to pick it.  They have sold almost all of the coffee that they have cleaned, cooked and bagged. 

We are also growing strawberries and have planted the last 300 plants this week.  They should start producing in a few months.   We have planted a hybrid variety of blackberries too.  Our gardener has also planted the vegetables.  Everything is up and looking great.  He planted some pumpkin seeds I brought last year and he is in for a surprise when he sees the monstrous orange squash.  They don’t grow pumpkins here. We should be receiving a container within the next couple weeks and more garden seeds should be in it.  They are clearing some land this week to be able to plant more vegetables.    

     As I was checking the work of the fencing on the River Farm and the Bridge Farm, I was amazed about how different everything looked.  The guys had cleaned and burned off areas that we hadn’t used before because we had always farmed the open land.  The River Farm now has a large area for cultivation.  I walked over to the Bridge farm and realized how large that farm was also.  I stood back and just looked around and saw beautiful mountain views that were blocked by trees before the road crew cut them down.  Both farms are gorgeous and have a lot of potential:  one will be for cultivation and coffee beans and the other for grazing.

      I came home feeling pretty excited about how great the farms looked.  I was just thanking God that all these unexpected changes to the farm in Las Harenas had turned out so well after all.  I felt as if the Lord was showing me how that the farm was sort of like life.  When life comes plowing through and seemingly rips the heart out of you, sometimes you are so overwhelmed that you don’t want to even think about the destruction that has occurred, let alone return to the scene to look at what has happened.  Then when the grief subsides, you work up the courage to go back and you barely recognize what used to be.  Now you see everything in a new light and see areas of your life that you have never seen before. You cleaned up other areas that you never needed before. You realize there is a lot more potential than you thought possible even after all that destruction.  God never told us that we would not have troubles.  As a matter of fact, they never put the scripture about Jesus promising, “that you will have tribulation” in the popular “Book of Promises”.  He just said that He would be there with us in those times and to be of good cheer.  He has been there for all of us here at Project Talitha Cumi and He continues to stand faithful.

Thanks to Mrs. B. (Rylma) and Jack Berquist for all the help and love they have shown to the girls these last 6 weeks.  Thanks for all the prayers and gifts that so many of you have sent.  We are blessed, and pray that God will continue to bless all that you do.

 Blessings,

Pam, Samuel, Sonia, Sarai, Sofia and all the girls here at Project Talitha Cumi

From the Board:

We are planning for mission teams coming for next year.  If your church would like to bring a group down please contact: Joe Reynolds –joe@sikm.org, or Tom Osborne -  tom@sikm.org .

As many of you know, we are in need of a better vehicle for the project. If anyone would like to contribute to this need, just designate truck fund on your contribution.

Thanks to all of you who have come to the support of these girls and the ministry of Project Talitha Cumi.