Bob's Report April 19, 2021

 April 18, 2021 Repot

We have witnessed quite a celebration over the weekend.  We have no idea what they were celebrating, but it was quite an event.  We live on top of a hill that is directly across from an ancient Catholic church, so we have a ringside seat to observe these events.  It started with a huge rocket that exploded over our home (about 4:00 am).  There are times when the ashes from the rockets fall onto our roof.  The next thing that happened was the sound of the squealing of a HUGE hog.  About eight men were pushing and pulling the hog up a stairway into the courtyard, and the pig was not too happy about it.  And then matters got worse for the pig.  About eight strong men were able to force the pig onto its right side in the middle of the church yard, essentially facing the doors into the chapel.  They had a huge-huge black pot on the fire, which was a clue that the future was in doubt for this poor pig.  It was hard to tell, but  it appeared like they were draining the blood out of this pig.  His squeals started at a high pitch, but after about 10 minutes it was just a squeak, and then silence.  Sorry for the vivid description but I just couldn't help myself.  The celebration lasted all day and into the night.  It was difficult to go to sleep with all the noise, but the last thing we knew was about 2:00 am when the kids were still running around to the sounds of heavy drums pounding and a trumpet blasting.  WOW!

On a lighter note, we will be delivering a wheelchair to a lady today who became paralyzed from the waist down.  This will be an hour and a half drive over a miserable treacherous road to deliver the wheelchair, which might not be possible today because of a huge rain last night.   (It is now scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.)

We have been here in Cahabon area for 5 months (3 1/2 months living here), and have come to realize how serious the potential food shortages area.  There are around 13,000 households with 1 to 5 families living in each one of them, or approximately 70,000 individuals.

They have been engaged in destructive farming practices over the last hundreds of years that have led to a soil condition that could have a disastrous impact on these special people.  It has reached the point where the crop yields are so low that just feeding their families become a problem.  There are certainly no financial reserves to fund a cropping program that will reverse this unfortunate trend.

Soil test results indicated an alarming lack of essential elements and numerous cornfields are showing nutritional deficiencies, which are resulting in small corn ears or no ears at all.  There are even some fields that appear to be abandoned.  Evidently, every year there are around one million acres that are abandoned around the world that is due to complacency or ignorance.  The recommended soil test for phosphorus should be between 25 and 40 and some soil test show it as low as 2.  Similar deficiencies are showing with magnesium, potassium and calcium.  These soil tests are very low and will continue to decline unless a major intervention is initiated.  Over the past centuries there has been no effort to correct this problem.  The trends can be so gradual that it is difficult for the farmers to comprehend that it is actually taking place.  I believe that we have been able to convince the community leaders that they have a very serious problem and feel like they are willing to try to find a way out of this dilemma.  We are looking at several solutions and are hopeful that we can find an answer.  Any solution will require some significant outside funding.  Funding from donors, or otherwise, will be considered as a loan to farmers that will require a long-term repayment  See the illustration of this problem below.

We are finalizing our plans for the two-acre experimental plot for corn.  I'm trying to hold to six varieties of corn, two levels of nitrogen and two seed spacings.  We plan to triplicate each trial, for statistical reasons, so it will be quite large.  Others are pressing me to add some other tests, but I don't want it to get out of hand.  See the test layout below.

In about two weeks we will be handing out the 100 lb. bags of fertilizer that is part of the Family to Family Corn Project sponsored by Welcome Hand and the Sustainable Families Group.  We have collected enough funds to assist nearly 800 farmers.  This will be in conjunction with the large Cahabon Corn Project that will be handing out fertilizer to another 8,200 farmers.   We plan to have 1,000 farmers come to the soccer field every day for nine days where we will give them the fertilizer.  (We will keep track of our 800 farmers, and follow up to see how they use the fertilizer.)  This will be quite an event and will help us meet more of the village people.  They are expected to return a portion of their harvest to the community to use as a rainy-day fund and to assist those that are in dire need.

We are finalizing our architectural plans for the Cardamon processing plant.  I think we have some donors that will assist in the costs of construction.  And we do have funds for at least one dryer.  We continue to work on getting the Pinares organic certification complete for the cacao (chocolate) farmers.  There are different agencies trying to take advantage of unknowable donors and it's a challenge trying to sort this all out.

Susan is organizing a project to help malnourished children.  There are 26 severely malnourished children that have been identified in the District.  The next step is to organize an event to take measurements of the children (weight and height).  The mothers of the children will be taught how to add additional nutrients to their diet and the importance of eating multiple meals each day.  Funds will be raised to provide emergency food supplements.  The biggest problem is the lack of family funds to provide the food to the children.  Hopefully, our agriculture projects will help to solve this problem, also.

Susan is also teaching English -- both to missionaries (using Google Meet) and to local people.  Some of the local people are also interested in learning more about the Church.

Our main objective in coming to Cahabon is to assist in the organization of a Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  In order to do that we have had to develop relationships of trust with the community and its leaders.  We have also been working with a number of individuals and families that appear to have an interest in the gospel, but it has been difficult for them to have missionary lessons, so it's a little hard to tell.  We feel we have made some progress in that regard and maybe it's time to take the next step.  We are excited about a meeting that will be held later this week to give us direction in that regard.

It isn't all peaches and cream around here.  We have just entered the high heat and high humidity season.  We had been warned about it, and now it is really here.  It can be tolerated if the air conditioner is working, but today everything was down -- electricity, internet, water, and our interpreter was out of town (at a family funeral).  So here we were, sitting in sweltering heat (sometimes topped 100 degrees), high humidity, and no one to talk to.  To make matters worse, we were in a stage of internet withdrawals -- I think it is worse than a drug addiction (not really).  And we couldn't even talk to anybody.  I will never forget the look on Susan's face when I came home.  Her face was flushed and I could see she was trying to cope with the situation and not doing so well.  She could see that I was concerned, and willing to do about anything, and then a big smile surfaced and she said, "we can do it."  Candlelight isn't that bad.  It was kind of a special moment for us.

Don't worry, everything is fine now!  We have electricity, our air conditioner is operating on all cylinders, we have water, we have someone to talk to (our interpreter is back) and we have hopes that our internet will be fixed today.  All is well!

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Please go to welcomehand.org if you would like to donate to the Malnourished Children project.

 

The Sounds of Cahabon

April 13

We arrived back at Cahabon last evening, and woke up this morning to the sounds of Cahabon.  In addition to the dogs barking and roosters crowing during the night, at 5:00 am there were three huge firecracker  blasts -- celebrating someone's birthday.  At the same time music began to play (latin music with the cornets and singers).  The loud music played for at least another hour.  And there were singers joining in.  (Family members will go to the house of the person with the birthday and wake them up with singing.)   By then the roosters were crowing loudly -- trying to outdo the sound of the music.  There are hundreds of roosters in Cahabon, and they crow often -- each trying to crow a little louder than the previous rooster.  The dogs continued to bark, and the birds began to sing.  We have many different species of birds, and a few trees around our house, so we hear a lot of bird songs -- which I love (unless it's so noisy you can't hear the birds).  At 6:00 am the church bells chime -- at the San Pablo Church just across the street from us.  They chime for about a minute every morning -- our 6:00 am alarm clock. By then we also have the trucks going up and down the hill on the road near our house.  They always make extra noises shifting gears to get up, or down, the hill.

With all these sounds going on around us -- we knew we were home -- for another 90 days.  (The Guatemala visa is only good for 90 days.)

I was telling someone about where we lived, who had not been to Cahabon, and she said, "I love quiet rural towns!"  I responded by saying that "we live in the noisiest town in the world!"  That could be true.

But -- WE LOVE IT!!!  

Special Family Came to our Family Home Evening

I am late writing this report, because we returned home to Utah for 10 days.  Our Guatemala visa expires every 90 days, so we have to go home and return, for another 90 days.  

The Sister Missionaries in Fray contacted us, and asked if we could get a Book of Mormon to Mario Rene Caal.  We arranged to meet him in town, and gave him both a Spanish and a Kekchi Book of Mormon.  He said his sons could read Kekchi.  We invited them to come to our home for a visit, but he said his wife was ill, and couldn't walk very well.  We told him we would pray for her.  He also said that he could only bring a couple of his children, because he couldn't afford the bus fare for all of them -- they needed it for their school fees, etc.  So we offered to come and pick them up.  (He said he had 7 children.)

On March 28th, the family came to our home for a family home evening.  Eight of them came.   The mother was able to walk, and so she came also.  They said they were thankful for our prayers, but asked us to keep praying, because she still had some problems.  In the picture below, the father is in the blue striped shirt.  The mother is in the green next to him.  The older daughter, and her six year old son are next, then a 15 yr. old boy.  On the other side, in the gold blouse with a baby, is their daughter-in-law and her 4 month old baby (her husband had to work that day).  Then a 17 yr. old boy in light blue shirt. Bob and I are standing in the back.

We showed them a video about Christ (in Spanish).  Another man had gone with Bob to pick them up (a city employee who knew where they lived), and he spoke Spanish, Kekchi and English, so he was our interpreter.  It was a very nice meeting with them.  The older boy (in the blue shirt) really hugged us when they left.  I think he has been reading the Kekchi Book of Mormon, and he seemed very receptive to the video.  They were planning to come again on April 11th, but we had to take care of some matters with our pickup, so we are just getting back to Cahabon on April 12th.