Satisfied Wages for Nicaragua

We stood on the roof of the Cate Hotel in Morogoro, Tanzania, in awe of the Uluguru Mountains and centuries old Baobob trees with trunks large enough to carve a house out of. We praised and thanked God for bringing us to Tanzania, East Africa! We met new people, cultures and shared a love for making disciples in the Lord Jesus Christ! We were there for our Discipling Marketplace Leaders Global summit!  This was our first time gathering with the rest of the DML team from around the world. We spent the week together sharing how the Holy Spirit is working with us to make disciples in the marketplace. We celebrated our diverse countries, and tribes. We sang in so many different languages to praise our living God! We ended the week with a trip to the Mikumi National park, admiring God’s great creation observing elephants and lions! A beautiful reminder, to love what God has left for us.  We also shared our challenges and laments at our summit. The hardships of living in a fallen wo...

A cool mountain morning at the demo plot Since Darwin graduated from the Managua Agronomy University in 2019, he wasn't able to find stable work in his career until now. This means apart from a few internships while in university he has lacked the hands on experience needed to work with farmers. In fact, he has grown up in the small city of Jinotega and has never planted anything of his own! Darwin never lacks enthusiasm to try new things. However, I knew if he was going to mentor experienced farmers on the technical side of growing beans, he needed to grow his own!  We had an older bag of red bean seed we had been using for promotion purposes in our workshops for the past six months. It was an older batch of seed, and while returning home from a workshop it started to rain and the bag got wet form a leak in my truckbed cover. While taking it out of the truck to store it again, the bag split open on us! We were able to recover the seed, but this meant we could no longer use it for ...

Darwin's checking out samples in El Naranjo We have our first samples of bean in the ground! Since July we have been promoting who we are and speaking to farmers about our certified red bean seed. Finally, planting season came in late September and October. We have about 27 people who have planted our beans! All of the samples have been a kilo's worth of seeds, with the exception being four farmers in the community of El Naranjo. We gave out five pound samples there because we gave an intro workshop and four men were very interested and showed commitment to plant the seeds.  It has been a very, very rainy season in Nicaragua and even more in Jinotega. Six of these sample plots were washed away by the rains, one sample was eaten by a horse! Hurricane Julia passed in October and washed away a lot of crops. Four farmers have decided to wait until December to plant their samples. This is when the dry season starts and they can have better success in their planting.  We have learne...

 Red beans, growing in El Naranjo, Nicaragua Ever since I can remember I was working with my grandfather in his garden. When I was a kid he would pick me up, looking for "day laborers," as he would joke. My cousins and I would go and work the acre he had at his cousins house in Grant, Michigan. We planted and harvested tomatoes, corn, onions, various chili plants, zucchini, green beans, etc. The green beans, Blue Lake bush beans, were always the most work, and we were able to harvest two crop during the summertime. As my grandpa aged, his gardens were smaller. Eventually he moved the garden to my backyard after I bought a house. Every Memorial Day we would till the soil and plant vegetables, and of course we had three rows of green beans. We would spend the summers sharing stories and jokes as we worked the garden. I always laughed, no matter how many times I heard the stories, because something new would be shared about his life and my great grandparents.  When Jari and I le...

 Darwin is now back in his hometown of Jinotega and is now working with us full time. His internship went well in Jinotepe with the ministy 'La Semilla." It went well enough he was offered a job and to work with us in starting up a local branch of the ministry in Jinotega!  We praise God for this new growth in our ministry and that we will continue to have a blessed relationship with Darwin in his work with us.  This means a new agreement was signed between us and La Semilla Minisries. We have had an ongoing relationship with this ministry since 2017. Their agronomists, Franklin and Ariel, were in our first classes of Good Sense in the Nehemiah Center. Franklin has become a facilitator of personal finances for the ministry and they have added it to the seminars for farmers they work with. This is a story of Franklin's work with the farmers he mentors.  Satisfied Wages is collaborating with La Semilla to gain community access and grow the Churches influence in the co...

We have an apprentice! His name is Darwin B. He has a degree in agronomy from the National Agronomy University in Managua. He was born and raised in Jinotega, Nicaragua. I met Darwin through our friends at Comunidad de Estudiantes Cristianos de Nicaragua - CECNIC. This is a Christian discipleship group within the universities here in Nicaragua, connected with Intervarsity. The past director of CECNIC, and another leader, Lester, were part of our original class of Buen Sentido in 2017.  When we arrived in Jinotega I knew we would need someone to help us with our work here. I called Lester and asked him if there was any CECNIC alumni in Jinotega. A few days later he gave me Darwin's phone number. When we were getting closer to going public with Discipling Marketplace Leaders I gave him a call. We met at a coffee shop a few times and conversed about life and the testimony of his Christian faith.  Lester, Darwin, and myself finishing Buen Sentido! In July 2021, we scheduled a Buen...

 We have a big change at the church, El Rio, where we worship and help to lead. Pastor Frank has decided to leave the congregation as lead pastor. A major factor in his decision to leave the church has to do with changes in local laws. There have been stricter reporting requirements for non-profit organizations and churches are being included in certain aspects. These new regulations are burdensome. They have affect the way the church will report the offering and the sources of these funds. It also affects income and salaries of the locals who fulfill leadership roles.  These changes were to drastic for pastor Frank's family and he decided to step down as pastor. He finished his preaching in May and completed a "Profession of Faith" class with 8 participants. While our church is young, we were able to establish some norms and build an identity as a church while he was leading. Pastor Frank helped us to establish our mission and vision. He also helped to articulate the cor...

There is a change in our method of working with businesses in Nicaragua than when we first arrived in 2016. It is easier to explain this difference with a story! Five years ago I started working with the Association of Christian Entrepreneurs of Nicaragua, (AECNIC). An association started out of the Nehemiah Center. You can read about this association in older blog posts. (I don't know why the pictures do not show up anymore, blogger website problem?) I spent a lot of time mentoring the business owners who made up the board of directors for the association. Hours were spent helping these individuals get a stronger accounting system and flow process in their businesses. I loved working with all of them. Their positive attitudes and faith was, and still is, inspiring today.  In 2018, Nicaragua went through its political crisis. During those months many businesses were hurting and barely surviving. I met with Erica* to see how she was coping with the crisis we were all living through....

It has been a while since I have posted to our blog. I can only say, weeks pass so quickly, even when you are living in a slower culture! There has been a lot of small, detail work that has been going in the start of year 2022. Most of it having to do with editing and prepping our Discipling Marketplace Leaders materials. We had workshops planned with a small church denomination for the beginning of March, but there were troubles confirming the day for our two day foundational workshop. Coordinating two different churches, in different towns to attend the same event is challenging.  We decided to have a special time in a Bible devotional for the two pastors and some of their leaders and businessowners. The church's treasurer invited us to a small cabin he has in the mountain. A great place for these pastors to get out of town and breathe some cool fresh air and set some dates!  Learning about Lidia, the businesswoman We dedicated some time reading about the business woman Lidi...