Fish and Loaves: God's Provisions

photo by @chelsearobersonIn Matthew chapter 14 we see an amazing example of Christ taking a limited resource and using it for unlimited possibilities.  The 2 fishes and 5 loaves fed over 5000 people that day.  God’s provision is perfect and awesome.  Mission Lazarus is constantly looking at ways of providing for herself to help offset the cost of providing for the basic needs of some of the poorest in Honduras.  In particular the Mission Lazarus Hacienda has had the unique opportunity to be able to grow crops and raise livestock to help offset the cost of running the Mission Lazarus Refuge children’s home.  On the ranch some of the finest quality and best tasting coffee is grown.  However the coffee growing on the ranch is very old and does not produce a good yield due to the size of each plant.  From our 35 acres of coffee plants only 3000 pounds were harvested in 2009.  A well maintained coffee plantation in optimal conditions will yield around 1000 pounds per acre.  With this in mind we made the decision in 2009 to prune our coffee trees back to about 18 inches tall, a far cry from the 10 – 14 feet that they were growing at previously.  This would mean that we’d drastically reduce our production yield for at least 2 and most likely 3 years.  It was a necessary effort to eventually increase our yield exponentially.  In early January 2010 I met with Gustavo our ranch manager to discuss our forecasted harvest of coffee for the year.  He felt comfortable estimating that we’d harvest around 1200 pounds off coffee, less than 25% of the coffee plants  would even be  producing this year.  As with all of our ministries, programs and projects, we pray often for our farming ventures including our coffee production.  Last week we finished the 2010 harvest with a total of exactly 3000 pounds of coffee harvested.  There is no way to explain this yield except to give the honor and glory to God for providing a great harvest that will care for hurting children in Honduras.

In August of 2009 Mission Lazarus signed a contract with a company that processes and exports breaded cheese filled jalapeno peppers to the U.S.  We agreed to raise jalapeño peppers for them and they would buy them for $0.25 per pound.  A harvest would yield between 80 and 120,000 pounds and the crop would last between 5 and 6 months.  Before we signed the contract Gustavo and I took our cost estimates and our projected earnings and we went to the field before it was plowed and we prayed over it.  We asked God to bless photo by @shawndaggettour plans and that he’d provide a great harvest that would benefit the children of the Mission Lazarus Refuge children’s home.  By the end of December more than 100,000 pounds of jalapeños had been harvested and it appeared, according to agronomist consultants provide by USAID, that our harvest was done.  However we continued to pray almost daily for the crop and to our surprise the plants began to bloom again.  They soon began to get loaded down with peppers again.  And soon we were harvesting again.  As of last week, we had harvested a total of 168,800 pounds of coffee.  More than two times what we were told we’d harvest.  We praise God for blessing our efforts to be good stewards and to provide for ourselves.  We have used our talents and God has given us a great harvest.  Now, the first week of March, and our plants are blooming again, and within two weeks we’ll be harvesting again.  Thank you Lord!

2009 was an amazing year of challenges for Mission Lazarus, however just beyond every challenge there have been abundant blessings.  We were surprised with a large increase in minimum wage during the last week of December 2008 long after our 2009 budget had been put together.  We decided that we’d be the leaders in respecting this new law rather than trying to get by and ignore the new law.  We shut down our offices and distribution warehouse in Choluteca and relocated everything to the ranch where the Mission Lazarus Refuge is located.  Many other measures were taken to ensure that no programs would be shut down.  One of our largest areas of focus is with our Early Childhood Development Centers.  These primary schools provide 2 meals a day, Christian education, and love for the nearly 450 children that they serve.  We had to get really creative with our budget and menu this year to be able to provide for the hundreds of children that we serve each day.  In late November I met with the director of our school in Monjaras, Emma Siria.  It was the final week of classes in Monjaras and she was bubbling over with stories.  One in particular I wish that I had been told about sooner.  Before the budget cut the school would prepare up to 12 pounds of rice a day to feed the nearly 100 children at that school.  After the budget cut the rice was cut back to only 7 pounds a day.  Amazingly enough, with only 7 pounds of rice for the same amount of children, they have never been short rice.  They have even had enough to give seconds to the children that ask for them, and every day they have had rice left over.  Do you want to call it a coincidence?  Most folks would.  I’d rather call it God, just as powerful today as 2000 years ago and just the same as tomorrow. 

These are just a few stories of how God is blessing this ministry.  Thanks for your prayers for this ministry.  God is hearing and answering them!