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.

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