Not Just a Cement Floor

We have been working with a church in El Coquito and we recently did a project together to put in a cement floor for a woman in the community.  For us it's just a cement floor but for Felipa, the women who lives in this house, it was a huge blessing, provision and demonstration of care and love for her!

We have gone through a process of identifying community needs followed up by a asking what projects can they do.  While we had a lot of needs listed like; latrines, water tanks for cooking and cleaning, hand washing stations, etc., the one that really stood out as a good starting project was cement floors for cooking areas.

This is a poor church and it would have been totally fine for them to have chosen to start by helping someone within the church but, amazingly to me, they chose to help a woman in the community who is not attending the church.  When I asked the pastor why they selected here, he looked at me with a sad face and said, "because she is very poor."  Let me restate that this is a poor community, the pastor himself lives very meagerly, and yet they chose this woman.  I found it to be very beautiful!

Here's a photo of the house with the pastor's truck parked outside.  It is a one room house about 12' x 14'.

A very exciting verse for the guys coming out from the church to help this woman was Psalm 127:1a

Unless the Lord builds the house, the laborers labor in vain!

This is Felipa, her three daughters and the pastor's son Benjamin.

Felipa's cooking area.

We started by leveling the floor.  We had to dig one corner down about 10"!

There are actually two more people in the room who don't show up in the photo.  It was a bit crowded, as well as a bit worrisome with people swinging pic axes, but the work went really fast!

We left the cooking counter in place and dug around the legs in leveling the floor.

Pastor Gustavo's wife showed up around 9:00 with a breakfast of  eggs, beans, cheese, tortillas and soda!

Mixing the concrete just outside the door to the house.

The cement is transferred to buckets to pour in the house.

Pastor Gustavo is smoothing out the floor as we bring in the cement.

Pastor Gustavo is adding a colorant to the top of the finished, but still wet, floor.

We wanted a group shot of everybody but folks sort of came and went throughout the day so this is the group at the finish!

Ellen kept the kids busy with fun crafts and Bible stories.  She also took them up to the church where they were holding a two hour children's program!


At the end of the day we celebrated in singing praise, praying over Felipa, her girls and the house, and encouraging each other with some favorite Scriptures.  One of those Scriptures was Mt 5:13-15 where Jesus says:

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."  

We prayed that the community may give praise to the Lord as they witness the blessing Felipa received!

After School Ministry Anniversary

We had a very special after-school program to celebrate the 4th year of CADIN!

We started with singing Christian songs, praying and then a Bible lesson using balloons.  In the picture is a wolf in sheep's clothing or un lobo vestido de oveja!  We looked at several verses which included one of my favorites, John 10:10,

 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and ]have it abundantly.


El ladrón no viene más que a robar, matar y destruir; yo he venido para que tengan vida, y la tengan en abundancia.

Then we had coloring sheets for the kids.  Something very fun is that my son in Maryland prepared the coloring sheet with the Bible verse, John 10:10, and a little graphic of a Bible!

All of these kids really love the opportunity to color!

Then Ellen had prepared a craft for the kids making butterflies from coffee filters!  What better verse for this then 2 Corinthians 5:17,

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: The old has gone, the new is here!

Por lo tanto, si alguno está en Cristo, es una nueva creación. ¡Lo viejo ha pasado, ha llegado ya lo nuevo!

The children colored the coffee filters with water washable markers and then the filters were sprayed to let the colors run.

The end results were beautiful and the children were so proud of what they had made!

After the craft we went outside to play some games.

It was so sweet to watch them both competing and encouraging one another.

This was a little difficult and I think we only had three who succeeded at getting the ball in the container!

These girls just wanted their picture taken together!

Ellen getting the special snack ready!

I don't remember exactly what these were called but it's a little corn meal dough outside with rice and chicken inside.  It was fried so of course it tasted great!

This was super special to have these cupcakes for a dessert snack! See the four candles in the middle?!

It is wonderful to see how patiently the children can wait for the food and sit so orderly to eat.

Before they left one of the volunteers, Aurora, went over the lesson of the wolf in sheep's clothing again by asking the children to explain what it meant and they really remembered!!

Pretty happy little guy even if all the frosting is not quite making it in the mouth!

When the children left they each had their butterfly, a cupcake, a balloon dog, a pretty fancy lollipop and a little bag of candy!

It was just great to see these huge smiles on each face as they were walking away.

Here's a group shot of the kids.

Some of the children are walking to their home to this neighborhood.  All of the children come from a poor area of town but these are the poorest.

These are all pretty much one room "houses" with no electricity, no plumbing and usually with only a mom and other siblings.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, 

for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”  Mt 19:14

New Farm Workers

With a title like "New Farm Workers" you might be picturing some guys in overalls but you will have to let that image fly away, because these farm workers are pretty small and certainly don't wear overalls.

Our new workers are actually converting our kitchen leftovers, as well as some animal leftovers donated by the farmer next door, into a highly nutritious animal feed!

This is an important project for us as so many of the farmers here struggle with providing adequate feed for their animals.  There is also a second issue that is less obvious and that is the issue of animal waste or feces. There are often droppings all around the farm (which for many folks is their home) and the disease vector and ground water pollutant that the animal feces will cause are hidden issues.  What is really exciting is that these problems can be virtually eliminated by employing our new workers!

Our new farm workers are actually flies... or more precisely their larva.  It's the Black Soldier Fly, or Hermetia illucens,  that we are using because of the truly amazing properties God gave it.

They are considered the ultimate food, or waste, recyclers because of the amazingly high conversion rate of feed into larva.  They are readily found here in Honduras, as well as in the states, but if you ever saw one you probably would not have recognized it as a fly.

The fly itself looks more like a wasp but no worries as it has no stinger.  It also does not eat in the fly stage and so this is not a fly that would annoy you at a picnic trying to land on your hotdogs and hamburgers.  The reason?  They don't have mouths.  So, they don't bite!

In the fly stage it is living simply to mate and lay eggs.  The eggs will hatch and become little white round larva that eat, and eat, and eat...  becoming nice packets of protein and fat!

Here are the mature larva that can be used as chicken, fish and pig feed. 

It's just fun to see them in full wiggly action!

The design we used for the Black Soldier Fly Larva composter is a simple modification from the one posted on the web by the fine folks at www.gardenpool.org.

Of note is that the barrel is on an angle from the front up to the back, and then the canal, or in our case a piece of guttering, is on an angle from the back of the barrel up to the front.  That's all to take advantage of another amazing design property that God built in.

That design property is commonly referred to as the crawl off.  When the larva are mature they turn from white to brown, from being all round to being more flattened, and then they instinctively crawl upward in search of soil to dig into and pupate.  That's the period when they'll change, or their metamorphosis, from larva into fly.

So, the barrel is angled up to the back and the piece of guttering is angled up to the front, so that the larva will simply follow the incline and self harvest into the awaiting trough (another piece of guttering).  In the picture is a larva dangling just before the fall into the collection trough.

This is a very full trough with hundreds of larva.  The rock is there just to keep the trough from being blown off in a storm with the results of hundreds of escapees to gather up!

We empty the trough to take the larva to the chickens.

This is a handful.  You can see that in the crawl off they are self cleaning as these larva are not dirtying my hand at all.  Yes, it really tickles as they squirm around and try to get between my fingers!!

 To say that our chickens are happy about the Black Soldier Fly Larva project is quite an understatement.  They naturally love eating insects, grubs and worms and so the larva are probably much more satisfying to them then the poultry concentrate purchased from the feed store.

Just a quick look in the barrel.  I had been cleaning it the day before and added some water so it's a little wetter than usual, but the larva don't seem to mind!!

Please pray with us that the Lord would use the Black Soldier Fly Larva project to bless the people!  That they can see and use something amazing that the Lord has prepared for them to freely use and so experience that the Lord has good for them!!

The thief (Satan) comes only to steal and kill and destroy; 

I (Jesus) have come that they may have life, 

and have it to the full.  John 10:10