Don Carlos & Doña Benita
James 1:27 Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. It’s our mandate, right? Each one of us concerned for the needs of others. God brings joy and peace into our lives through our loving on others. Give us your eyes for the world, LORD. Don CARLOS & Doña BENITA: Of course our daily life here in Nicaragua exposes us to much of the harsh reality and affects of poverty. Living situations like Carlos & Benita. They are residents of the barrio next to where we help with a seniors home. While they aren’t ready to make a move into the actual facility, where care and love is provided for 9 residents, they do benefit a lot from the practical care that is offered at Dulce Refugio Seniors Home. Simple…
Selecting the Right Participants – «La desicion es suya!»
Working in agriculture in Nicaragua within a development model requires that we select the right participants into our programs. Believe it or not, not every producer that we interact with wants the services and opportunities that Ministerio La Semilla presents. Many people are stuck in a lack of vision, and are not looking for solutions for them to develop themselves – economically, socially, nor spiritually. If there were things being given away, sure, they would be first in line, but the effort and «cost» of development – no thanks. Sustainable development starts with a vision and desire to improve! Thankfully though, we meet many producers who do believe in a better future for themselves and their families, and will take active steps to make changes. Over the years and growing seasons that we have worked in Nicaragua, we have continually defined our programs and the manner in which we make…
Centro de Salud LA CHONA officialy opens!
Alcaldesa (mayor) Yulinda Téllez addresses the crowd. Although La Semilla Ministries is focused on economic development through agriculture, we have a heart for the families and communities where we work. Based on that compassion, and our desire to practically demonstrate the love of God, we began work on a community health center in LA CHONA in July of 2015. Through many months of labor, both paid and volunteer, the building began to take shape, and the final outfitting of equipment and supplies could be put into place to make the building ready for occupancy. Hats off to our work teams from CENTRA Windows & Doors in B.C. Canada, Taber EFC Church, Alberta, and MEMO Canada (equipment & supplies) for your generosity and dedication to making this project a reality. May God add His blessing to your work! The clinic is located on public property, on the same grounds…
From Vision to Action!
In May of each year we host a field day for all the producers from the Carazo region. It’s a great event to start off a new growing season and get farmers together to share ideas. This year it was our privilege to host motivational speaker Rudy Alvarez from Costa Rica. Rudy brings an impactful message about not just having a vision for our future, but really putting that vision into action. It was good for producers to hear this message and think about the decisions they are making daily that either put into play, or hold back vision. Rudy has stories from a lifetime of experiences to make his presentation entertaining and easy to listen to. Thanks Rudy! We also shared some agronomy pointers for both bean and sorghum production, as well as held a workshop on proper nozzle selection and application for pesticides. All in all, a…
Building Relationships
One thing we’ve learned over the years of working here in Nicaragua in ag-development is that we can only relate to people from a position of trust. We’ve worked hard at the actual programs that we deliver for the betterment of rural families, but we’ve worked even harder at building relaionships. This has been as diverse as potable water improvement programs to involvement in community sports. Lately we’ve been keeping ourselves active in communities by sharing a movie night in each of the 20 some communities where we work. This accomplishes 3 things: Sharing an event like this is unique in these communities. We always have our portable power plant along, since some villages don’t yet have electricity. Sitting together watching a movie is something that in most cases, has never happened before in their community. A juice box and little pack of cookies goes a long way to put a…
Successful Harvest begins with Quality Seed
A main objective of La Semilla Ministries has been to make available quality seed to producers of all levels of production. Since we work with small producers (less than 8 acres), a constant struggle that we’ve seen is availability of clean, vigorous seed that carries genetics appropriate for the specific climate zone to be seeded. We have a good working relationship with INTA (Nicaraguan Institute of Technical Agriculture) who do most of the plant breeding in Nicaragua and maintain various lines of genetics. Using them as source of high generation seed, La Semilla works with a group of 6 producers who propagate that seed into a commercial seed that we provide to our producers. Much care is taken through this entire process to ensure quality is maintained. Beans are then dried to 13%, machine processed, hand-selected, then maintained free from humidity, insects, and rodents until the next planting season. A…
The move to Jinotepe
The year 2016 has brought many changes again to La Semilla Ministries and a big one was a change in the location of our office and main place of operations. After having rented a grain processing plant in Jinotepe for the past 2 years and running operations out of the 2 facilities it was apparent that we should move to the processing plant with our offices as well. It was difficult to leave the farm where the ministry was started, where many good memories were made with many locals, many experiments were done as we tried to find ways to help and improve agriculture. So the offices at the processing plant were renovated with new windows, new paint and a good cleaning. We are still making ourselves at home here where there is a bit more traffic noise and the commute for me is now 1 hr to get to…
Suiting Up For Safety
Suiting up for Safety In July of 2016, La Semilla Ministries signed a memorandum of agreement with TECHNOSERVE, an American non-profit focused on agriculture development. Our mutual goal is to see an improved level of production of sorghum in the Carazo, Managua, and Rivas departments, basically the Pacific southwest region of the country. The reasoning is multi faceted: This geographic zone is subject to periodic drought. Sorghum is fairly drought tolerant, therefore a reduced risk for our producers. Reduced risk for our producers mans reduced risk for the credit that the ministry extends for purchase of seed and crop protection products. Sorghum is a crop rotation option, separate from beans, which will, in the long run, lead to more sustainable agriculture income. A more consistent supply of sorghum for industrial use will lead to less reliance on imported feed grains and a stronger national ag sector. As we’ve rolled…
What is La Semilla Ministries all about anyway?
La Semilla Ministries, Carazo, Nicaragua It’s always a joy to share in depth how we define Agriculture Development in Nicaragua. In 2007 La Semilla Ministries was born in the minds of Wally and Esther Wiebe while they were working in construction at a local orphanage. The Wiebe’s had a burden for the poverty stricken families they saw and interacted with in rural Nicaragua. An initiative in economic development seemed appropriate, and since it was rural Nicaragua, the focus quickly became agriculture. In 2009 property was purchased for construction of office space, warehouse, workshop, and also land for research & demonstration. Rob and Leslee Oudman joined the ministry in 2010 to add their agriculture perspective, as they began to exit from their potato growing farm operation in Alberta, Canada. The first years were full of investigations and establishing networks of contacts as the ministry slowly took shape. Community development projects such…
Rob & Leslee Oudman’s August2016 news
Rob & Leslee’s news: Development work: the long road. Saludos de Nicaragua!Each day I awake, enjoying the energy that God gives us to serve Him in practical ways in the rural province of Carazo. La Semilla Ministries is focused on development work, which is often taxing on our energy reserves. The people here are quite accustomed to NGO’s working in communities in various ways to relieve the effects of poverty. Because of this frequent interaction, there is a strong «entitlement» mentality that as development workers we need to overcome. Our stated goal as a mission is to see rural families develop economically stable and sustainable households. So many of the families we know are in survival mode, and that’s a tough position for a family to operate from. So we’re here for the long road, committed to working step by difficult step to help bring stability to these rural…