Bentley's in Jocotan, Guatemala

Dear Friends and Family,

Since getting back to Camotán, Guatemala, after our 3 week visit in Maine and New Hampshire, it has been difficult to see some increasingly tough circumstances facing the people who live here.

The day after arriving back, I stopped in at the Nutritional Rehab Center in Jocotán. They were overwhelmed and under-resourced for the number of severely malnourished kids they were seeing.

What is happening at the nutritional rehab center in Jocotán reflects a much wider picture of malnutrition and crop failures. What is the reason why?

Well, their is a lot of talk about the canicula in Guatemala.. The best translation for this is probably the dog days of summer. This year they were in the last half of July and the first half of August. The problem is the dog days of summer were too long and too dry. The municipality of Camotán had 30 days without rain, Jocotán-22, Olopa- 25, and San Juan Hermita-22. After 15 days without rain (during this critical period for the growth of corn and beans) crop loss starts. To sum things up, their was wide-spread crop loss. The hardest hit areas were the municipalities that compose the Chorti region.

To make matters worse last year was a very bad year for coffee due to the "roya" or coffee rust. Many coffee growers lost much of their crop and have had to replant. So it is estimated that over 100,000 seasonal job opportunities in this area will be lost for "jornaleros" to pick coffee. Finding work as a jornalero is a pillar of the Chorti family economy. .

For a complete report of the situation here go to http://www.albedrio.org/htm/documentos/OXFAM-EvaluacionRapidaCorredorSecoGuatemala2013.pdf

Even if you don't speak Spanish it is still easy to understand the graphs.

Amidst this context, please pray!.

Please pray that this will be a unifying force for Christian churches to find practical ways to love their neighbors.

The other day I was talking with Hermano Eliseo, a good friend and the director of Radio Alegria. When we first arrived in Guatemala he had approached us about starting a radio program with contextualized health and agriculture education because up to that point Radio Alegria did not have a program like that. Since that time Eliseo has been continuing on the journey to find ways that the radio and the group of churches it represents can love their neighbors.

We talked about the need for Christian NGO's to be all about the local church. Some Christian organizations here are not known as Christian because they do not partner with local churches. We also talked about ideas for the Church to be doing compassion ministry in this context.

Please pray that the Church and Christian organizations here might address some underlying issues that relate to the situation of the Chorti in a way that brings Christ's healing...

Here are just a few of them.

a) a stratified society that discriminates against the indigenous poor

b) a fatalistic world view of the Chorti

c) alcoholism among the men

Please pray for the small picture. I've written a tiny bit about the big picture. But also please pray for the small picture.

1) Please pray for Manuel's family. Manuel is in nutritional rehab for the 4th time. Please pray either for a change in his family or for a placement to be found for him outside of his family.

2) Please pray for Sara. She undergoes surgery to remove a cataract from her right eye on Wednesday. Their has been extreme uncertainty from her and her Mom since the beginning of this process and some people in her community (who for selfish reasons don't want her having surgery) have been lying to her. Please pray she will come.

3) Please pray for our sponsored child program. We have been graduating some of the older kids and many new families with young kids and babies are coming. Some of these babies are still in a very fragile state health-wise. Also pray, for our time of worship, Bible teaching, and counseling with these families. Many of them have a world-view that is very animistic and very focused on visitation of the saints so they are resistant to a lot of Biblical truth.

For example, doing evangelism in one of the villages I was talking about John 3:16 with different men and women. When I would ask them, "Who is God's only son that the verse refers to?" They would answer by starting to name the different saints.

It has been very encouraging recently to see some of the sponsored families that understand and believe the Gospel start to share testimonies, songs, and encouragement during the open microphone time!

This past week we did a training about moringa trees with our sponsored families. Here is a story from that training;

I was a little taken aback when José told me he didn't like it. All the other families I had been talking to said they were enjoying it very much. But then the boy's Mom grinned at me, "If he doesn't like it, why is he eating it so fast?" José looked up at his mom trying to hide a smile.

The sponsored families were sampling black beans with dried moringa powder. I was encouraged to get all the positive reviews because gram for gram dried moringa leaves have 25x more iron than spinach, 17x more calcium than milk, 15x more potassium than bananas 10x more vitamin A than carrots and 9 x more protein than milk. On top of this they are one of the only plants to provide all the amino acids of a complete protein.

A lot of recent write-ups and studies have hailed the potential of the moringa tree in fighting malnutrition. The tree also grows fast- up to 12 feet per season, so it is a useful tree for fire wood. The seeds can be used to clarify and filter water. It also has many traditional medicinal uses.

This month we have been doing demonstrations and teaching sessions about the moringa tree.

Our agricultural extensionists, Pablo and Angel, have both been growing moringa trees near their homes and using them to improve the nutrition of their families. They each had a time to share about the tree (how it reproduces, how to incorporate it into traditional foods, how to dry the leaves, etc..). We also demonstrated how the seeds can be used to filter water and talked about the nutritional benefits and some of the medicinal uses of the leaves. Another one of our staff, Doña Trini, had prepared a big pot of black beans so that families could sample moringa leaf powder and moringa seed powder with their beans. After the training each sponsored family was given 2 moringa trees to take home and plant.

Our family has been doing well. We had an incredible visit to Maine and New Hampshire in August and got to see a lot of family on both sides. Jadon is army crawling, barrel rolling, and pulling himself up into a standing position. He isn't too interested in solids yet, but loves to suck on raw apples. He has been struggling with some ear issues (starting stages of ear infections). The weather here is still very hot (90's-100's). We are hoping it will start to cool down to the 80's soon!

Thank you for your prayer and partnership with us,

James, Joy, and Jadon

Jadon loves:
~ to not only sit up but to stand upright! He's great at standing strong and tall (just needs some work on the balancing part:)
~ baths and is super good at soaking us and the counter/floor
~ Mornings (it's hard waking up at 5am...but to this lil guy with his killer smile)! I wouldn't trade this time of day with anyone:)
~ Mr. lion is his official favorite toy...to the point of him putting on a pouty face when he saw Mr. lion drying on the line and then he couldn't look away!
~ cold teething toys!!!
~ squeaky moose (he thinks the sound is funny)
~ people (he's extremely outgoing and loves watching people)!
~ watching me wash the dishes (cause there's water involved!)
~ singing (he actually babbles/sings with James and the guitar)!
~ looking in the mirror, or watching videos of himself that we've taken:)

Jadon has his first cold this week. Not fun but he's a trooper and is handling it well. More cuddles and Tylenol!