Blog

September 2020

The word “seed” is used 346 times in the Bible. My favorite seed story is the parable of the mustard seed, so small, yet when it comes up it grows large enough for birds to lodge in its branches. Christ likens this to our faith which can be very small, but our small faith is in a big God. That’s why the Gardens of Good News are faith builders and teach us and the children over and over that God is a miracle worker. Yes, indeed, all of the seeds that Julio plants into prepared soil come up and produce 30 to 100 fold. Since creation all seeds planted come up in their kind. Julio never worries that a cucumber will come up a tomato, or a squash, or a watermelon. God is always faithful, and the stories of seeds continue at Good News. As Good News gardens flourish, so also our faith in a God who always gives us what we need, not what we want. We are forever thankful for the opportunities to do good with the planting and keeping of the gardens at the following five Mexico orphanages: Casa Hogar Morada del Nino Jesus, Rancho Anela Eterna, Rancho el Milagro, Shining Light, and Agua de Vida.

Julio remains busy all summer with the requirements of gardening. Because of high heat at Agua de Vida the summer is a slow time, but planting will kick into high gear in late August and continue through May. As soon as possible we plan to go to Mexico to visit orphanages that have requested gardens that would fill needs they have. We will see how God leads, and He will supply the wisdom for good decisions.

We say “Thank You” to all of you that send prayers and money gifts. It is always amazing to watch God take our money and turn it into gardens of love and food for the at-risk children of Mexico.

Overview of Good News Projects

Good News is alive and well- bringing hope for the lost, helping to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, bring peace among people, and to put music in the heart! All work we do as Good News is not our doing, it is all God’s and His plans. We try to understand and follow His leading.

As many of you know, GNFI started in January of 2010 with the Lastic Canyon Water Project. After finishing that project (which is a story in itself), we turned it over to a group of Natives who have been managing it ever since. They formed a water district having a manager and employees. Good News funds a percentage of the cost of operations, approximately $1,600 per month. We have been very pleased with the maintenance and management there.

We are currently busy as bees in Mexico. Our man Julio is working with four to five orphanages: putting in and sustaining gardens, teaching children to learn gardening, and how our hearts are like a garden that God’s seeds can grow in. Julio is definitely a seed planter both physically and spiritually. He wants to find those green shoots of life in the orphanages and water them with love, feed them with faith, and nurture them with hope. We also have also done other projects such as building the girls dorm, laundry room, and new office, remodeling the kitchen, fundraising items such as stoves, refrigerator, washing machines, and dryers, and installing septic systems that change black water into usable water for irrigation.

Our volunteers Gene and Venora Ensz have been working in Panama from January to March of 2020. They have been helping install a water purification system for Native Indians who are getting very sick from contaminated water.

Our objective is that people will be able to see who God really is. We want to make a difference. For this to be true, we at GNFI must be willing to take risks, so risk-takers we will be, joining the band of risk takers who have changed the world! We want to swim deep in the ocean of faith and not paddle in the shallow existence of sight. Without our donors and volunteers we do not exist, so may you all stay with us with your prayers, encouragement, and monetary help.

As drought hammers countryside, many in Haiti go hungry
By DAVID McFADDEN
Feb. 24, 2016

These Feb 20, 2016 photos show the dry, cracked lakebed of Trou Caiman, in Croix-deBouquets, Haiti. A drought worsened by the El Nino weather phenomenon has driven Haitians who were already barely getting by on the marginal farmland deeper into misery. An estimated 1.5 million people are going hungry as crop yields fall to the lowest levels in 35 years in a country where two-thirds of the people eke out a living from agriculture.
(AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

Kevin’s Note – This lake is about 15 miles NW from our house. It used to be running over, and the discharge ran into the lake near our house. It was one of the contributing factors to that lake rising.

Kevin’s Note – This is from an Associated Press article online about the drought in Haiti. I have added some comments, and shortened some of their captions, which were somewhat repetitive. The original article can be found here

In this Feb. 15, 2016 photo, Carole Joseph holds her toddler twins, Angelo, left, and Angela, after visiting a local health center to examine her children for signs of malnutrition, in Oriani, Haiti. The 28 year old mother of four is among roughly 1.5 million Haitians who can’t get nearly enough nutrition because of a year’s long drought that has spoiled harvests in her small mountain village and across large sections of the countryside.
(AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

Kevin’s Note – Coming up is a section on Oriani, the town where Keith Toews and family run the Confidence in God Heath clinic, and where GNFI sponsors a school. The “local health clinic” and “local health workers” mentioned in the article and captions refer to the local government run clinic, which is not generally of major help. Oriiani is only about 25 miles south of our house, but it takes about two hours to drive there. They are high on the east side of Peak Le Salle, the highest mountain in Haiti. Our dam, reservoir, and headworks are lower down the mountain on the north side.

In this Feb. 15, 2016 photo, vendors cull through bunches of carrots to sell at a local street
market in Oriani, Haiti. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

In this Feb. 15, 2016 photo, Angelo, left, and his twin sister Angela, crawl on the earthen floor of their front porch in Oriani, Haiti. Only shriveled carrots and potatoes grow in their mother’s small vegetable plot. Her 2 year old twins have missed developmental milestones such as taking their first steps or uttering their first words. The 28 year old mother of four is among roughly 1.5 million Haitians who can’t get nearly enough nutrition because of a year’s long drought. “We get a little bit to eat and drink each day, but it’s never enough to get our strength back. I don’t know what to do anymore,” she said, as she cradled her toddler twins, their hair brittle and taking on a yellowish tinge, signs of malnutrition. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

Kevin’s Note – The condition described is known as kwashiorkor. It is mostly caused by a lack of protein, and has long term, and in many cases permanent, effects. Wikipedia has a good article on it.

In this Feb. 15, 2016 photo, community health volunteer Sylvio Fils-Aime examines a child for signs of malnutrition in Oriani, Haiti. Many Haitians routinely go to bed hungry. But the impact of a year’s long drought is so severe that Haiti is facing “unprecedented food insecurity”, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

In this Feb. 15, 2016 photo, community health volunteer Sylvio Fils-Aime examines a child for signs of malnutrition. Diminishing calories means more children are vulnerable to infections like measles and any number of other diseases. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

In this Feb. 15, 2016 photo, Roodymanche Lomane plants potatoes in his small vegetable plot in Oriani, Haiti. A strong El Nino weather phenomenon that’s been disrupting weather patterns across the globe is leaving many places in Latin America and the Caribbean stricken by drought. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

In this Feb. 15, 2016 photo, a man pours water he collected from a nearby river, pictured in the background, into a larger receptacle, in Fond Verrettes, Haiti. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

In this Feb. 15, 2016 photo, residents carry buckets filled with water they collected from the Soliette River to irrigate their vegetable plots in Fond Verrettes, Haiti. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

Kevin’s Note – The river referred to in the two photos above is a spring fed river, about twice the size of the one we have captured in the Lastic Canyon, that springs out of the mountainside over the course of about ½ mile on the east side of the mountain. There is a little bit of farm ground nearby, which is mostly watered via bucket carried water. The river then enters a narrow mountain chasm and runs eastward in the Dominican Republic, and eventually into Lago Enriquillo, a salt lake.

In this Feb. 20, 2016 photo, residents siphon water from a waterhole in the lakebed of Lastique Lake, in Fond Parisien, Haiti. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

Kevin’s Note – The ”waterhole” is actually a clean out on our pipeline, and it lies in the dry bed of the Lastic River. We have tried in the past to keep the manhole lid in place, but we haven’t enforced that because the locals really don’t have much choice for other places to get water. If water is not running in the pipeline from them to draw from, their next best option is a spring about 1.5 miles west and about 2500’ higher into the mountains along a pretty rugged trail known as “Ti Source” (Little Spring). It has been capped and piped down into the valley in the past, but the system has fallen into disrepair. We have looked into repairing it as a source for local drinking water.

 

 

ORIANI, Haiti (AP) — Only shriveled carrots and potatoes grow in Carole Joseph’s small vegetable plot. The family’s chickens are long gone. She sold her only tools to buy food, then the wooden bed she shared with her children. The family now sleeps on the floor of their shack. All that’s left to sell are the pots she uses to cook over a fire pit, when there’s something to eat.

The 28-year-old mother of four is among roughly 1.5 million Haitians who can’t get nearly enough nutrition because of a years-long drought that has spoiled harvests in her small mountain village and across large sections of the countryside.

“We get a little bit to eat and drink each day, but it’s never enough to get our strength back. I don’t know what to do anymore,” she said, her voice hoarse as she cradled her toddler twins, their hair brittle and taking on a yellowish tinge, a sign of malnutrition.

For the last three years, a punishing drought has driven Haitians who were already barely getting by on marginal farmland even deeper into misery. Last year’s crop yields were the worst in 35 years in a country where more than two-thirds of people eke out a living from agriculture, many using archaic hand tools.
Many Haitians routinely go to bed hungry, and are heartbreakingly accustomed to privation and natural disasters. But the cumulative impact of this drought is so severe that Haiti is facing “unprecedented food insecurity,” according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Over the last year, it’s worsened significantly with a strong El Nino weather phenomenon that’s been disrupting weather patterns across the globe, leaving many places in Latin America and the Caribbean stricken by drought. Cuba suffered its worst drought in over a century in 2015 and water rationing was ordered in Puerto Rico and elsewhere.

But few places are more vulnerable than Haiti, where 3.6 million of its 10.4 million people can’t afford the minimum daily calories, according to the U.N. World Food Program. Of those, 1.5 million are in urgent need of assistance, meaning they’re getting significantly less nutrition than what they need and are so underfed they become weak. That category of “severely food insecure” people has doubled in Haiti over the last six months, the agency said.

“This drought is a very dangerous situation. The pressures on people keep increasing,” said Haitian economist Kesner Pharel, noting that buying food makes up more than half of an average Haitian family’s budget.

Pharel said local agricultural production has contracted so severely over the last two years that 70 percent of the crops consumed in Haiti are now imported, up from roughly 50 percent in the past. With the local currency losing value, the cost of imports is rising, making everything pricier.

Officials say more rural families are being forced to join the decades-long exodus to cities. And diminishing calories means more children are vulnerable to infections like measles and any number of other diseases.

Wendy Bigham, country director of the U.N. World Food Program, said a growing number of farming families have been eating seed stock, seeking loans and selling items such as livestock and tools to get cash for food.

But “coping mechanisms such as reducing food consumption, selling assets and borrowing money are more and more difficult to sustain as the drought continues year after year,” she said. In the wind-swept mountain town of Oriani in southeast Haiti, Joseph knows this all too well.

About a year ago, her husband left to seek work in the neighboring Dominican Republic and he hasn’t returned since. She was forced to sell off her chickens and then her other meager possessions to buy food.

On a recent afternoon, Associated Press reporters met her at a town health clinic crowded with other women cradling children and waiting their turn to be seen. Her 2-year-old twins, Angelo and Angela, have missed developmental milestones such as taking their first steps or uttering their first words. On this day, she left with only deworming tablets because the facility was again out of nutrient-dense peanut butter.

At her family’s stone-and-timber shack, Joseph’s two older children, 10-year-old daughter Junel and 12-year-old son Stevenson, sprawled listlessly on a straw mat as her hungry twins tried to breastfeed. Joseph is so underfed and dehydrated that she can’t produce milk. “I only nurse them to comfort them,” she said.

To get emergency aid to people like Joseph and her children, the World Food Program is seeking $84 million in donations to distribute cash and food to roughly 1 million drought-affected Haitians. The U.S. has boosted its emergency aid to Haiti, awarding $11.6 million to nonprofits to address nutritional deficiencies for over 135,000 people.

The challenges of getting emergency food aid to struggling communities, even those accessible only by foot or donkey, is easier than finding elusive solutions to Haiti’s chronic hunger problems.

Abnel Desarmours, acting director of the government’s National Coordination of Food Security Unit, said more sustained efforts must be made to escape the seemingly endless cycles of disaster and rescue. The recent rise in food insecurity underscores just how vulnerable many of Haiti’s people remain despite decades of global aid.

“It is very difficult, but we have to figure this out. Irrigation systems must be built or fixed and our food production has to be strengthened,” he said.

Haiti has long struggled with malnutrition as a result of widespread poverty, political dysfunction and corruption, and a fragile agricultural sector repeatedly set back by severe weather and environmental degradation. Punishing weather is only expected to intensify as a result of global climate change.

Recently, sustained rains from a cold front came to northern Haiti. But they arrived in the form of a deluge that flooded streets and fields, doing little to help the current planting season.

The crisis in the countryside has also reached the cities, causing the price of plantains and tomatoes to triple, according to vendors in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

“The prices keep going up even as the crops get punier,” vendor Junior Edraud said as he worked a bustling corner. “Something’s got to give because the Haitian people can’t keep going like this.”

Even if the rainfall during the spring rainy season is steady, farming families in Oriani and other towns will have to struggle to get by until the summer harvest. Last week, the U.N. weather agency said the ongoing El Nino has passed its peak, but its “humanitarian and economic impacts will continue for many months to come.”

For now, Joseph is doing what she can to feed her family two meager meals a day. “It’s very hard because when they get up crying in the night I can’t answer them,” she said.