The fieldwork beins on the land
There is truly so much to praise the Lord for in the developments of the Bible School Training Center land over the past few days. So much in fact, that I am busting at the seams to write another blog and bring you up to date on the events.
As I noted in my last blog, the waiting game is over and we own the land and sugarcane contract. Now the real work begins.
Johnny Appleseed, Mexican-style, visited yesterday. Theresa and I needed to go about forty five minutes south of Cd. Valles to a place called Xolol. There is a small Baptist clinic there at which we were privileged to be able to drop off some medicine – the remaining vestiges of the clinics of the past. Just a bit further south of Xolol there is a town called Huichihuayan. This area is full of roadside “viveros” – nurseries, where one can purchase all kinds of plants for very cheap prices. The prices in the Huichihuayan area are at least half of what they are here in Cd. Valles, even though we are only a little less than an hour north. Theresa had the idea that we should invite Javier Santos, his wife Cristina and the children to go with us so that we could fill up the van with seedlings in preparation for the rainy season.
Javier Santos is our farm administrator, a pastor, a man who loves the Lord, and a man who loves the soil. He is a good man, and his wife Cristina is a wonderful friend of ours. Javier and I had just been out at the land site the day before, and he had been talking about the fruit trees which he envisioned that we should now be planting as soon as the rains began.
Javier and the family willingly accepted our offer and we all packed up a “lonche” – a picnic, and piled into the van and headed south. We dropped of the medicine donation at the clinic and went to purchase seedlings. It was like
Johnny Appleseed seedlings waiting for the rains to begin
Christmas as we proceeded to fill the back of the van:
– 7 litchi seedlings
– 7 mango seedlings
– 4 pistachio seedlings
– 4 lemon seedlings
– 6 orange seedlings
– 5 mandarin seedlings
– 3 ruby red grapefruit seedlings
How exciting, and what fun! For the moment they are all well watered and cared for at our place. As soon as the rains begin they will be planted at the land site in preparation for much abundance in the years ahead.
The next thing – equally exciting – is that as of this morning the land began to be worked. Praise the Lord. At long last it is happening!
Javier surveying as the cutivation begins
Javier made the final arrangements for the hiring of the tractor and worker last week. Yesterday Javier and I grabbed our machetes, hats and “guajes” (water jugs), and headed out to the land to cut down shrubs and trees which had grown up in the field and dragged them into the hedgerow in preparation for the tractor to arrive. Today the first tractor work began. There will still be several days of fieldwork which need to take place during this first stage, but it is going forward well. There is still disking, harrowing, and other things which need to happen before the rains begin. We are now very much fighting for time against the rains. We need to get the preparations taken care of so that the soil will be ready for the rain when it does come. But God is in control of this. We are content that he will be with us.
Tomorrow morning Javier and I will go out to the site and burn off the old thatch that is still left. We need to hire some men to cut down the remaining acre or so of old, useless, thorny trees on the field edge so that that area can be made useful as well. There is lots of work to be done now that we can finally do it.
All of the hacking, cutting, burning, and other work must also be done in the heat of the April and May sun. Today the high reached a toasty 103.8° Fahrenheit, and it is only going to get hotter before it cools down at all. One must be
Javier - a good man!
careful to work early in the morning and later in the evening, thus avoiding the extreme heat of the midday. Also, of course, water is a necessity at the jobsite.
We are blessed, we are excited, and we are now beginning to see the vision starting to become fleshed out into potential reality.
Thank you for sticking with us, and for continuing to believe in us during the long wait.
