May 2003

Dear Friends,

Just a handful of "chicharras" can be so loud as to make it difficult to hear one another talk. To hear oneself think is even more difficult. The chicharra is the seven-year locust, and myth has it that they reach adult stage at Eastertime to announce the good news that death is not the end of life. Maybe the fact that they seem to "die" from one Easter season and are born in the next contributes to this myth so widespread throughout Latin America.

Today I got to hear one start up in the early morning. I have never had the privilege to hear just one at one time. It had to warm up. It had to try its high-pitched whistle about five times before it kept a steady sound emitting from within its body. Cute. When I was young, in Brazil, I would find these chicharras and gently squeeze their soft underbellies until they would "sing."

We are enjoying working in the new community under construction in Soyapango. Julie has started up arts and crafts and music workshops. I have built improved stoves in workshop formats and seen at least four other families copy them. There is no cost and it removes smoke from the kitchen area and saves up to two-thirds of the precious wood.

In Colima there are have been exciting accomplishments on the part of the cooperative members. They have whitewashed the front hacienda wall, which faces the highway. It is 200 feet long. They have also cleaned up trash from the entrance and the street that connects the sugar mill area to the hacienda. They now have new letterhead and business cards to promote ecotourism at the hacienda. The business cards have a photo I took last year as the background for the words. It is a photo of the inner court of the hacienda with tile, wooden columns, a wagon wheel, a hanging planter, a gorgeous fern....

All this has been done with co-op resources, and the co-op members seem to understand full well now that the future survival of this co-op (in a land where 97 percent of all agrarian reform co-ops have been foreclosed and taken over by banks) depends on its diversifying sources of income.

One co-op member voluntarily moved his office to a room facing the outer patio, freeing up his old office facing the inner main patio to become a quaint guest room for one person or a couple. Two more rooms by the pool now have electricity, new doors and windows and are well on their way to becoming guest rooms. The co-op is investing in more cleaning help, kitchen supplies, ventilation fans....

I was reflecting today on the new sources of funds helping to bring hope to Colima: solidarity church delegations coming to work or just to rest and relax pay for their stay and for use of the swimming pool. National as well as international tourists pay to use the pool, to be taken to the forest reserve or the nearby Mayan ruins and brought back again, to be accompanied by guides.

The co-op is renting a sales and workspace now to the Artisans of Colima based on percentage of sales. Guides are paid for their services. Teak trees are harvested from the plantation and new trees sprout up and grow quickly from the roots. The restored lake was able to produce around 100,000 organically raised tilapia fish sold to markets nationally. Next year the co-op begins managing La Laguna and its income, so the co-op is deepening the lake at this time.

It will continue to serve filet of organic tilapia at the hacienda along with other typical dishes, such as the delicious range-fed chicken soup. Next year the co-op receives back hundreds of acres of sugar cane land that had been rented out for years. The harvest the income from it will be the co-op's. Now that the Colima sugar mill is producing at maximum efficiency for the first time since the war, the co-op will be able to sell all their cane locally, saving on transportation costs.

I was invited to an hour-long interview on a popular Christian television station last week to pack in what I could about reflexology. It went quite well. The interviewer got to feel what a reflex point felt like as I revealed to the nation he had lower lumbar troubles! He confirmed on the air that this was indeed the case. That same day, and since, I have been getting calls (the station has fulfilled its promised to copy my charts and send them out by mail) from folk telling me of the relief they are getting from everything from an intestinal hernia to sciatica. Medicines are so expensive here that folk are desperately looking for alternatives.

The co-op is now officially the owner of the fuel-log machine donated to them by the Lutheran World Federation. The co-op has tons of bagasse (donated by the Colima sugar mill) stored under a roof now for the rainy season just starting up, it has installed the new auger and heater elements that we got from the Republic of China. Today I got one more item repaired so we are ready to start up a new round of trial runs. Our objective is to refine our production cost analysis to be able to justify duplicating the machine in El Salvador for regional distribution. As you know, this is the most elegant answer to worldwide deforestation I have found to date, as it is able to convert, not only bagasse, but rice chaff, sawdust and coffee pulp into cooking fuel.

Another fascinating development in our work is having come to know a non-profit here in El Salvador called "Homies United." It is an organization made up of mostly Los Angeles gang members that have been deported back to El Salvador and who are in a process of reforming themselves from violent and illegal survival methods and who wish to help their "homies" do the same.

They have met the gang members in our housing project community of La Panama and yesterday offered them ten sholarships for vocational training. As we met under several trees, each and every one of the gang members, male and female, covered with tattoos (mostly 18th Street), we were protected from the possible intrusion or a rival gang or the police by one them standing as a sentinel on the top of a roof. Reminded me of a meerkat, standing tall. I reflected on how I ended up there yesterday. On the privilege. On the blessing. Playing a part in bringing hope, restoring dignity to a tormented few. How I ache for the time of Purification! And yes, Julie, I think you are right. That time is upon us.

Working for a New Day,

Bob

The 2003 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.243