Hey Friend,

It’s been a while. I was reminded recently by our Mission Connections people in the national office of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Louisville that I hadn’t sent out an update of my work since last September. I believe they are referring to the note I sent out after the World Trade Center incident, which would mean that it has been a good bit longer since I sent out news about the work of Rancho Ebenezer via e-mail, although many of you have received, or will soon, the annual newsletter that Mom and Dad have photocopied and mailed for me. If you don’t receive that and would like to, please let me know.

I received a number of comments after sending my letter last September, many of them very positive. I received two notes from folks who were clearly offended by what I wrote, and I entered into a good conversation with my friend Joe Daprano which centered more around my manner of saying what I said, rather than the content. I also got a note from my friend, Mitch Barnes, currently living in Belgium, who said he found what I wrote "…thought provoking and written with a certain type of beauty that by itself pulled me along to keep reading even though I did not like very much some of the things said." That is as good a response as I could hope for, but I suspect that most of the folks who failed to find any "beauty" in my writing found it easier not to write me about it. When my brother Bruce came this past January to do electrical work here at the farm, he commented that he found my writing "arrogant." I had my response to that observation, but the reality was that Bruce had already created a lot of space for making any observations he wanted, since he had just spent many months raising funds to come down to the farm and help reorganize our electrical system and begin bringing our wiring up to Cleveland City code.

Nevertheless, at the risk of sounding arrogant, I feel compelled to note here that I am appalled by our government’s response to the World Trade Towers incident, particularly the bombings in Afghanistan. Thousands of people have died and thousands more wounded and I find that equally as abhorrent as the violence done against the people killed and wounded during the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon. It struck me recently that if I had been called to work in Afghanistan, the people I would be working with would be the victims of many of the bombings—farm families in remote areas of the country. How incredibly futile our slow, patient work would seem! Whole communities wiped out in minutes. President Bush has been quoted as saying, to the effect, You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists. A strange concept. In the work of Rancho Ebenezer, our goal is to cooperate, not dominate, to empower, not destroy, to help build healthy communities that are feeding themselves—that are growing and learning and worshiping our Creator in love. Our aim is to promote life in every way that we are able and I am neither with "my" government nor with the terrorists, both of whom seem firmly entrenched in activities that result in death.

My boss, Chico Juárez, often comments that we have sinned against creation and that we who claim the name of Christ-followers are obligated to respond to that particular sin by renewing creation wherever we can. I feel helpless in what I can do about the destruction in Afghanistan, other than commenting to you all about it. But I am blessed in having been given the opportunity to sow seeds here at Rancho Ebenezer, along with the rest of the crew—real seeds, the kind you get to watch sprout and grow. In the last three years, just the small crew that I lead here has been able to establish over 600 new trees, most of them forage species we are already using to feed the goats and rabbits in our small production trials. The goats, in particular, have shown their appreciation by producing milk in relative abundance for about six months now. Since our rainy season this year began May 21, we have also planted over three acres of seasonal leguminous vines (aggressive bean species) which we are using to control weeds and improve our soils. And last week we also planted over 200 yards of new leguminous hedgerows on some of the steepest land here, which means we are continuing to improve our permanent system of soil protection. All of this work has been especially blessed this year by good rains in our area. As I write, the sunny skies are clouding over and it looks like we could get some showers later on. Forage trees and shrubs all over the farm are growing great gangbusters and the main herd of goats is starting to eat adequate quantities of high quality forage for the first time in at least four years. As a result, the young kids are growing faster and the mothers are producing more milk—enough that the farm cook, Rosita, has begun to make a soft type of goat cheese on a daily basis. She has been able to make enough cheese for the daily consumption of the farm crew and a small surplus which Chico sells in Managua.

These are real and immediate benefits which come from our efforts to renew our part of God’s creation, but the main goal of Ebenezer is not just to improve our production, but to share what we learn with people striving against great odds in the isolated rural areas of Nicaragua. Four people from the two communities where I have been working now for two and a half years came to our five-day workshop here this past May and left greatly enthused and ready to share with others and put into practice themselves some of techniques they experienced here. These are good people of good faith, but the odds are often against them. When Sebastián and I visited the two villages the week before last, the bountiful rains we have been experiencing here in west central Nicaragua were not reaching them in northwestern Nicaragua (department of Chinandega) and their crops were starting to suffer after 10 days without significant rainfall. Besides erratic weather and highly degraded soils, members of these two communities suffer from lack of organization, internal conflicts fueled by party politics, and an overabundance of external organizations which rarely try to coordinate their efforts within the communities. Despite all of these problems, what I believe to be the greatest obstacle for many rural people is a lack of faith and confidence in themselves—low self-esteem which is often reinforced rather than reversed by organizations looking for fast statistics for their annual reports rather than real improvements within the communities.

If you feel moved to pray for the work of the Ebenezer Project perhaps you could pray for us in our ongoing search for effective ways to share our knowledge with rural people accustomed to failure. Pray that we can help build people’s confidence in themselves and to organize themselves effectively. Pray that we can share in all humility the techniques that we have found to work in our part of Nicaragua without forgetting that the rural farmers and their families are the final judges of the value of what we have to offer. And pray that God’s love and mercy might finally prevail on Earth.

Mark

The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 251