Hey guys. I need your help! David and I went to meet with a designer this past week to work on our coffee label. In the gallery, I have two options for the front label, and the text of the back label. I need constructive criticism. None of this, “Looks good” or anything. I want you to tell me specifically what you like and what you don’t like, and what needs to be improved, and any ideas. Tell me which label you like best. Tell me why. Review the text. Tell me what sounds great, and what just doesn’t have that ring. We’ve already improved on this text, so I know there are some things you can say, because we already noticed some of it. I would like as many people as possible to participate. We want to do everything the best we can so that we can market this product, and the more opinions we have, the better start we’ll have. I’m pretty sure we could consider it your Christian duty to participate! You might also notice that we’re playing with different names. Let me know which one you like, or if you have a better idea, it’s welcome too! Thanks, and I expect my email to be full very soon! Kim@missionnicaragua.org.

Front Label Option 1

Front Label Option 2

Back Label Text

I am so excited because today David and I went and got our labels all made for the coffee. We met with a designer and our friend from Sevogia coffee to brainstorm. I wish we had them now to show you, but we’ll have the samples on Friday. The front label has a light background of a coffee stem full of red berries. Then it has a light green map of Nicaragua with a coffee bean marking the farm’s location. It also has a cup of coffee with a open book (to symbolize the Bible) in the background. Sounds like a lot of stuff, but it looks great! The back label has the backgound of the coffee stem, and has two paragraphs describing our coffee. The first talks about the high quality and taste of the coffee, and the second talks about the mission of the coffee, evangelism and helping the poor. We’re still working on all the wording. If all goes well, we’ll be sending coffee back with my family when they come, and then with the mission group.

Work on the church building continues to come along. We had to cut some of the large trees that border where we’ll put the new building. They cut about 3 of the 7 trees (only in half, so they’re still very tall, but won’t blow over in the wind). The other 4 we’re going to do on Saturday, as we decided this wasn’t very safe, and called in the experts! Members of the church continue to help everyday cleaning up the area of plants and such.

David is so excited about his (oh, he says “the farms”)new water pump, and maybe all you guys who like your gadgets will be too. We have a huge water tank built in the ground that used to be used for coffee processing/drying. We’re going to remove all the water and seal up any holes. Then we’ll let the rain fill it up again. I think we’re going to put a little roof over it with drains that let the water in and filter out the debris. The pump is run by a rope that has rubber stopper type things. The rope with the stoppers run up a tube that suctions out the water. The rope moves by turning a handle attached to part of a tire. Pretty simple, but it works great!

I forgot all about telling our most exciting thing last time! We went to do a coffee tasting last week at the company that is going to roast and package our coffee. We tasted two different roasts of our coffee, and two coffees from other companies. We considered mixing our coffee with another, but it didn’t turn out that great when we tried it, so for now we’ll stick with just ours (which I was glad about because I didn’t want to mess with paying someone else for coffee).

The Smell Test

We’re really getting things going with the building. We’re getting the land all cleared. It looks like we’re going to have to take some dirt from one side of the area and move it to the other because of a slight inclination, but it’s nothing serious. We should get all of the materials this week and start building next week, which means we’re right on schedule! I can hardly believe it. After the dust bath we all took in church services yesterday, we are more ready than ever to get a real building built!

I’m so excited about everything that is going on with the building. We remembered to take some before pictures so everyone could see the difference! Our workers started clearing the land yesterday. We’re going to put the building right at the entrance and facing front. It’s right next to a tree line too, so it should be really pretty. Roger is going to help us make the entrance look really nice too (with the landscaping). Monday we have to cut the trees back so a strong wind doesn’t come and destroy all of our work!

Tomorrow we’re taking the workers and their families to the beach! Last week was a holiday week, but we decided to go this week so there wouldn’t be so many people there. It should be a lot of fun. It’s the ocean, but it’s fresh water because, well, I don’t know why, but they say it is, and I believe.

The kids are all in TROUBLE!! They came home with bad grades, every one of them! So I spent all morning making flash cards of numbers, letters, addition, multiplication, words, and anything else I could think of. Eddi tried to get out of the mess because he doesn’t go to school, but I said that was even worse! The good thing is that they are all excited about working on it, even if they don’t want to admit it.

Wow, it seems like June is coming so soon, and there’s so much to get done! I’m so excited about this trip. Every Sunday we have about 10 people who have to stand up during church services, and another 10 who are sitting outside the building in all the chairs that we can find to bring from Giovanni’s house. It will be so nice to finally have a church building that has 4 walls and can hold us all! With the rainy season coming, this will be even more important. I think we have 13 people who are for sure coming, and 3 considering. A smaller group than what we expected, but that may be for the better as this is our first time to plan a mission trip and a smaller group will be more manageable (hopefully). We’re also going to have VBS, which I think will be great for the kids. It’s always nice to see a new face teaching you to make the message different and interesting.

Other exciting news is that my family is going to get to visit us very soon! Probably the 2nd week of May! My mom has been here before, but it will be a first for my dad, sister, brother-in-law and niece and nephew. I can’t wait!!

Something I might mention, is that we have one member of the June mission team who is excited to come, but doesn’t have the finances to do so. The trip is going to cost $900 a person (mostly the plane tickets expense at $721). If you’d like to help him out, jot me an email and I’ll let you know where you can send your donation (tax-deductable!). We really need everyone we can get to come, since we have a big project with the church building, so if you can’t come, but want to help out in this way, please let me know.

If you’d like to know more information about the trip, check out the link on the welcome page Hosting Mission Trips from the States, or just click here.

David and I took the kids to Hertylandia today. It’s a water park, and the first water park I’ve ever been to. It was a ton of fun! They had big water slides, and we managed to convince all the kids to go at least once. The pools weren’t very deep, so we didn’t have to worry like at the river. Chepe and Edwin are even learning to swim some. So many times these kids say, “I can’t” and that’s it. There’s no room for learning. I think that’s why it’s so hard for some of them to read, because they and others say “They don’t know how.” Anyway, it’s good to see them trying to do something new.

We’re just taking it easy right now. It’s a holiday here, so the kids have been out of school all week, and the workers get Thursday through Saturday off. We just don’t know what to do with ourselves!

We had church services yesterday at Mama Lydia’s house (the kids’ grandma). Giovanni talked about seeing through faith. He used the story when the army surrounded Elisha’s town and his servant didn’t know what they were going to do. Elisha asked God to open his eyes so he could see that their army was stronger than the enemies. Sometimes we forget that God is surrounding us with protection and we are fighting the devil alone. On a physical note, Lydia made arroz con leche and it was wonderful!!! Yum Yum.

Kids Swimming

So many exciting things are happening it’s so hard to know where to start (or how to title the newsletter!)

We had 3 baptisms on Sunday. Edwin, our kid, was baptized. He has wanted to for a while, but his mom always told him no because she didn’t want him playing with the things of God, but he finally got her convinced that he was making a responsible decision, and not playing. Lucia, Johanna’s daughter also became a Christian. Now Johanna, her mother, and two of her daughters are faithful! Pedro also dedicated his life to God. He’s Fransicso and Maria Auxiliadora’s son (baptized last week). So exciting to see these young people making such mature decisions.

The mission trip planning seems to be going great (though we’re certainly not doing much of the work!). It looks like we’ll have plenty of supplies to give to the kids and needy families here. The church building plan is comeing along great as well. We have the plans all done, and everything should be ready to begin in about 2 weeks so we’ll have the base work ready for the group. I’m so excited to get to see everyone and show them what all we’ve been doing this past year.

I woke up at 4:00 the other night to see David doing a rain dance in our bedroom. True, it is getting hot, but I thought it was a bit early to start calling on the rain. Turned out he was doing the scorpion dance, as one of those little guys thought David looked nice and snuggly in his bed, and then got mad when he didn’t want to cuddle. Bit him on the side and the hand, but it turned out it wasn’t one of the scorpions from New Mexico, which the kids claim kill people (but they claim a lot of things, so who knows), because you can’t even see the mark now.

Edwin’s Baptism

I put some pictures up of the two poor workers who got stuck with the job of turning the fertilizer pile. Yuck! My coffee book talks about how wonderful coffee pulp fertilizer is because it has a pleasing color and smell. I don’t know what coffee they were using!

I am constantly amazed a how things grow here. I put some pictures up to show it. We planted a post just to mark off some firewood, and it already has new leaves growing. For the plants that line the fence, they just shove them in the ground and they’re ready to go. I kept asking if we didn’t need to water them or something. I almost had a heart attack after we cut our coffee trees back, because my book acted like we might as well give up. All the coffee would be gone. But as you can see in the picture, the stumps are growing strong and covered with leaves.

Speaking of killing plants, I successfully killed and revived the flowers David gave me for my birthday. When they started looking really glum, I thought, “Well, I’m just not good with plants.” But then I thought that as an administrator of a coffee farm, that’s not something I’m allowed to say! I’m pleased to report that my flowers are reblooming and healthy!

Turning the Fertilizer Pile

I was able to put a ton of pictures on today, so be sure to check out the gallery! The farm is so beautiful right now, I just want to take pictures of everything. I was trying to photograph the blooming flowers and the berries, and I took a bunch of pictures because I’m always afraid that if I only take a few, they won’t turn out. Well, this time they were all good and it was so hard deciding which to put on the site. We had our big flowering week for March. We have one more left, and it will be in May. This year will have 3 flowerings, which is usual. There are normally just two. This year is also what they call “La Nina” which is a tropical storm. So the rain should come early and harder than normal. Hopefully this will help us to have larger beans with a better cup quality.

I’m living at the internet cafe now trying to get taxes done!! Ugh! That has put me very behind on all the things I need to tell you about!

We added 3 members to the church on Sunday. One was a husband and wife. They are a very poor family with 5 kids (3 boys and 2 girls). They are caretakers of a farm not too far away, but the owners are very good about paying them regularly. It’s a very sad situation. The father has a drinking problem, but we know that with God’s help he can overcome all bad habits! Please pray for this family. Darling was also baptized. She is the older sister of Graysel, who became a Christian during our gospel meeting. It is so exciting to see new Christians immediately reach out to their family members.

Roger started work on the farm Monday, and things are going great! He’s really good and talking to the workers and finding out what they need and how they want to do things. Since things are getting to a regular schedule we tried making a budget for how much we can spend each week. That got blown out of the water when we received a water bill for the past 16 months. Apparently no one ever bothered paying it. It’s only about $180, which isn’t bad for 16 months, but it put a strain on our budget. We are still trying to hold out selling any coffee (to CISA) until May (when the price is better). Our coffee buddy is picking up our sample on Thursday, and then we’ll get together to experiment on toasting and labels.

How about a poll? What should we name our coffee? Ideas, suggestions…