Nicaraguan to Nicaraguan Mentoring

When thinking of the outcome from a simple loan for a brick oven, the desired goal would be that of diversification for the farm areas. With bean prices down due to drought and now too much rain, El Congo is looking at this oven as a possibility to subsidize their income. The national organizations understand this will take some planning. These ladies have expressed a desire to learn as much as they can on baking bread before the actually create a business plan to sell their delicious products.

With the aid of a local Nicaraguan baker, the ladies of the Peniel community learned how to turn regular bread dough into cakes, donuts, and other sweet breads. This small rural village is also home to 12 land bank farmers.

The ladies were overjoyed and wrote down every detail of the recipes as he shared them. His hands-on demonstrations were a way of explaining simple things, like how to knead the dough enough to be able to begin forming shapes. Topics like, how long to let it rise and new artistic designs were shared to create a new look with the same bread.

Local mentoring is a desired outcome to the Partners work in Nicaragua. Equipping the communities to be self sustained while finding mentors is what has been an aspiration and program design. Marvin was trained in Miami years ago where there was a better future for him, and yet he returned to his home town in Boaco, Nicaragua to bake in a privately owned business with his mother. He recently took up the challenge to work alongside The Asociación Cristiana de Jóvenes, (ACJ) which is the YMCA of Nicaragua, to share of the talents God has given him.

One challenge for these women is to accurately regulate the temperature of the oven. On their first try of the day they weren’t so successful but after a bit they realize what it takes to cool the oven down before baking. The fire roars for about an hour before they can begin to work. The wood is cleared out before the food goes in and stays hot for about five hours. This allows enough to bake several different types of bread.

While there are still many lessons to learn these ladies gained a great deal of knowledge from their training session. With more lessons to come we invite you to join us in prayer for the start of this new business.

David and Wendy Van Klinken
Managua, Nicaragua

Photos of the Medical Team

THANKS TEAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Health emphasis in Farm areas of Nicaragua

August 11-19 we hosted a team of medical persons who arrived in Nicaragua ready to give of their time and talents in whatever capacity they could. The team consisted of a group of health professionals from different areas of Michigan.
Drs Pete and Cheri Lauber along with Dr. James Strikwerda, Amy Strikwerda, hygienist Alana Baker, Norma Thompson, RN, Robert Hirssig and Dr. Sarah Ruff.
Partners Worldwide works in different rural areas in agriculture with land purchase and eventual ownership. Health and sustainability is an added component to these farm areas. The spirit of love and equality was felt by all our brothers and sisters in Christ.
This team’s focus was in the areas of medical, dental and vision care.
This year’s focal point was directed at empowering the Nicaragua health committees. These committees were in charge of organizing the whole community for four day clinic and hands on trainings. Helping them learn different skills associated with each profession. The community of San Buenaventura worked very hard to organize and set up a make shift clinic. It was built in a church not far from the social health post called MINSA. The last and final day of work was in a community called Mombachito where we worked towards the same strategies.
Both communities had training done in four different schools. These trainings aided approximately 500 children in total with oral health. A medical student on the team assisted by a local committee member, worked with the children by teaching how to brush their teeth and pointing out good foods and bad foods demonstrating how those affected the teeth with decay.
The rural areas of Nicaragua are not always able to get medicines or treatment for illnesses. The state of Government says “free care for everyone” but there is often no staffing at the local centers and no medicine. Those were statement coming from the local members. So equipping the local persons in the communities to be responsible for their own family’s health, especially in areas of prevention will be a continued goal by the Michigan Medical team who are working toward healthy families and healthy communities.

Visiting Medical team

This Saturday the 11th of August there will be a medical team of 8 come to visit the work being done in Nicaragua.


The team is lead by Peter and Cheryl Lauber from River Terrace Church, in LAnsing Michigan.




This year there challenge will be a bit different. Other than the clinic style mission, we will be adding a componant of education to the communities of San Buenaventura, San Juan, San Andres and Mombachito. We will be working with the health committies from all the local areas.




Medical, Dental and vision componants will be a part of their visit.




The goal of this trip is to empower the local teams to aid us as North Americans to assist them. Walking along side of our Nicaraguan Brothers and sisters.




Please join us in prayer for this to be a great trip!

Visit to El Progresso

Wow, what a good week this has been!

This past week was spent with visitors from the Grand Rapids home office. Kris Vander Stelt, Greg Elzinga, Matt Van Til, Doug Seebeck (Partners Worldwide), Sandy Johnson, and Rev. Jerry Dykstra (CRCNA). Accompanying the group from Michigan was Joel Huyser (soon to be moving back to Nicaragua after being state-side most of the past year).

The visit began with an overview of work in the Nehemiah Center. Several visits were made to see PW partnerships in the Managua area, however, the day that stood out was our trip to AMC's El Progresso farm.

As many of you know, there is a drivable road into El Progresso now....... at least in the dry season. Not so fortunate (driving) for our Grand Rapids visitors, as after walking 1 mile into the farm, they had enough mud on them to grow a good crop of corn!! and then it began to rain...... actually, it cleaned everyone up a bit!

While the individual partner farms were being visited, the statement heard many times was a variation of, "you started with nothing? .....and now you have all this?? Incredible!".

On another note, the really big news is the fact that the first litter of piglets were born two week ago in El Progresso! 8 healthy piglets scurrying between the sow, and the community center where we had group discussions with partner farmers. (got to do something about the sow pen..... they squeeze though the fence!).

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your big part in this!

Blessings,

David and Wendy