Udate

Hey everyone, I hope everything is going well, no matter where you find yourself in life.  I have been here in Nicaragua for about a month now, and it is hard to believe how fast time can fly.  During my time here I have been doing my best to get the agricultural project in Betania started, but things tend to move slow in Nicaragua...  Even though I am not as far along in the project as I would like to be, I do feel confident that we are on track to get everything ready for our planting periods in September and November/December; God has a plan, and I am learning to trust in him even when I feel like everything is going wrong.  I have been going out to the community a few times a week trying to keep the relationship up, and also meeting with Pastor Earl and the leaders of the community.  Tomorrow, Pastor Earl and I will be going out there for one final big meeting, in which we hope to select the families that we will be working with on our model farm.

The idea behind this project is to plant a variety of different crops, in order to see what new things we might be able to introduce into the current planting cycle.  We are hoping to build the self esteem of the people in the community as they produce cash crops and see their land producing an abundance of food.  The goal os for the farm to be self sustaining, but we face many obstacles in getting everything set up.  My desire is that the people will be able to take a portion of the seed/plant material from the model farm and plant it on their own personal farms, thus influencing the indigenous farming practices, and hopefully creating better food security.

Much of my time so far has been spent supporting/leading short term missions teams as they come in each week; it has been an amazing opportunity to get to know so many people from across the US, and hear their hearts for ministry.  While helping these teams, I have been a part of building houses for members of the church and the work crew, building a new building for the Verbo school, food deliveries/prayer trips into villages and extremely poor sections of town, and of course I have had plenty of opportunities to hang out with the kids here at the orphanage, in my house, at the beach, and at the river.  One of my favorite parts about the opportunity I have in being here for a year, is getting to know the kids in the orphanage better, learning about their history, and hearing what their hopes and dreams are.  It is so cool to see how spiritually mature some of the kids are!

I will be posting pictures sometime in the next few days; I am currently connect to the internet via a modem with a limited data package, so I will have to go to the Pastors house to upload pictures.  Thanks everyone for your interest, prayers, and support.

God bless,

Austin Fricker

I'm Back!

Hello everyone, I am starting up a new adventure here in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.  I will just add to the existing blog to keep it simple.

It all started when Dustin Holliday, the head of the mission board at Christian Fellowship Church in Virginia, told me that they were looking into expanding their missions vision into agriculture.  He asked me if I would be willing to come back to  Puerto Cabezas for a year to work in Betania with the subsistence farmers.  I of course took the offer, so here I am, sitting in Pastor Earl's house blogging about the trip.

I arrived Saturday, and my greeting from the kids in the orphanage made me feel right at home; as soon as I crossed the fence that separates my house from the orphanage compound a big group of kids came running towards me yelling my name.  All the guys in the discipleship were excited to see me as well; it is so nice to be back in the swing of things.

The idea for this year is to develop a large piece of land directly behind Betania, specifically looking at introducing new crops (especially Nitrogen fixing, green manure type crops), developing other methods of getting nutrients into the soil, and teaching the farmers to replicate what we do on this land in their farmland along the river.  Today I will be heading out to Betania to meet with my good friend Nestor; he is the farmer that I worked with throughout the three and a half months I was here last fall.  We will be discussing the goals and hopes for development of the land, which families might be willing to participate, and of course we will be catching up on what has been going on in each others lives the six months that I have been gone.

I will keep it short this time because I am very busy with everything that is going on, but I will be updating again soon.

Thanks for the support,

God Bless, Dios Te Bendiga, Dawan Man Mumbaia,

Austin