Seeds and Love together contributes in different ways and our categories of aid are: Agriculture, Clean Water, Medical Needs and Pastoral Training. Our assistance is based on a partnership relationship with the Miskito people; we are not their parents. For many years, other organizations assumed the role of parents, assuming that they alone had the answers for the Miskito people. In that parental type role, they left the communities without dignity and empowerment when they abruptly parted the region about ten years ago. In our missions training, SALT has chosen to build personal relationships and to be partners who allow them to determine their own needs and the workable means to address those needs. What might work in a western setting is not always viable in this setting. Therefore, our promised partnership was to do what we can to enable them to become everything God intends.
Part of doing that was to do everything by some form of micro-financing in which all recipients would be required to repay the “loan” in some agreed-upon format. While difficult to do in a “zero dollar” economy where there are no paying jobs and no physical money, we agreed on a way to hold them accountable for the funds we provide/provided to “front” a project. In the case of agriculture as an example, if we provided fifteen pounds of bean seeds to plant the annual family bean crop, we expect/expected to be repaid with fifteen pounds of seed at harvest. As it relates to the clean water, where we supply the materials to construct the wells, they repay us through labor and construct all the wells on their own.
The medical treatment across the country, even in Managua, is chronically in need of nurses, doctors and supplies. The villages we serve have nurses, but often no equipment or medicines. The closest hospital has very limited capabilities and most referrals for testing, intensive care and surgeries require a trip of seventy-eight miles to Puerto Cabezas or up to a thirty-six hour bus ride to Managua which, in nearly all cases, is often out of the question for the ill and their care takers. God is good though, and it appears that our prayers to provide a local doctor in Kisalaya may be answered in the form of Dr. Jeffery Justin Garavilla, – Dr. Jeff. While still in medical school and when he had time off from his classes, we would provide his travel to and from the School of Medicine in Bluefields to Waspam where he would serve the people of Kisalaya. We would pay the wages Dr. Jeff for that time as it is an impossibility for the village to pay him to be there. The village of nearly 2,000 in Kisalaya has been so blessed by his service when he has been able to come. He is currently fulfilling his required commitment to serve the government of Nicaragua but, will be released to return to Kisalaya and begin serving the people there if we are able to raise the funds needed for him to do so. That is a major project for us as we need approximately $5,000 per year to pay him to work for the village and we hope to begin in January 2022 when he is finished with his government service. Please join us in prayer over this important need.
