Progress

We've been back in South East Asia for right at a month now and I wanted to give everyone a current update on many of our projects that we shared about while stateside.  

While we were gone the team here did a fantastic job of keeping things moving.  It was great to be able to leave for two months and have the team here not skip a beat.  While we were gone, thousands of coffee trees were planted on our farm and the new seedling share program was implemented.  Ten families received a total of over 10,000 seedlings.

But here are some of the current happenings:

-Training Center Progress:  If we saw you while stateside, I'm sure you heard the story about our contractor here and the headaches that he's caused.  In April we tried to fire him (it didn't work), so I knew the conversation with him would not be easy when we returned.  We had also been told that he hadn't paid any of his workers during the project.

When we arrived back in South East Asia no additional work had been done to the training center, so we called the contractor and told him we needed him to come talk to us.  He refused to come out and said that he would no longer work on the project because he is losing money. He claimed the workers stole money meant for materials (the workers hadn't been paid, but minor detail...), and he doesn't want to lose more money on the project.  So after several months, one five minute phone call solved our contractor problem.

Over the last few weeks we've interviewed several contractors and decided to have the village leader in the next village complete the walls, flooring and ceiling on the second floor.  His crew had already done a nice job with the one wall they finished before they realized they weren't getting paid.  Please continue to pray for good progress and hopefully this will lead to having a good relationship with some village leadership.  

-Team Truck:  We bought a truck!  After several months of waiting, KIA finally found the only new four-door cargo truck in the entire country (literally).  We quickly put down a deposit and paid it in full last week.  We've been enjoying much more spacious rides to the village and the ice cold air-conditioning.

-Seedling Followup:  This last week our farm manager (and village pastor) started following up with the ten families that received seedlings.  He understands the goal for these seedlings is not only checking on coffee but seeking ministry opportunities.  Just last week he was able to visit the first two families, with the goal to visit all of the families each month.  Please pray for open doors though as he follows up.

-Village Leader Health:  Not everyone knows about our village leader, but I have shared his story with many of you.  For over three years now, we have gotten to know him and he has been a big help to us.  He is not a Christian (yet) but has always been kind and generous to us and the local church.  He has help us establish our business and allowed us to have open access to the village, which can be a rare thing here.  He has also always come to Christmas parties and other events when the church has invited him.

Back in January the village leader had a massive stroke.  For months he was only able to lay on a mat on his floor and not move or talk.  I honestly thought he was going to die.  During our weekly meetings we made sure to pray for him.  In March, our village pastor visited him and was encouraged that he was able to sit up and eat solid food for the first time in months. 

Last week we were driving out to the farm (in our new truck) and passed by his house.  I was surprised to see him sitting in a chair on his porch.  I waved, he waved back, and so we stopped and talked with him for a few minutes.  He still has almost no use of his right arm, his right leg is shaky, and his speech is slurred, but he has made amazing progress since I last saw him.  Please continue to pray for him and that we might find some ways to get him access to physical therapy.

Thanks again for all the prayers.  We're excited to see continued progress in all these areas in the coming months!

Seedling Sharing

One of our big initiatives for 2018 has been a seedling sharing program in our village.  Our vision for our coffee test farm has always been to introduce new coffee varieties to our region.  These varieties produce a higher quality coffee and when connected to the right market, can dramatically increase the income of the farmer.

Our seedling program works like this:  We partner with a farmer in our village and loan him X amount of seedlings.  In 3-4 years when his coffee is producing he returns 2X the seedlings to us, which we then use to start the process over again with other farmers.  The farmers have ownership of all the coffee seedlings and can sell coffee to whoever.  This is just one of many ways to do a seedling program, but it fits well for our area.  Farmers love the program because no money changes hands and it is low risk for them.  We love the program because we have an inexpensive way to get good genetics out into the community.

Another benefit of the seedling program is that it gives us an built-in opportunity for relationships in our village.  Because villagers know we're expecting seedlings back from them in a few years, they know we have an investment in what they're doing.  To check on this investment, our farm manager (also the village pastor) will go around and check in on the farmers once every month or so.  While he's there he'll ask about the coffee, ask about their family and ask how he can pray for them.  The hope and prayer is that this will lead to opportunities for him to share the gospel.

Last year, when we started our community surveys to find out which coffee varieties are available in our village, we also asked villagers if they would be interested in participating in the seedling program.  The plan this year was to distribute 10,000 seedlings to our community, assuming there was interest and people would actually clear their land and be prepared.  We were blown away with how much interest there has been from our village.  We've partnered with 9 initial families to roll out the program, but it is looking like we'll need 20,000 or 30,000 seedlings next year if we want to meet the demand just from our village.

Please be praying for the seedling program.  This is the first year that we've tried this, so there are sure to be some hiccups along the way.  The goal is that this will be the next phase of our ministry here and something that will easily multiply out to more villages.

Seedlings are being distributed to farmers this upcoming weekend!

2018 Plans

We've hit the ground running in 2018, which is why this post is at the beginning of February instead of the beginning of January.  This year should be a big year for Underground Coffee International and we wanted to share some of our big plans with you.  So here's a quick game plan of what we're looking forward to:

-Training Center:  We've been building a training center in the village for the past several months. This will be a space to hold trainings for farmers, use as an office, and give us a place to stay in the village, as well as a place to roast and check the quality of the coffee coming in.  We've got a local builder working on it (so it is a little behind schedule) but completion date should be the end of March.

-Wet-mill:  Part of the reason this post is so late is that we've been busy building our wet-mill during January.  The wet-mill will allow us to handle the volume of coffee needed for export and make processing much easier.

-Even more construction... : We still have lots of small construction projects we're working on such as drying houses, storage and a small water-treatment setup.  No pictures on those yet, but we should have them built in the next couple months.

-Seedling Program:  This year we're rolling out a new program in the village where we share high quality seedlings with farmers.  We've been busy with community surveys and mapping out coffee in our village as well as identifying potential partners for these new seedlings.  We'll distribute approximately 10,000 seedlings this spring and in a few years will have lots of great coffee to harvest from our village.

-Planting more coffee on our test farm:  We'll also plant 3 new varieties on our test farm this spring.  Two of these varieties are new to our region and if they perform well, we can use them to further increase and diversify what farmers are growing.

-Harvest: We have an order for 10 tons of very specific coffee this upcoming harvest.  We've been busy figuring out who has this kind of coffee and thinking through the logistics of getting it to our mill.  Ten tons sounds like a lot, but in reality that means processing 60+ tons of coffee cherry.  We're busy this year trying to track all that coffee down as well as harvesting it all for the first time this fall.

-Continued growth in the village church:  We're also hoping to see even more people from our village be trained and step up into leadership.

So 2018 has some VERY big plans.  Thanks again for everyone who has partnered with us financially and in prayer to help make these plans become a reality.