February

February was a crazy month.  There's been so much going on that I wanted to take a little bit more time and space to unpack it than allowed in a newsletter or a note attached to a social media post.

We arrived back in country on February 1st.  It was long travel, but honestly it was the smoothest transition back we've ever had.  Within 12-hours of landing we had our bills paid, cellphone reactivated, internet turned back on and a broken A/C fixed.  There were also no fires that needed putting out on the farm and I didn't have to worry about fixing anything.  I completely attribute this to our teammates.  Having a team is such a blessing, and I couldn't imagine trying to carry this load on our own.  The Filipino family that is part of our work here along with our two local families did a great job while we were stateside. The goal is that they'll continue to take on larger leadership roles in the future. 

It wasn't just the physical things that our team handled well, it was also the spiritual.  The day after we arrived back in country, I was told we needed to attend church in the village that Sunday because 3 people were getting baptized.  The baptism of 3 people might not sound like a lot, but when you work with Unreached Peoples and the church usually has an attendance of 18... 3 is a big number.  The story goes that during a Sunday morning service in January a family wanted to participate in communion.  The pastor (our farm manager) explained that they needed to be Christians in order to participate.  He shared the gospel with them, they believed and then a couple weeks later were baptized.

All of this happened while we were gone.  It is a continual reminder that we are merely walking in obedience to this journey that God has us on.  It isn't like He couldn't do it without us.

One of our core goals is to raise up local leadership.  My job is working myself out of a job.  And I was able to see some of the fruit from that this last month.  We've spent a lot of time going over goals for the year and planning things out with our team during February.  We did the same thing last year, but neither of our local guys had ever had a planning meeting before that.  It is amazing how a whiteboard, a little organization and some discussion can really open peoples eyes and get them excited about the year.  Since that initial meeting, our local guys have taken those tasks and run with them.

Some of those small tasks have been things like finishing our processing mill, digging a water well, running electrical to our processing land and doing some land work there as well.  In a place where nothing gets done quickly, we're actually ahead of schedule (for the moment anyway).  Once again, I give our local guys a lot of the credit.  They know who to call to get things done and have started to understand the system of running a business here.  All they need is a little vision (and cash) to make it happen.  Just this last weekend we finished digging a 100ft water well.  It took 3 days and it was 100ft of solid rock, but it now pumps clean water. 

Next month might be a different story from this month.  I guess that statement could be true for all of us.  During March, we'll have a few visitors come out, my wife will head home for a week to attend a funeral, and we're hopefully going to start building an office/coffee training center in the village.  There will be a lot of hurdles, but God has given us a great reminder in February of how He can handle everything.

2017

Java seedlings that we will plant this summer

I figured what better way to follow up a blogpost from a month ago with a continuation of it this month.  Last month, I recapped some of what has been going on here in South East Asia with Underground Coffee.  2016, was a huge year for us and saw many milestones being met.  Hopefully 2017 will also have a lot of 'firsts' for our team here.

This year we've got a lot of things planned and are praying for God to help them all come together.  Here's a little bit of what we have going on this year:

• This spring we'll finish up our processing center as well as begin construction on an office/training center in the village.  The training center will give us a place to stay while we're in the village (very important during those long weeks of planting and harvest).  It will also serve as a place to bring the community together.  We plan to eventually use the training center as a place for coffee trainings and use as a coffee lab for training local farmers.  We'll be able to use this to educate them on better techniques, how the coffee market works, and also allow us to have more quality control for the coffee grown there.  All this means more understanding of the coffee industry for the local farmers. It also means helping them find ways to increase their income and quality of product.
• This spring we also have some smaller construction projects planned like digging a water well, running electrical lines and finishing up some fencing.  We're all looking forward to investing in a few power tools once we get the electrical up and running.  I'm getting a little tired of using a handsaw on all the hardwood out here.
• This summer we will again plant some new coffee varieties on our farm.  Since we are introducing these new varieties, we're realizing it can be a little hard to source seed.  Villagers think we're crazy that we care so much about knowing exactly what we're planting, but it is part of being able to introduce new genetics into a community.  So this year we'll plant some Java and some Geisha.  We'll also start seedlings for 2018's planting, since the timing of harvest from our seed source is too late to get them for this year's planting.
• This fall our plan is to participate in harvest along with the villagers.  The coffee that we've planted over the past couple years will not be mature enough, but we will use the mill to process coffee that other farmers have grown.  We'll work with them on quality and pay them more for a better product.  Our goal is to export to the US and we're currently working on a plan with a coffee importer to bring our coffee stateside this next harvest.

So 2017 should be a big year.  There will be a lot of firsts and hopefully opportunities to deepen relationships in the village.  If this year is the same as the last couple of years, there will also be a lot of unexpected things happen (and probably some of the expected things not happen).  That old adage of "Man plans, and God laughs" has definitely been true during our time here.  One of those unexpected things is coming up this weekend.  We've been stateside for the past couple months and as soon as we got back in country we found out that the village church will have a baptism and baby dedication this Sunday.  I'll fill everyone in more on that in the coming weeks.

2016

As 2016 draws to a close, I’ve realized that I’ve been neglecting the blog updates for the past few months.  (Ok, maybe six months.)  With the busyness of planting season this summer, family travel and then moving into construction projects on the farm I have gotten out of the rhythm of keeping this blog current.  Thankfully, New Year’s is great for good intentions, so here’s to keeping the blog updated throughout 2017!

2016 has been a great year for us here at Underground Coffee.  Schedules were changed, plans were tweaked and God has moved in much bigger ways than we could have imagined.

We started off the year adding to our team.  At the end of last year we hired on the village pastor to be our farm manager.  He has been a great addition to the team, adds invaluable insight and relationships to what we’re doing in the village, and because he has a job in his village, he is able to keep pastoring the church that he loves.  We also added another local person on salary this past year.  He has a passion for seeing the village church grow strong so that it can serve as a place to train others that live in even harder to reach areas.  Finally, we added a Filipino family to our group in South East Asia.  They come with many years of missions experience working in Malaysia among Muslims.  Luv’s time with UCI came to an end this summer as he moved back to the Philippines to get married.   One of my personal highlights of 2016 was getting to attend his wedding. 

2016 also meant moving closer to our goal of our ministry focusing in the villages.  Most of the unreached people live up in the mountains and it is hard to find ways to interact with them on a daily basis.  Coffee has helped us achieve those relationships and given us reasons to work together.  As a family, we made a decision at the beginning of the year to start attending the village house church twice a month.  It has been such a blessing to become even more a part of that community and for us to worship together regularly.  This summer, after about eight months of work, the church finally completed a small building to worship in.  The church was entirely paid for by the locals, with the exception of UCI buying the chairs so we don’t continue to sit on the floor (for which my back is very thankful ).  God is also doing some great things with the locals by inspiring them to be more outreach focused.

It was also a big year on the farm.  We set out the year planning to plant 1 hectare (2.5 acres) of coffee.  For some reason this spring I got the crazy idea that we could handle twice that.  So in May we planted 2 hectares, which took over three weeks and just about exhausted all of us.  I’m thankful for our Filipino partners who spent many nights up on the plateau without (much) complaining.  They are definitely more gracious than I would have been.  At the end of it we have 2/5 of our farm planted and have established relationships with a large portion of the village.  All of the work was done by hand, which meant hiring between thirty and forty people to work each day.  Paying them a respectable wage helps put food on their table. We figured out the trick to getting people to want to work for you is taking a 15 minute snack break in the afternoon.  I’ve had more villagers than I can count tell me they like working for us because we give them cookies.  It is also great to drive through the village now and have people wave, say hello and ask if there is work going on that day.

Late summer brought on our processing mill construction project.  Once again, God provided a huge blessing by having a friend offer to come and help us.  He spent several years working in our town with construction.  I can’t tell you how valuable it is to have someone who understands Western quality and planning but also knows the language, culture, has contacts and knows where to buy all the construction supplies.  It wouldn’t have been possible without him.  Rainy season has gone on for several extra months this year, which delayed some of our construction, but we’re looking forward to finishing up the mill early this spring. 

We’re excited to look forward to 2017, and even though we feel like there is a good plan in place, I’m sure there will be some unexpected curves.  Our plan for the upcoming year is to finish the mill and start working on a training center in the village.  This summer we are also planning to plant 1 hectare (we learned our lesson on trying for two last year) and also plan to harvest coffee this fall.  There will be lots of firsts for us, and we are excited about where God has placed our team.