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Christmas Cocoa!
Dear family and friends,
I love cozy, hot cocoa, especially at Christmas, don’t you? Since I have been close friends with the folks of the Aruamu language group in Papua New Guinea, I have come to have a deep appreciation for the complicated process by which cocoa comes to us. Although they are primarily subsistence farmers, their one cash crop has been cocoa.
Sadly, in the severe drought in PNG in 2015-2016, most of their cocoa trees were lost. So this year, I have been thinking creatively with them about how they could restore their cocoa gardens, in a way that can provide ongoing benefit to the entire area. And thus, by God’s grace, the Aruamu Cocoa Tree Project has emerged! We are partnering with our Beyond Baptism co-workers (Bobby Joe and Sue Ellen Wrenn) and with reliable Aruamu leaders to facilitate this. I would like to tell you about it.
The over-arching goal of the Aruamu Cocoa Tree Project is to help Aruamu families replace the many Cocoa trees which were lost in the drought throughout most of the Aruamu area, with a new strain of drought-resistant Cocoa trees that is now available in PNG.
There are also 4 major sub-goals of the project:
- To provide Faith Bible College with an ongoing income source through maintaining and managing the Cocoa orchard (5,000 trees) and selling tree-graft starts,
- To enable FBC graduates to have a skill (raising/grafting/selling Cocoa starts) by which they can support themselves as they go out to minister in other contexts),
- To provide each Aruamu translator with a bit of a retirement fund (100 trees each) after their many years of work on translating the Bible,
- To raise the overall living standard in the area. “REDEMPTION AND LIFT” is at work here!
Steven Dazim (whom many of you met this last year when he was here in the US) and those he wisely appoints, will be the immediate managers of the project. Steven is ordering 5,000 tree buds/starts together with poly bags for planting, right at the end of this dry season (so they can be planted just before the rains start at the end of the year). The Aruamus have just purchase all the needed tools and supplies to develop a cocoa orchard.
Because effective training is essential for success, salaries will be provided for 2 cocoa specialists to be out in Tiap village for 3 months to train many Aruamus in Cocoa grafting and the latest techniques in the specialty of Cocoa Nursery growing and maintenance. All the Bible College Students and teachers, as well as all the translators would learn how to do work with Cocoa trees.
From the 5,000 tree buds/starts, each translator would receive 100 trees to plant, as a thank you gift for their faithful work on the translation over many years, and to give them a way to provide sustenance later during retirement years.
The rest of the trees would belong to Faith Bible College, to look after and use as a business to support the school on an ongoing basis.
As the trees are established, Faith Bible College would be able to sell new buds/starts to many people through out the entire language group, and in other groups, to replace their many trees which were lost in the 2015-2016 drought.
The Cocoa Tree Project is just being kicked off THIS MONTH! Please undergird this with prayer.
On December 4, I received this email from Steven Dazim:
Hi Marsha,
Good morning! Everything at Farmset (Agricultural Supply) is ready, Jim Bliffen gonna help me and pick them and come to the office and tomorrow I will take all the material home to the village. The students and the translators will start filling up the poly bags next week. The ground for the nursery is cleared already. After filling up the bags, we will get the other German cocoa seed to plant them for sprouting up in the bags. When they have their first leaves, then we will buy bud branches from CRi and go bud them in the nursery trees. I’m trying to start up the cocoa project in hurry before the rains are starting, so that we will have enough.
Blessings my sister,
Brother Steven
Praise God! So this Christmas, when you enjoy hot cocoa, or Christmas fudge, or other chocolate treats, please let this prompt you to remember these dear brothers and sisters in Christ in your prayers!
Christmas blessings to you,
Marsha Relyea Miles
(for the entire Aruamu team)
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