Team Unity (by Janelle Hay)

Our Nutty Leaders

 Although a little nutty, Wade was our amazing team leader. Wade and Karen make a wonderful couple. Not only did we have a hoot with them but they are beautiful people with a heart for missions and a willingness to serve the Lord in whatever ways they can and in whatever country they are in. I wanted to publicly thank Wade for all the effort that he put into making the trip go so smoothly and for the example they were to us. 

Here is our team of fifteen from Trinity Baptist, Sherwood Park at the mission.

One thing that I loved about this week is that there were other teams from Alberta and California at the mission and everyone worked together and even spent their free time together.

Here are some of us in the back of the truck on the way to the Macadamia orchard... notice that we have a few extra team members.

 Once the nuts are ready, they fall to the ground. Some are green but most of them are brown and can be partially buried in the soft soil or hidden under the dead, prickly leaves. Picking up the nuts requires careful searching. Although they are easy to miss, every nut is valuable. These nuts are a source of income to provide for the needs of the children at the mission.

You may be wondering how a tropical nut can live and thrive in the dry soil in Mexico. The story is written in Charla's book but basically, it is a miracle. Macadamia nuts are a tropical tree native to Australia. It took years of experimenting and but these trees have built up a resistance and are hardy trees that can survive here. Bees had to be imported to pollinate the trees but they died in transport from the stress. Although very discouraged the people of the mission continued to pray. Seemingly, out of nowhere, God sent swarms of bees.

 It takes about eight years for the tree to begin producing nuts but each year after that they produce more and more. I believe that God is blessing the mission through the bountiful harvest.

Yes, those are the hard Macadamia shells on the road. No part of the nut is wasted. Even the bad nuts are used to get rid of pests.

Harvesting Macadamia nuts is quite the process.  The mission is slowly getting the equipment they need to crack these extremely hard shells and to sort the nuts.

 But most of it is done by hand.

 As you can see here, it takes a lot of man power to do it by hand and takes careful sorting. When we were not sure about the quality of the nut we were encouraged to try it.

Here is Karen showing off our sorted containers of whole nuts, half nuts and the bad nuts.

These two pictures were taken at one of the evening adult evangelism outreaches where we were able to work together as one big team to serve the community supper. After the meal, an evangelistic message was given through showing a film projected on the side of a van and then a pastor spoke.

At the end we were able to pray with those who came forward by laying hands on them.  We were told one night that there were about six different languages spoken by the people in the crowd. They live side by side but can not communicate with each other unless they know Spanish. There are about 360 different languages spoken in Mexico.