Summaries of Projects:1. MEFEL Church at Buena Vista:
Two of our board members, Dick McNally and Dan James went on a fact finding
mission trip January 2004 with the established charity, Acts 1:8 (Georgia).
During the trip, Dick and Dan toured the Northwest area of Nicaragua with the
President of the Nicaraguan pastoral Group, MEFEL. Two projects were picked by
the board upon their return. The church in Buena Vista was structurally unsound
and not earthquake proof. Bountiful Grace funded the construction of a new church
which was completed under-budget (due to the volunteer labor of the villagers)
and early. The church was dedicated during our January 2005 mission trip,now has
85 members and is the center of village life for this community.
2. Building of a grammar school in Pueblo Nuevo:
Pueblo Nuevo is another small remote village in Northwest Nicaragua. The majority
of the children in this village of 250 families were not going to school since
their old school had been condemned in 2001 because of landslide danger. Bountiful
Grace worked with MEFEL to provide a new grammar school for the area. The school
construction began soon after our January 2005 trip and was completed and opened
for classes soon after our January 2007 trip. Fifty five children grades
Kindergarten through 6th grade are now attending the school. The Ministry of
Education is supplying two teachers for the school.
3. Supplying a roof and improving the wall structural integrity of the church
in Pueblo Nuevo: During our 2004 trip, Dick and Dan met with the minister of a
small church in Pueblo Nuevo. The congregation had started building a larger
church around the existing structure as funds were made available. The villagers
were supplying the funds and labor for the project and 3 years later had built
most of the four walls for the new larger church.Unfortunately, a construction
engineer evaluating the project determined that the wall construction would not
safely support the roof that Bountiful Grace was going to supply to finish the
project. Our board decided to fund the reinforcement of the wall structure as
well as fund the roof of the new church. This project should be completed early
in 2008.
4. Various work projects at the MEFEL mission compound, Tipitapa:
During our mission trips, we base our first and last days out of a mission
compound just outside of Managua. Ronnie and Angi Hopkins are permanent
missionaries in Nicaragua since 2006 and have been going on construction, faith
based and medical mission trips to Nicaragua since 1989. They are basing their
work out of this compound and help coordinate mission trips for multiple groups
from the United States, Europe and Canada throughout the year. We were fortunate
to have been able to help during the early phases of this compound's construction and we attempt
to do work around the compound each trip.
5. Water and Sanitation project Northwestern Nicaragua:
For the past several years, Bountiful Grace has been hoping to improve the health
care status of the rural area we have been serving and working in. Water
contamination related illnesses (eg. Typhoid,Cholera, Dysentery, E. Coli, etc.)
are responsible for over 2 million deaths per year in developing countries. 90%
of these deaths occur in children under the age of 5. Dehydration and malnutrition
are rampant in areas without clean water sources. Household water in the rural
areas of Nicaragua comes from rivers, streams and shallow wells. Latrines have
been built in areas that drain to local water sources. During our 2007 mission
trip, we met with the leaders of two organizations, CARE International and Silva
an indigenous environmental Nicaraguan organization). These two groups were in the
planning stages of building a clean water and environmentally safe latrine system
for the Northwest area close to our village of Pueblo Nuevo. CARE requires the
villages supply 40% of the funding for their projects. Silva had decided to supply
20% of the funding, so the villages were going to be required to supply the
remaining 20% of the cost to acquire and pump clean water to their homes. This
area is very poor, with a 60-80% unemployment rate and a typical daily wage of
$2. Bountiful Grace decided to fund most of the cost of the water project for two
villages (Pueblo Nuevo and Gaspar Garcia) with approximately 500 families. The
villagers will be required to supply volunteer labor for the project. A well has
now been dug and the project is underway.
6. Improved health care access for the remote areas near and including Pueblo
Nuevo:
The villagers in the area around Pueblo Nuevo rarely see a doctor except in an
emergency. If a need arises, the villagers must take a 5-6 hour bus ride on a bus
that comes through the village at 4am and returns at 10pm. If medicine is
prescribed for an illness there is often no medicine available or there is no
money to buy medicine. We have been evaluating the possibility of building a
regional health clinic, working with the regional Ministry of Health for nursing
and doctor staffing, and supplying medications for the clinic. We also are
evaluating providing a local "health care surrogate" who would be trained to
provide health care related duties such as record keeping, health education,
medicine distribution, and networking with a base facility. Our current work is to find a way to
move forward with this plan. We are trying to connect with Nicaraguan and
international groups working in this area as well as connecting with governmental
entities.
Additional Health related work (Samaritan's Purse):
Bountiful Grace helped obtain and arrange the transfer of 26 used anesthesia
machines from St. Joseph Hospital, Lexington, KY (valued between $300,000-
$500,000) to be used in worldwide medical mission work through Samaritan's purse.
7. Project Hurricane Katrina assistance:
Following the devastation of the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina, Bountiful
Grace leaders teamed with St. Michael's Episcopal Church to gather clothes for
anticipated evacuees. One of our board members attended local disaster response
meetings. Bountiful Grace led a team of 12 adults from St Michael's church to the
New Orleans area in the fall of 2006 and worked mucking out homes to get them
ready for renovation