Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Help KBI Become Self Sustaining

Many of you know about our Kekchi Bible Institute plans and the ways we want to teach the pastors to be self-sustaining so they can provide for their families and still have time to be pastors and start new works in unreached villages. During their three years of study, each one of the students will be working 2 acres of the Institute farm in agricultural projects we will be teaching them. These projects should produce enough to feed and support the students while they are studying so they can do so tuition free.

What you probably don't know about yet are the plans for the Institute itself to become self sustaining. There are a lot of expenses besides supporting the students' needs such as teacher reimbursement, paper, books, electricity etc. We have 30 acres of land that will be used for various long-term projects that will take a few years before they start producing, but should produce a fairly reliable income for the Institute, so that if all of our fish die (and I've heard from some reliable fish farmers that fish die all the time for no reason) or ants or pigs eat all of our corn before we can stop them, or just normal weather problems every farmer faces destroys everything, we won't be responsible for 50 students and their families starving to death (ok, I know that's a little dramatic).

We are going to diversify and plant a little of each item.

Two acres will be used to plant 600 lime trees. These are big limes that are very popular here and take about 4 years to produce to full potential. The benefit to this variety is that they can be harvested every month, giving some stability. The total yearly income after 4 years (for a 20 year production cycle) is around $10,000. Each tree can be bought and planted for $4. For $4 you can help lay the foundation for the Institute to be on its own.

Two more acres will be used to plant black pepper. Black pepper is easy to grow with almost no insect predators and this is the perfect climate for it. We can plant around 2,500 black pepper plants on two acres and the project should yield around $20,000 per year after four years for the Institute. You can help by buying a pepper plant for $2.

One other project that we have already paid for is two acres for 2,300 Guano palm trees. The leaves from these trees are harvested to make thatched roofs here. A benefit is that these trees are endangered, so we will have one of the first legal farms for harvesting them. We will be able to use the leaves to replace the roofs on the student houses, but if we sell them all, it's another $12,000/year for the Institute.

Combining these long-term projects with the individual student projects you can see that in just a few years' time the Institute will be able to stand on its own feet. That's our goal - independence and self-sufficiency.

We have created a little Google store if you would like to help. You can find the store below on this post, or on the right hand side bar of this blog if you lose this post. 

You need a Google account (i.e. a google email address) to use it, but you can give with your debit or credit card.


For a tax-deductible receipt, you need to mail a check to:

Global Faith Mission Agency
PO Box 3326
Chattanooga, TN 37404

Make sure to mark it for "Kekchi Bible Institute". You can email us what you want to purchase with your donation.

Thank you for getting involved and helping us make what God put in our hearts a reality. 

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