There is a great river that winds like a ribbon along the northern border of Nicaragua called the Rio Coco. Dense, tropical rainforest surrounds it, stretching for hundreds of miles on all sides. Thousands of animal species make their home here and as a lesser known fact, so do thousands of people.

Aureliano Spellman is one of these people. He lives with his wife, Herrera, and seven of their nine children on their farm on the Rio Coco. Six years ago, Aureliano and his family lived in the nearby community of Yahbra Tangni, and he would hike an hour to his farm land where he planted his crops. Three years ago, he was able to move his family to live on the farm permanently where they can now keep an eye on their crops all of the time.

As World Renew staff in Nicaragua, we first met Aureliano on a visit a year ago with his family at their home. This year, we had the opportunity to return there and hear more about the progress the Spellman family is making.

Aureliano, born the son of a Moravian pastor, did not grow up on the Rio Coco. However, the nature of his father’s job frequently brought their family to communities on the river, including Yahbra Tangni, where he met Herrera. When he was 19 and she was just 17, they married and began a life and family together.

As the couple raised their children, they farmed the traditional way – building their home in the community and claiming a parcel of land deep in the forest where they planted rice, beans, and tuber crops. They subsisted on what they could grow that wasn’t stolen from their unwatched fields.

 “My hope in all of this 
is that all the work I'm 
investing personally
will now have an
even greater impact 
on my children.” 

– Aureliano

Since that first visit last year, Aureliano and his family have made a lot of changes in their lives as a result of what they have learned from World Renew’s agriculture training. They have learned to plant a variety of new crops and farm with techniques that are healthy for the environment.

“The trainings have been useful,” Aureliano says, “because now I can plant many different crops on a very small area of land.”

One of the most valuable crops Aureliano has learned to cultivate is cacao. On our recent visit to their home, he eagerly brought us to his cacao trees, which were laden with fruit. Passing around a bar of chocolate, he explained how cacao production has provided his family with some additional income. The family sells the chocolate to other families in the community where it is a popular treat. With their extra earnings, they can now buy basic necessities such as salt, flour, soap, and cooking oil.

We live differently than we did before,” says Aureliano. “Now, there is food year-round, when before that wasn’t the case.”

Aureliano is teaching his eldest son the new ways he is learning to farm. “My hope in all of this,” he says, “is that all of the work I am investing personally now will have an even greater impact on my children.”

Pray for Nicaragua:

• Urban transformation: World Renew is working in seven neighborhoods as part of an urban transformation strategy. This is a new endeavor and we are learning to develop leadership for community organizing in a context where the resources and needs are very different than they are in rural areas. With half of the urban population being under the age of 15, the role of youth is significant. Pray for the youth clubs (impact clubs) have been formed to engage the youth in becoming a positive force in the transformation of their communities.
   
• Water: We are completing two community water projects. Now that the wells have been drilled and the reservoirs constructed, many kilometers of pipes need to be laid to reach the homes in the communities. Pray for good participation as community members volunteer their time to do this hard work and that it can be completed in the next few months.

Mark VanderWees