Adventures with Palm Oil Fruit!

The other day, we had a palm oil fruit adventure! At the Canadian project where Marvin works, grow some palm trees--not a lot, but some here and there spread out around the property. These trees produce a fruit from which palm oil is extracted. They had become pretty loaded with fruit, and the gardener that tends to them called Marvin to let him know it was time to cut them down. Marvin had been authorized to take it upon himself to have the fruit cut down and sold if he wanted to because, otherwise, the fruit would basically go to waste. So we became palm oil sellers for the day! It wasn't a big load of fruit--maybe 20 to 25 bunches, but Marvin had them loaded into the back of the truck, and off we went! When we got to the place where the fruit is sold though, Marvin was told that they are no longer buying from independent sellers that are not part of a palm tree plantation and cannot provide large loads of palm oil fruit! So we headed back down the road, and Marvin told me to be on the look-out for big trucks loaded with the fruit. Right about then, we spotted a truck loaded with palm oil fruit passing by us, and my crazy and wonderful husband turned the car around and caught up with the truck and pulled beside it, motioning for the driver to stop. Only in Honduras would a guy be so happy to help a stranger sell his little load of palm oil fruit! The truck-driver was not the owner of the load of fruit he carried, but agreed to let us tag along with him back to the same place where we had just been to talk to the buyer with us. The truck-driver wasn't able to help very much, but he showed Marvin the engineer in charge of buying the product and encouraged Marvin to talk to him. After meeting my friendly husband and striking up conversations with him about the palm oil plantations, the Canadian project, and Balfate, I'm sure the engineer was eager to do him the favor. (-; At least that is what his crazy-in-love wife would love to think! To conclude my story, we made I think 771 Lempiras--about 40 dollars on our little load of palm fruit! This ended up being a big blessing today as we bought a medical paper for 600 Lempiras that I needed to buy for my residency.

I couldn't help but be reminded of the persistent widow from Luke 18 as we drove right back into the same place that would not buy our product from us the first time and sold it to the same people. I actually pulled out my Bible right then and read the story and was reminded that if the Lord truly is faithful and just, we should never give up praying to Him and crying out to Him for justice, just as the persistent widow kept insisting to the unjust judge that he give her justice until he finally relented. Luke 18:6-8 "And the Lord said, 'Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?'"

Sometimes God is just calling us to have faith, persist, and not give up!