Jubilee

A story of the Kingdom in two chapters

August 15, 2007

Chapter 1

When you happen on someone who's in trouble or needs help among your people…don't look the other way pretending you don't see him. Don't keep a tight grip on your purse. No. Look at him, open your purse, lend whatever and as much as he needs. Don't count the cost… Deuteronomy 15:7-11

If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? James 2:16

In 2006 we received a donation of $1000 that was designated as “seed money” – with no stipulations on how it was to be used. It occurred to me that seeds are supposed to grow. We could have used the money on many worthy projects, but then it would have been gone.

One of our goals for our pastors is livelihood sustainability. They do not receive enough in tithes and offerings to live on, and most work as semi-skilled laborers, which is seasonal. So there is often a struggle to make ends meet.

With this in mind, we used half of the seed money to initiate a loan program for micro-businesses. I gathered the pastors’ wives and had a chat with them about how they managed money. I wanted to make sure they had the attitudes and habits that would allow them to experience success with the loans.

Our first micro-enterprise loans:

Melba López de Ramírez - $25 to start a tortilla-making business

Maria Lourdes Pérez de Sierra - $50 to sell tamales in the market on weekends

Miriam Flores de Mendoza - $50 to purchase used clothing for resale

Familia Mendoza Flores

Chapter 2

At the end of every seventh year, cancel all debts… Deuteronomy 15:1

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to announce good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to declare the year of the Lord's favor."
Luke 4:18-19

After my return to Honduras in 2006, my relationship with Rafael and Patricia moved to a new level. My returning as promised signaled to all of us that this was going to be a long-term thing. I had known they were struggling financially, but now I was led to ask, and they were willing to admit, that they were under a burden of debt. After praying, I loaned them 97,000 lempiras at 13% (it was a premature withdrawal from my IRA) for 10 years to pay off a business loan that they had been in default on since Rafael’s stroke in 2001. The interest and penalties had mounted up alarmingly:

Dr. Rafael Maradiaga’s business loan

Amount paid off in 2007 (L. 82,050) $4342

Amount previously paid by Rafael (L. 50,000) $2646

Total paid (L.132,050) $6988

Original loan amount (L. 75,000) $3969

Nominal Interest rate 23%

Actual interest rate paid 76%

This was a loan from a major bank, not a loan shark!

Remembering how God had blessed me with years of a good salary, and since I quit work, with much generosity from friends and family, I felt that I could do no less than pass on that blessing and generosity to the Maradiagas. The absolute amount was relatively small to me, but it was huge to them.

Thus began a series of bank (mis)adventures. Getting the exact amount due, much less paying it, was no easy matter, involving many trips and many lines and no small amount of rudeness from bank employees. Who would think it would be so hard to give money to a bank? It was clear that the Powers were not happy about letting anyone get out of slavery. But finally, after some months, the bank was paid and the two cosigners reimbursed and freed from garnishment of their wages.

At first I just viewed it as the right thing to do, and as something I wanted to do, that is, help a friend. But then I realized there was more to it. We had participated in the defeat of the powers and principalities of this world. We had enacted the Kingdom of God. Beloved children of God had been freed from slavery to debt. Heaven had broken right into the middle of this fallen world, and the year of God’s favor had been declared.

We had already started the loan fund for micro-enterprises, with the goal of promoting livelihood sustainability. Now I began to wonder, if Dr. Rafael Maradiaga had such a problem with debt, what about the pastors? And their debts would certainly not be to banks, so to whom would they be? Why, loan sharks of course. And if a bank could legally charge 23%, I hated to think what the loan shark would be charging. (20% per month, I found out later, and also that payment must be made daily!)

So what good would a micro-business be for livelihood sustainability if the profits went to a loan shark?? We checked it out with 5 pastors, and four of them were in debt. (Pastor Elías credits his lack of debt to the fact that he doesn’t work a paying job and so doesn’t kid himself that he can pay back a loan). So we gave each of the four a debt relief loan - $50 to $100 each, for debts like the electric bill or emergency repairs to a truck used for work. We made them cosigners for each others’ loans.

Epilogue

The loan fund is set up as a cooperative. The terms are the same for all loans – 12 monthly payments of 10% of the amount loaned, resulting in a total paid back of 120%, of which the first 10% is a tithe to the ministry and the other 10% is savings for the borrower-investor. After paying off the first loan, they are eligible for another, larger one; having demonstrated their reliability and the fund having grown.

There have been unexpected side benefits – apart from debt relief and improvement in livelihood sustainability, it makes them feel really good to square their shoulders and walk into the bank to make their monthly payments (of $5 to $10.) They have more self-respect.

The loan cooperative began with $500 capital, and which is now close to $700 due to interest payments. To date, we have made 21 loans to 12 families (8 pastors, 4 church members), ranging from $25 to $200. As the recipients pay off each small loan, they are eligible for another, larger one. The Sierra family is now on its 4^th loan; having paid off two micro-enterprise loans, they now have a 3^rd micro-enterprise loan and a debt relief loan. Six loans have been paid off and one ($50) was written off.