Story number 4 for 27 Nov 2001

(Guatemala) — Next, and evangelical organization is helping Indians in Guatemala out of economic ruin. Farms International‘s Joseph Richter just returned from that Central American country where they’re establishing three new micro-credit loan programs. “What micro-credit does is encourages the people to work toward self support of their own families and of their own churches. A part of our requirements for each loan is that each recipient will tithe out of their profits. When the churches are self supported there’s many opportunities for evangelism.” According to Richter, Farms would like to expand this program into areas that need the Gospel, but funding is needed to do that. “We start a program in the range of $3,000 to $5,000 and that to do the initial funding of the revolving loan portion of it. Churches are adopting these types of programs.”