Seven years ago, Alexi Santos started a bakery with his brother. They named it, “Los Brother’s Panaderia.” (Panaderia is Spanish for bakery). They produced a good product and were soon able to grow an established clientele. Most of their clients were small businesses who purchased the baked goods for resale. However, just when things were going well, they were hit by multiple problems and tragedies.
First, Alexi’s brother dropped out of the business and withdrew his share of the capital. This set things back, but Alexi and his wife Sandra decided to continue on with the bakery. But then their young son was diagnosed with leukemia. His struggle with leukemia lasted two years, before he finally succumbed. The medical costs were huge, and these expenses drained all the family’s resources. To pay for their son’s treatments, Alexi and Sandra were eventually forced to sell one of the bakery’s two large ovens and their huge commercial mixer. This reduced their production capacity, and they lost many of their business clients as they were unable to meet the demands.
When it appeared that things could not get worse, Alexi’s father died. The bakery was located in a building on his father’s land. The sibling who inherited the land needed the building for other purposes, and so Alexi and Sandra were forced to move their business. Yet, they had no funds to purchase another building. So they put up a makeshift tin building in the backyard of the house they were renting. This was a huge setback, but they were at least able to keep the business going. Since they no longer have their commercial mixer, Alexi and Sandra use a very old processing machine with two large rollers. They hand feed the dough through the rollers to knead it faster. Their bread, in consequence, is very fluffy and soft. Yet, the process requires much harder work.
Having survived all of these setbacks, Alexi and Sandra were ready to focus on rebuilding their business. Yet, tragedy struck once again. Alexi suffered from kidney stones, which required surgery. Although the surgery was successful, the costs used up all their remaining resources. They eventually reached a point where they no longer had funds to buy the flour and other ingredients to make their bakery products.
Nevertheless, through all these trials, Alexi and Sandra were confident that God would see them through to the end. Just when things were the blackest, their pastor told them about the ministry of the Society of the Good Shepherd. We were able to quickly provide them with an interest-free microloan to enable them to restock everything to get their bakery up and running again.
Alexi and Sandra are still living on the edge. At the end of each day’s sales, they use part of the proceeds to buy the needed materials for the following day. They work together monitoring the oven, kneading the bread, and packaging the product. It is not easy work, and their makeshift bakery is not ideal. But they do not give up!
Their main products are the following: semitas (a type of sweet bread, shown in the picture), loaves of sweet bread, and donuts. They also bake many different types of Honduran cookies. These cookies are dry and hard, and people dip them in their coffee as a cultural norm. They package their smaller baked goods in bags containing eight to ten items each. They mainly sell to the various neighborhood grocery stores called pulperias, and they sell about a thousand bags of baked goods per week. Their largest customer is from the nearby town of La Esperanza, and he purchases 200 bags each Friday.
Assuming they are not hit by any new trials, Alexi and Sandra hope to eventually move their bakery to a more suitable building. The various trials have not broken their spirit, as they have confidence in the Lord as their provider. Through all the tragedies, they have kept a poster on the bakery wall that contains the 23rd Psalm. Although they have gone through the dark valley, Christ has proven to be their Good Shepherd through it all.
Julie Nyhoff de Valladares
The Society of the Good Shepherd, P. O. Box 122, Amberson, PA 17210 • (717) 349-7033
Click on the following link if you would care to make a donation to the work in Honduras: Honduras Donations