2024 Year-end Financial Report

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Amigas del Señor

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May 1, 2025, 6:35:38 PMMay 1
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Amigas del Señor End-of-Year Finances 2024


EXPENSES          4th Quarter Year-end

Food and Groceries    $569     $2,260

Agroforestry           635      2,820

Household costs        295      1,705

Health care          1,546      5,774

Construction         1,582      3,525

Clothing                +2         12

Library                  0         91

Communication           86        504

Name Change             20        365

Chickens/Eggs          244        866

Jam & Peanuts            0         10

Lost money               5         52

Taxes                    0          2

Financial costs         94        329

Upper Room             244        251

      (Subtotal)       (5,318)   (18,566)

Alms                 3,223     11,463

TOTAL               $8,541    $30,029

INCOME           4th Quarter  Year-end

Chickens/Eggs         $202       $670

Jam & Peanuts            0         24

Upper Room               0        193

Writing                  0         60

Donations            4,449     24,273

Interest                 7         59

Loan paid                0        145

Agroforestry            36         94

TOTAL               $4,694    $25,518



Notes by Sister Confianza

2024 was our second full year living in town.  Our living expenses are much higher than when we were at the rural motherhouse because we are paying for more conveniences.  We hire part-time help for household work like washing clothes, cooking and cleaning, and for our agricultural endeavors.  Lorany's wages are split between Food, Household, and Health, since she also does some care for Sister Alegria, including staying with her when I go out for the day.  She works three mornings a week.  William works the same three days, keeping up our garden (Agroforestry) and doing other handiwork. 

Food costs include groceries, purchased breads and prepared foods as well as firewood.  Household expenditures include everything from cleaning supplies to bike repairs to spaying the cat.  Our Health costs this year cover medications plus Lorany's help in caring for Sister Alegria, along with a couple of doctor visits in the city for me as I recovered from long COVID.  (On the other hand, Sister Alegria hasn't had a doctor appointment since August 2023, so total health costs were less than last year.)

In early 2024, we decided to rebuild the motherhouse in adobe in hopes of moving back in the future, thus the new category for Construction. Another new entry is for my legal Name Change, getting a new passport with my chosen religious name, Confianza del Señor, instead of my birth name.

In 2024, we didn't buy any fabric or sewing supplies for making new blouses or habit dresses, but we did purchase underclothes as well as elastic to mend them.  I used the treadle sewing machine to mend our clothes, including putting patches and new elastic on underclothes.  We paid Lorany to help cut out and pin a blouse (though I didn't finish sewing it until April 2025!).  Sometimes William asks me to mend something for him, and I charge him a couple of dollars, effectively lowering the total spent on Clothing.

We are grateful to Multnomah Monthly Meeting (Quakers in Portland, OR) for buying us books that are on our wish list, and sending us a box twice a year through a company in Miami.  We pay for the shipping of the boxes from Miami to Honduras, plus customs fees, hence the Library costs.  (The boxes also include a few medications and other items, so some of the cost is under the respective categories.) 

We spend about $25 per month on internet and phone service.  Also included in Communication in 2024 was the purchase of a new battery for the laptop and new phone chargers. 

Our Chicken and Egg expense is primarily food for our flock of some 25 birds of all ages.  There are about 10 laying hens, whose eggs we eat and sell.  We also eat and sell young male chickens and old hens.  Sometimes we sell young males and pullets for someone else to grow their flock.  We also resell corn and chicken feed to neighbors.  While we don't break even, we feel it is important to be a part of raising food in a region that imports much of what it eats (including many tons of frozen chicken and factory eggs). 

"Jam and Peanuts" is another small-scale enterprise, smaller, in fact, than it used to be when we lived at the motherhouse.  It consists, in part, of the purchase of raw peanuts which we toast and resell to help pay for the peanuts we ourselves eat.  (We even make our own peanut butter sometimes.)  We also make and sell jam from our pineapples -- whose harvest has been smaller since we no longer care well for the pineapple plants at the motherhouse.  Sometimes I even make and sell "topogigios," an icy treat made of frozen fruit juice (mango is the yummiest!).

Every once in a while I find that money is missing from the money belt if I leave it unattended, and sometimes I lend a little money to someone who doesn't pay back.  All of that counts as Lost money.

Financial costs are the fees charged by PayPal for electronic donations, plus occasional bank fees for transferring money.  Our property Taxes, on the other hand, haven't gone up in years.

We have had a ministry sharing and selling The Upper Room on buses since 2012.  In mid-year, we lost a client who used to buy a couple dozen copies of each edition. Then I got long COVID in August, and wasn't able to sell them during the last part of the year.  Because of my uncertain abilities, we lowered our subscriptions for 2025, which we paid for in November. 

Other income includes bank Interest (our accounts had a nice amount of money for several months, and the credit union has high interest rates); payment for meditations I wrote for The Upper Room (Writing); and the sale of produce from our garden -- primarily papayas (Agroforestry).

The biggest about of money flowing to us comes from you, our donors, for which we are very grateful!  Designated Donations included money to renovate the lab at the public health clinic and otherwise support their extensive work.  In 2024, we paid for the repair of the solar panel installation for the clinic annex, continued motorcycle maintenance and repairs, printer repairs, birth control and other medicines and materials.  All that counts as Alms expenses.  We've added a line for a subtotal, so you can easily see how much money was spent on our monastic living expenses, not including the alms.  While we aim to spend at least 50% of the money on alms, that didn't happen in 2024 because of the big project to rebuilt the motherhouse.

Thank you again for your financial and moral support.  So far in 2025, we've been living close to the edge financially, as we continue to support the clinic lab renovation (we'd like to add more solar panels) and the rebuilding of the motherhouse (which still awaits a new floor and a few other last details).   Donations to support these efforts and our everyday living expenses are always appreciated! 

Bendiciones,
Sister Confianza

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