Clive and Beth Houghton will be on their way to paradise on Monday.

They are visiting the village and orphanage that they and members of Immanuel Church in The Broadway, Winchester, have planned, designed and built with the help of local people. It is called Maranatha (Come, Lord Jesus) and is near Managua, the Nicaraguan capital.

"When I was there in December 2001, I took a lorry and went up to the hills, bought plants worth £500 and got a palm tree for the equivalent of £1," Clive (51) told the Hampshire Chronicle.

"The land is very fertile and there are now bananas, papaya and lemon. It attracts the birds and it's a paradise compared to the dustbowl the children would have experienced if they had had to live in Managua."

The children are very poor, often abandoned or abused, sometimes referred by the capital's "completely under-funded" social services department. There are now 85 boys and girls aged from one to 15, who are looked after by house parents. Each house has a spread of ages among the children, so that they don't become institutionalised.

Clive says he's returning because he wants to discuss plans for buying a house in Managua, where 16-year-olds from the village could stay for a while, a kind of staging post before they went back to Nicaraguan society after relatively sheltered lives.

His determination to return to Maranatha is remarkable since for much of the past year he has been fighting prostate cancer. Good doctors, pain-killing drugs and the power of prayer have helped him, he said.

"We want to maintain contact with everything that's happening. And we love to see the children transformed from difficult backgrounds to be being happy youngsters.

"The building project started in 1998. It took two years and there have been children in the houses for nearly two years. We have developed it slowly. There is a school that can be used as a community centre, we have built a kitchen and play courts and we are converting another building into a gymnasium. We now have a farm of 200 acres where we are growing cash crops."

Much of the money has come from the Winchester church, American friends have paid for a bus, and the British and American embassies in Managua clubbed together to pay for a freshwater well.

Clive is raring to go. "I don't believe my work on this earth is done," he said.