Thursday, October 11, 2007

Furlough Itinerary

I'm currently on a 6 week furlough to the United States.

My itinerary is available at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~living99/2007furl.htm

The on-line itinerary contains contact information if you would like to reach me while I'm in the States. I will update the few gaps that remain when I have the information.

Community Outreach

Our Ranch community has had a consistent outreach to the local rural community in which we live. We provide jobs for over 15 employees from the community (not counting Hondurans that come from the city). Several of these jobs are house assistant jobs, which bring these employees into close proximity with our house parents and children. These relationships in turn foster interaction with the community and outreach on an as-needed basis to those employees and their families.

In addition, in the past, whenever we hosted construction teams, part of the team experience had been to go into the local community and deliver clothes, toys, food and the gospel message to a selected home. More recently, however, we have had the construction teams go into the city and participate in the WGO medical brigades for one day of their stay. This change has left a small gap in our local outreach. However, two recent projects have more than made up for this gap.
Literacy Program

Oscar, our only Senior in high school, is required to participate in over 100 hours of community service as a government requirement. This requirement sparked our principal, Valerie Schubert, to pursue a long term desire of hers to provide an adult literacy program in the community. Oscar is now playing a major role in providing this literacy program, but the contributions from the ranch do not stop there. One of our Honduran teachers has decided to participate in the program, along with Valerie, and they have also opened up the program to any of our teens who want to participate. I am very excited that Obed has decided to participate.


Classroom
A local church provides space for the classroom.


Obed works with one of the few men in the program.


Children's Bible Club

Children's Bible ClubOur second outreach that has started recently is a Bible club for small children. This program was the desire of Paul Hosier, our new director of the Children’s Ministry at the ranch. It goes hand in hand with the literacy program, because the Bible club offers a place for the children of the adults participating in the literacy program. Again, several of our teens from the ranch are participating in this program. Brayan, Will and Obed have participated at times.

These types of outreaches are outstanding ways for our children to give to others from the resources they have been given. It helps them to see the richness of God’s blessings to them, what they have that many others are lacking. And it helps us as a ranch community to address the real and pressing needs of those around us.

Soccer Tournament

One of the fundamental principles of WGO’s philosophy of ministry is the raising of children in family units. One of the special aspects of this philosophy is the way in which family gets played out in church life. House parents are allowed the freedom to determine where the family will go to church, and the family participates in church life much as any biological family would participate. Our church, Ministerio La Fuente, recently organized a friendly soccer match with another church in the city, Union Church. The House of Timothy boys were very excited about this event and were counting down the days. It was great to see them play alongside other youth and adults in our church.

As it turned out, the organizer involved from Union Church participates in an orphanage ministry outside of town. He wanted to integrate the boys from the orphanage into the event, and what started as a friendly match became a tournament. He also arranged for the orphanage to provide the venue, as they have a good quality but small grass soccer field on their property. Unfortunately, we were forced to split up our rather formidable team into two teams in order to accommodate the smaller field and the need for two teams. We ended up having 4 matches, with our two MLF teams facing the orphanage and Union Church teams in the first round. In the second round, the winners played and the losers played. Union Church came in 4th place, the two MLF teams came in 2nd and 3rd, and the home team from the orphanage dominated both of their games for 1st place. Everyone had a great time, including the large number of fans who came out to cheer on their teams.

Here are some shots from the games:
Team Photo
Obed puts on his game face:Team MLF Red tightens up on defense:
Proof I played:


Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Helping Out



Last Saturday, the boys and I went to Oscar's house to help move some dirt. Oscar is a Honduran co-pastor with Peter. Peter started our church, Ministerio La Fuente (The Well Ministry) about 6 years ago as a missionary from England. They started with the two families meeting together at Peter’s house. With the heavy rains this season, Oscar has had problems with mud washing into his front doorway. After they get the dirt moved back, he plans to put in a small retaining wall. We worked about 3 hours and got about half way done. Afterwards, Oscar’s family served us lunch.

In the three years I have been here, Oscar’s house has gradually improved from a dirt floor, to a cement floor, to tile. Using the same amount of space, they have gone from one curtained off bedroom for a family of four to 3 separate bedrooms, giving privacy to Mom & Dad as well as their now teenage son and daughter. All of this represents what is somewhat rare in Honduras, a lower income family that is able to save up and work towards self improvement little by little. Oscar maintains a steady government job, where his integrity and faithfulness has caused him to be honored among men in a secular environment. He does all this, the full time job and the home improvement, while playing a pivotal role in helping Peter navigate the culture and pastor our community of believers.

After lunch, Oscar regaled us with self deprecating one-liners. “I was so thin back then that I slept on a needle and used the thread as a blanket.” He is a tremendous example to the boys as a hard working, self reliant, responsible husband and father, and above all as a man of God. It was great to have the boys out giving a helping hand to this brother who has ministered to them these last few years.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Introduction

I'm creating this blog to provide a venue for more frequent but less detailed updates on my time in Honduras. Based on the date of my last newsletter (June 2006), that venue is obviously just not working for me.

Speaking of newsletters, those are available at http://home.earthlink.net/~living99/. They can be read for the "historical" perspective of my time here. For those of you who have followed my time here until now, this blog will hopefully provide something that has been missing - a fairly frequent word (nothing long winded, as my newsletters tended to get), but with something of interest and a photo or two.