Montalowa Church of Christ (the old San Miguel)

Jennifer Arnold and her Husband Josue put on children's church at 2:00 every Sunday in the Old San Miguel. For the past six weeks we have been going to Los Pinos so we decided to do something a little different, and the kids LOVED it!
Saul as King

Antonio going down the river as Moses (w/ help from Papi Carlos)

Moses (Antonio)

Carlos helping Yoni get dressed

They have on average about 75 kids a week!

Valentines From Melbourne

Thank you to the Melbourne Church of Christ Childrens Worship for the Valentines! My children LOVED them and they have them hanging from their beds!

Marvin!

Fransico!

Mario!

Jovanni

All of them opening their cards!

Passing Out Shoes!

Margret Whaterah! (sorry I know I spelled your name wrong) Thank you so much for sending my those shoes. When we unloaded Gayle's container about three weeks ago, Carlos (the oldest boy living with us, age:18) asked me if he could take some of the shoes to families he knew in the Ka-Ko-EE (I have NO idea how to spell it) homes. These are homes that TORCH/IRC helped build right on the IRC property in Santa Ana. I was very pleased to see that he wanted to help. We gave away about 40 pairs of shoes there and plan to give the rest away at the dump in the near future!
My friend Janet organizing the shoes in my room

Us with the kids. (I am in my suit b/c we had a meeting earlier that morning)

Carlos with the family that is the poorest in the community

Carlos putting shoes on the little girl!

Report

God called me to Honduras years ago, I just didn't know what my purpose would be here. When I finally decided to move here in August of 2008, I knew that he had started to open doors for me here, I just didn't realize what they where. I thought that God had called me here to help the children that lived on the street, to help find resources for other organizations but really his a mediate goal was for me the serve these nine boys that I now call my own.
Currently Saul, Mario, Jovanni, Fransico and Marvin are all enrolled in Hamilton School where they attend kindergarten. They will be in kinder until they can speak enough English to proceed onto the correct grade level in the fall. About the third week of February Eduardo and Yoni will start in the public school system. They are too old and too far behind to catch up in bi-lingual school. We plan for Carlos to start back to school at that time as well but he will be taking night classes, hopefully so that he can work during the day :). Antonio is only three years old, however, I have been working with him on his English and math some! He is a very bright kid for being only three!
During my down time while the children are at school I am still able to serve the people of Honduras. Weekly I have been visiting the hospital with my friend Janet Garcia and Sam. We have been visiting families that we have grown close with in different villages and I have been able to use some of my nursing skills to treat some minor wounds and illnesses throughout the villages.
God is GREAT!

December

This month has flown by!!! I cannot believe that it has been almost a month since I last blogged! My appologies!
We started out this month with preparing for the Malone Trip, headed up by Ashley! From ordering wood, to purchasing dinner foods the first week went fast. The group came and built two houses, held prayer groups in the feeding center of Nevo Orental, visited the sick and lonely, fed and showed the people at the Tegucigalpa Landfill the love of Christ, even after a camera was stolen.
While the group was at the dump, a younger Honduran child asked for one of the American boys shirts. After some deliberation, they swapped shirts soon everyone was exchanging shirts. I felt like it was a great way to show the people of the Landfill, that we are NOT above them!
While the group was here, we had the five brothers (who where taken back from Casa De Esperanza) come and help us! They brought lots of fun and great smiles to the week! While they were with us, at various different times, they told us about their lives at home. The brothers informed us that their father was drinking more and more and that was getting more violent. They had told us in the past that there dad wasn't so kind, but know it had became clear that we needed to do something different.
After hours of prayer Jen, Sam and I decided it would be best to confront the situation when we brought them back after the group left. We met with Chilo (the boys father) and Maria (their mother) at Wendys. We didn't go into detail about what we knew, we just informed them that it was time to change the course of actions. We offered to send Chilo to an Alcoholic rehab center, and offered to take Maria and the boys in while he was there. He said that he wanted to some time to think about it and asked us to come up to their house on Christmas and re-discuss the issue.
On Christmas day we made our way up the mountain to visit their family! Sam had some money donated from her church for boys christmas, so we were able to buy them a few things! After opening presents and eating Nock-A-Tamailas (i know i spelled it all wrong!)we sat down to talk. Chilo informed us that he was still on probation and that he owed his boss about $100.00 (us). We informed him that we would handle getting the paper work from the Judge and paying off his boss. He told us that he needed a few more days to think about it and this time we brought God into the situation. We had brought our friends, David and Janet Garcia, they are full time missionaries here from Miami Florida. Janet asked Chilo if Christ was an influance in his life, he replied no. After some talking and prayer, Chilo accepted Christ into his life right then and there!
A couple of days later, after they had time to pack up their things we went and brought them home! Sadly Chilo decided to hace one last Hoo-Rahh and drank about $100.00 worth of alcohol in about a days time. We brought Maria and the boys home and Jen and I brought Chilo to the treatment center. The center is very nice and would meet every standard in the states. ITs very similar to the 12 step program designed by AA. He will be there for two months. They boys and Maria have to go and visit with a counsalor as well, so that will be good.
So as of now our house consists of Jen, Sam, David, Maria, Carlos, Edwardo, Saul, Johnny, Jovanni, Marvin, Mario, Fransico, Antonio!!! Its a lot of mouths to feed! I feel like i have started my own children's home and I love it!
Maria had asperations to start the Mi Esperanza program soon and once the father is out we hope to find job placement for him too.
As you can immagine having all these extra mouths to feed is costing way outside my projected budget! God says knock and the door shall be opened. Well the Lopez family knocked on our door and know I am knocking on yours! Fincaial support would be greatly appericated! We are all broke and living by faith. God keeps providing as the needs araise! I am learning to lean soley on him. Its really hard! Considering I have been working since I was 13.
I love you all and thank you!
David

Board Meeting Update | Prayer Request and more!!!

Since deciding to move to Honduras three months ago, my faith in the Lord has increased traumatically. God has shown me to rely solely on him, and showing me that he is faithful thru and thru. God has shown us as a group our mission and our purpose for being here, while also showing us our own personal missions. Below you will find a summary of our Board Meeting the other day and ways you can help! We plan on working with each other, to help achieve higher and more effective ways to serve the people of Honduras, while showing them the face of Christ.
Sam plans on working with the people in the dump more effectively. God has given her aspersions to help take the people out of that situation. In previous discussions Jen, Sam and I have talked about creating a community where people can come and live for a period of time. The people would be able to attend a Church, have three meals a day, children will be educated and more importantly the parents or adults living in the community will be taught a trade of some sort, that way they can go out and provide for their families. I say all that, to say, we feel as if God wants us to take small amounts of people, about ten families every eight to nine months and bring them into our “compound” and allow them the opportunity to better themselves and the future of their family, while serving and learning about the Lord we all serve.
God has placed hurting people in my heart. He has given me the heart to care for the sick, needy and abandoned. My plan is to create something like a store or supply center inside the state run hospital, Hospital Escuela. The poor and needy of Honduras travel for hours to come to this horrible hospital to receive the worst of the worst medical care. Please do not miss understand me, most of the doctors and nurses there are caring and loving, but the hospital itself does not have the means of supplying medications, surgical supplies or even just basic necessities a hospital should have such as IV tape. Within the supply center I want to be able to offer people all the necessary items that their family members would need for free or at a reduced low cost rate; from everything such as tape, to medications, to surgical supplies for the doctors. Along with helping people with material items, I believe that this is a great way to introduce people to Christ. We will offer spiritual guidance to families and information about churches in their area.
Jennifer plans on working with the kids at Casistis Kennedy. These kids are taken off of the streets and put here, before they are placed into a child’s home. God has placed the kids of Honduras on Jennifer’s heart, and she yearns to form relationships and bonds with the teenage girls at Casistis. God has also placed a community in Santa Ana on her heart. She has aspirations to dig wells that would supply clean drinking water to the community there. If these wells are successful, we will start implementing them in our TORCH homes that we build during the summers. They are very affordable, only costing about $50 total.
As a group we will be working with other organizations throughout Honduras, helping the street children. Currently, we are working on establishing a relationship with USAID and UNICEF to help in an effort to help the street kids of Honduras. The children of this country break all our hearts and we hope and pray that God opens more doors to help in better ways.God has blessed us with enough money to feed at the dump two times already, send some medical supplies to Hospital Escuela, donate 50 blankets to a clinic for street kids, work with other missionary families, join a church that preaches in English on Sunday evenings and learn the ropes about starting a new ministry. We have been able to help at a children’s home in a remote part of Honduras and serve in the mountain communities. God has allowed us to donate two computers to Cadena De Amor and we are anticipating on donating ten more to a local public school! God has shown us each our own personal missions as well as our mission(s) as a whole.
God is working in our ministry. He is opening doors left and right to serve the people here!!! Thank you for continuing to support me in serving the people of Honduras!
Currently our plans are costing more than expected. Also, our car stopped going in reverse. We need a new transmission and it is more costly than in the states. Since we know it will take months to get the parts in and things like that from the states, and our ministries are going to start exploding soon, we are in need of another car. For a decent reliable vehicle, we project that we would need somewhere between $5,000 and $7,000. We plan on purchasing a more cost effective vehicle; that will serve dual purposes. We have looked into purchasing a Toyota FJ Land Cruiser (an older model) for $5,000 from some friends here. Purchasing a Toyota or something similar would be best, so that we have the opportunity to have it fix faster and cheaper.
Please take the time to pray and ask God how you can help. We are praying that God opens doors within the next couple of weeks, because we need to take our Suburban into the shop before it gets worse and creates more problems.
Thank you for your prayers, support and love for the people of this country.

Good yet Sad Day

On Tuesday morning Sam Ashley and Mike got up early and prepared over 200 peanut butter sandwiches to hand out in the Landfill. We left our house at about 12:00 to head out to buy some bags of water then to the dump. We purchased over 210 bags of water, because that is all the stores along the way had. We arrived at the dump, and people surrounded our car. Men, Women, Children of all ages, faces dirty with God only knows what. Normally, when we visit the dump, there are a lot of people. Today for some reason, the amount of people seemed to had doubled or even tripled. There was a lot more women and children!
Please keep the people living and working in this area in your prayers. Sam, Jen and I have been working on a plan to get some of these people out of this environment and into a program that we wish to start. Pray that some doors start to open and that we will be able to effect people lives positively.