Accepting an Invitation

Last Weekend, 20 people accepted God's invitation. I was privileged to be part of the beautiful ceremony where these individuals made a public decalartion of their love for God.

I have been part of some amazing church movements in the past including Washington Cathedral and Gainesville Outreach. Here in Honduras, it is different. I cant quite put a finger on the difference or even articulate it. It is just different. God is definitely doing something and I am glad to be a part of it at AFE and our church here, Amor y Vida.

About a month ago, I spoke at our church about baptism. In a nutshell, I explained that baptism was our accepting God’s invitation in a public forum. At our first baptism, we had over 20 individuals accept. We have already scheduled our next baptism. We started last year with 3 house churches in our community. We have since doubled and now have six throughout the community. And this weekend, we will launch our first house church across the street from the garbage dump. We are so excited because this has been our goal from the start – sharing God’s good news with those in desperate poverty.

Please pray as God continues to amaze us.

The Miracle of Pollito

If anyone were a poster child for project transformation, it would be Pollito. You might recognize him from his picture – four and a half feet of dusty clothes worn too big, and a grimy smile that spreads from ear to ear. I had heard much about him before I first saw him. He is well known among the garbage sorters as the little boy raised in the trash. His mom is a drug addict and he has been in the garbage every day without fail since he was one year old. Now that he is eight, there has never been a harder worker. The older guys call him “Pollito,” which means “little chicken,” because they think of him as sort of a pet. You can see he takes pride in being allowed to hang around them. I suspect no one gives him attention “at home” – wherever that is.

How long, little Pollito, will you grow up in garbage? Will you ever learn to play instead of lift heavy bags twice your size? For seven years, since AFE began, Pollito has been the subject of our hopes and prayers. Every time we encounter him, he promises to come to school the next day. But for seven years, the next day found him in the trash once more. Until last week.
On Monday, and mouths dropped open when Pollito and his little sister walked through AFE’s doors, clean and ready to learn. They were not alone. Their mother, sober for the first time, brought them and enrolled them in classes immediately. Since that day, Pollito and his sister have not missed one class, have arrived promptly every day, and even came to church on Sunday! There is no other explanation than God’s timing, and we can do nothing but thank God for this miracle.

We thank God…but we still fervently pray for Pollito and his family. While he and his sister are enrolled in AFE and showing good intentions to change, it is still an uphill battle to rescue them from the forces that keep generations in the dump. In fact, Pollito has a particular challenge in education since he has never learned the motor skills to even hold a pencil. He is receiving special tutoring for this, but please continue to keep their family in your prayers. We will keep you updated as to Pollito’s progress!

New Church Building

On Saturday October 25, Amor y Vida inaugurated our new church building. We have officially moved out of the community center and into our own building. We had a huge celebration with many special guests and the whole church. We have so many people to thank including Orphan Outreach, ACEMH, and Washington Cathedral who have been involved in various ways.

The construction team that funded most of the building is from Heritage Family Church located in Fort Worth, Texas. They do not have their own building yet but meet in a school. They were in the middle of a building campaign for their own church when the pastor visited our project in Honduras. On his return to the church, he announced that they would begin construction on a new building. The church began applauding thinking that the building was for them. Yet the pastor told them the new building was going to be about 2500 miles south. He explained our project and vision and the church was in agreement to build our church first. It was a tremendous sacrifice and one we do not take lightly.

Spiritual formation is at the center of the transformation process. We believe that unless God is in the center of the process, it will inevitable fail. Our church is fusing two different communities together. It has not been easy but God has worked miracles which are evident on the first visit to our church. We serve families connected to the garbage dump which most of society has ostracized. But God is doing a work in their lives that is impacting the whole garbage dump community. We have started ‘small´ groups in three different locations but they have all grown to over 50. The new building was a definite need as we were standing room only in our old location.

Please pray for our church, our pastors, leaders, and members.

Spiritual Formation

We strongly believe that at the core of all our students is a spiritual being. Unless they are connected intimately with Jesus, discovering His love and purpose for their lives, no other transformation is enough. They will be restless until they find rest in Him.

“None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it.”
Richard Chenevix Trench

By no means are we minimizing or not making social justice a priority. We are simply stating that social justice without Jesus is not enough. We know it is hard for a starving child to hear “Jesus loves you” so we feed and with both our action and our words we declare, “Jesus loves you.” We apply this principle to all the areas of their lives where there is disintegration and devastation.

In order to develop followers of Jesus among the people in the garbage dump, we are initiating a new strategy the first week of October for all the students 12 and up. In conjunction with Amor y Vida, we are beginning a ‘church plant’ at AFE with this age group. We have a 3 pronged approach

1 – Weekly meetings where we discuss any of the topics the students deem relevant to their lives. We want to teach our kids how to be a Christian in the everyday life including dating, working, family life, friends, pop culture, etc.

2 – We are dividing up are kids into small accountability groups called ISI – Iron Sharpens Iron. These groups will be following the structure of Life Transformation Groups where the group meets weekly and discuss a series of accountability questions whose goal is to develop deep disciples.

3 – Finally, we have assigned a mentor over all the students whose responsibility will be to have bi-monthly one on ones. These meeting will serve to simply listen to the student about their lives, problems, weaknesses, strengths, dreams, and ambitions. Anything is free game. Our jobs will be to help the students see Jesus in their own lives.

We are beyond excited about our strategy for the spiritual formation of our students. We don’t doubt these are the future leaders of Honduras who will start their own projects, churches, and businesses that will shine a light of God’s love in Honduras. We are also painfully aware of our inadequacy to attempt this great endeavor. We are utterly dependant on God. Please pray that God might be glorified through this new step.