First Week of Class

We just finished our first week of classes. It was an incredible experience. We registered 49 news students all connected to the garbage dump. We were all surprised by the sudden interest in many of the new students. To think that these 49 new students will experience love unexplainable and hope of a new future is really exciting. We all believe 2009 will be a pivotal year for the garbage dump. We plan on starting the nursery this year along with a special education class. We will have a fulltime teacher who is helping the children with learning disabilities. We also started 9th grade this year. We have an English class which will help with speaking the language and a new literature class where we will be reading Honduras authors along with classics such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. We also started another year of our discipleship program called Impacto Total. This program was such a success last year as the students learned how to practically apply their faith to everyday life. The testimonies were so beautiful as many students spoke of incredible growth in different areas.

Along with the 49 miracles God gave us, he provided another miracle for AFE. Due to the increase in our students, we have had to hire new staff. The problem is we do not have any funds to hire new teachers. All of us were feeling the pressure and stress of not having any funds. I would wake up every morning at 5 am with the weight of the world on my chest. Where would we get about eight thousand dollars in such short notice? One of the students saw me worrying and asked what was wrong. I decided to use this opportunity to grow in faith. I told the student, “I am looking for some money but can’t find any. But let’s pray and God will provide for us.” We both prayed asking God to look out for us. That was Tuesday. On Thursday, I got an unexpected email from Mike Douris of Orphan Outreach which is a partner organization. He told me a group from Florida Baptist Children’s home was giving exactly $8000 towards operations! I was stunned. I know all the stories of George Mueller and William Carey praying and living by faith. But this might be the first time I experienced it. It has taken us a while, but I am realizing how much God cares for this ministry.

We have new prayer request so please don’t forget about us.

Graduation 08 - Slideshow

Please keep these students in your prayers.

Josue, Milton, Carlos, Paola

Selena, Jackson, Maholy, Gerson, Edwin, Douglas

Graduation 08

On December 5, 2008 we had a graduation at AFE. Four students finished kindergarten and are moving into first grade. Six students finished elementary school and are moving into middle school. It was the first graduation for AFE I had attended. I was moved by the students who have overcome so many crippling obstacles to reach this moment. Some of the graduates live in the worst conditions imaginable. Others are dealing with serious family problems and abuse. Others have been abandoned by their parents and are being raised by aunts and grandparents. Others have had to work every afternoon in the garbage dump afterschool to provide food for their family. Yet these students have graduated and there were many people congratulating them.

In Honduras, the graduation is dedicated to a person and named after them. The graduation is usually addressed to some who gave a large donation or passed away or did something special for the school. Our graduation was named after Jeki Suge Roca. She is actually a made up person. Instead she is the acronym of all the teachers we have on staff at AFE. This graduation was dedicated to our teachers because for many years they have done all the hard work at AFE. I feel honored to work next to these heroes. For many years they donated all their time to teach our students. They paid for all their material and transportation. This year, we have been able to give them an ‘offering’ for their work. They tremendously gifted and love all our students as if they were their own. These teachers serve as proof that God has the garbage dump in his plans because he assembled an all-star staff of teachers to love and teach these students.

Imparting the Love of Books

Books have always been a huge part of my life. They helped form my dreams for the future, made me excited to excel in school, and taught me important lessons about history, culture, and people.

Honduras has not had a history of passing on a love for reading to its children. Perhaps this is part of what affects the astronomical levels of illiteracy and lack of education.

One of the best parts of my last week was to see the 8th grade class of AFE devour Charlotte’s Web and develop a love for reading. They finished the book in less than two weeks and are begging for more. Although we have a library, we do not have sets of books for all the kids to read together. Thanks to a gift by Rebecca White, we have been able to purchase two complete sets of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.

The students began reading The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe today. Since we only have two copies, the teacher uses one to help the students read and one student reads the other copy aloud. Today, as they began The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, the room became eerily quiet. You could hear the kids breathing. Some have their eyes closed, imaging themselves in the world of Narnia. Others were trying to read over the student’s shoulder. It was a beautiful sight. When we stopped reading they pleaded for more and even offered to skip their break to hear more of the story.

One of our goals in transforming this garbage dump is to increase the level of literacy. The school is a perfect means of doing that among the kids. We hope the students’ enthusiasm for reading will spread among their parents and older siblings. We talk about several areas of literacy: reading, writing and computing. Soon we will open up our own computer lab and teach the students computer skills, giving them more job and educational opportunities.

If you have any suggestions as to what our students should read or where to look for sets of books (in Spanish), please let us know.

God is Already Moving

In less than a week, Project Transformation has made two incredible contacts that will help with the transformation of the garbage dump. First, we were able to go to a local university in Tegucigalpa and present the conditions of the dump to two classes. In response, these classes took a trip to the garbage dump to see for themselves the conditions in which these people live and work. This visit opened the ideas of the leaders of the university and now AFE is in the process of working out a partnership that will allow children from the dump to attend that university with scholarships!

We believe education is one of the key areas of impoverishment in the dump community. The lack of education means a lack of options in their lives. Most of the children at AFE could not imagine a life outside of the garbage dump until just recently. Now with the Metro University as a possibility, the options are radically different.

The next major contact is a non-profit called StreetKidsDirect, run by Duncan Dyason. Dyason travels to Guatemala and Honduras looking for projects making a difference in the lives of street kids or kids in extremely poor conditions. Then he returns to the UK to raise funds for these projects. He works hard so that 100% of the funds donated reach the specific project for which they were intended. Over dinner, we were able to explain some of our future dreams for the dump community and to hear his dream.

One of the projects Dyason works with is a potato farm in Guatemala where 10% of the profits go directly to support the operational cost of local projects. This is a way to make projects in poor areas self-sustainable. We will be working out the details with him so that AFE can apply to be one of the projects receiving the funds for operation. The possibility of this connection is awesome. Using a similar model, we could invest in some local farms that could eventually help fund this project.

Please keep both of these connections is prayer as we still have a long way to go.

So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up – Gal 6:9