It started
on our first mission trip to Honduras in 2002 to support our missionary
Teresa Devlin. During that trip, a young girl, no older than 6 wandered
into our camp with two little brothers that had been abandoned by her
parents. It was hard for me to imagine a six year old taking care of
two younger brothers. Teresa confirmed that there were many homeless
children in Honduras.
This
experience inspired a dream to establish an orphanage for children like
this. But I must admit my motives were not just to provide for orphans
but also provide a ministry opportunity for mission teams coming from the
United States. The travel to Honduras was easy and the cost was
reasonable.
 |
| The beautiful property for the orphanage |
As I suggested the idea to our missionary there,
Teresa seemed to act as if it were a plan straight from heaven. She
began to look for property where we could have an orphanage. Two years after we began to talk about the orphanage Teresa found a piece of
property about 10 miles outside of the city of La Ceiba where she had
her music conservatory and about a mile off the main highway. This
beautiful piece of property, about 50 acres, butted up against the Pico
Bonito National Park. It had water and access to electricity. There
were few trees and seemed like a perfect place for an orphanage. And
the price was right, just $16,000 which we had raised. Not bad for 50
acres.
When we went to make an offer, suddenly the price
went up to $26,000. This was out of our budget and right after Teresa
informed me of the price increase, I wrote in my journal that I guess
God didn't have plans for that orphanage after all. Two days after I
wrote those words, Teresa called and said she had met an American
businessman, Charles Button who was interested in helping us. She had
taken him to the property and he loved the idea of an orphanage and the
land and offered to pay the balance. I was a bit skeptical because she
sometimes hears what she wants to hear, so I asked if I could talk to
this Mr. Button. She said sure, his office is across the street from my
house and in a few minutes Mr. Button confirmed that he was
serious. We now had our land. God apparently did want this orphanage
built after all!
Over the next few years we have raised money
for buildings and the process of completing the Living Water Children's
home has been slow and steady. We are close to completing the last
building before the children arrive. God has seemed to step in every
time we began to get discouraged and brought just the right people or
resources to help us along the way.
One such occurrence was
just as we were about to begin the construction of our first cottage. I
was preparing our Grace Point spring mission trip to Honduras and
recruiting our team members. I had asked one of our members, Michelle
Brand if she would consider going. She told me she would pray about
it. A couple of months later she confessed that she had other ideas for
spring break and asked her middle sister if they could do something
together, go to the beach or other vacation spot. Her sister replied,
"doesn't your church do a spring mission trip? That would be fun to do
together." Soon they had recruited their father, Othal Brand,
Michelle's Aunt, her younger sister and one brother to go. Her youngest
sister was in high school and her brother had just returned from Iraq.
Othal, a businessman from McAllen recruited two of his employees to come
along.
I did not know any of her family members but we needed
them to fill out our team. And I was soon to learn that this family
was not just your ordinary group, God had prepared ahead for them to be
there.
Othal, I learned on the way to Honduras, actually lived
in Honduras and had a fruit and vegetable business, exporting to the
U.S. When I told him that he needed to meet the Living Water Children's
Home board president, Rene Lafitte, he smiled and said, "I know
Rene. I think he purchased some of my land when I moved back to the
states!" My jaw dropped. What are the chances that this could
happen? What was God up to?
 | ||
| Living Water Children's Ranch |
Our biggest dilemma at this time
was a serious erosion problem with the orphanage land. A river that
bordered the north part of our land was quickly eroding the land and we
needed to find a solution quickly. Othal was working on this project
for us but he realized the scope of the problem was bigger than we could
handle and we needed some heavy equipment to solve it. Othal's sister
was wondering what her purpose was to be on the trip and so decided she
would do her part by writing Standard Fruit Company a letter requesting
their help. She said they had worked with Standard when they had their
business in Honduras and perhaps they would help us. I thought it was a
very long shot but it didn't hurt to ask.
Much to my
surprise we received an answer in two days. "Come on out to the plant
and we will see what we can do". So three of us went to the plant where
we were met by a manager of Standard, Jorge Williams. He said, "jump
in my truck and let's go see the land." It was only a few miles away
but on the way to the land, Mr. Williams shared his story with us. He
said he had discovered several years ago that he was HIV positive. Not
long after that he gave his life to Christ, became a pastor and started a
church under a tree. Along the way God cured him of the disease and
now his church was thriving. It was an amazing story and an even more
amazing turn of events.
 |
| baptized in this waterfall |
When we got to the property, Jorge
was moved by the vision of an orphanage and told us he wanted to help us
and could even envision preaching some day at the orphanage. He
gathered us together and prayed for the land and the problem and the
eventual children that would grow up there. Wow! Tears were flowing
down my cheek as he prayed. Never could I imagine that God would take
such care of the details to work to bring us this man.
When
we arrived back at our camp, everyone was asking, "how did it go?" All I
could think of was Ephesians 3:20, that "God will do exceedingly more
than we can ask for or even imagine."
Standard Fruit helped stop the erosion and Jorge has become a ministry friend and partner. And
one
of the workers that Othal brought along accepted Christ and I had the
opportunity to baptize him in a waterfall not far from the orphanage!
During
this process God continues to do exceedingly more that we could imagine
and in the most incredible, unpredictable, miraculous ways. It really
confirms that He wants this orphanage and his heart is for the
children!
No comments:
Post a Comment