His Eyes

It has been a long time coming, with lots of talking, praying, planning, patience and work, and in September the second Milk Project location began!  Sampedrana seemed a natural choice for the first expansion, although logistically it is the hardest of the Churches to do this in, but in most ways it is also the most in need for such a project.  

We are starting with 25 children, most of whom range from just starting school to third grade.  After talking with the Church, they decided to include 13 children that are from the community but not the Church, with 12 coming from families that attend there.  This is purposefully trying to see the project as a way to reach more in the areas we serve for Christ, and was great to see them see this so much as to purposefully request more than half be from the community, as this is something that many wish they could be involved.  We started out with 50 profiles to get to the 25 we are starting with, for example.  

This all took got started over a month after I left for the US, it has been great to see Oscar and Maria take the plans and run with them, including at least a visit per month for several months together to make sure the new staff (a director, cook and volunteer teacher) are gelling and doing well overall.  

Getting vegetables and such for cooking is not nearly as easy as in Tegucigalpa, and since there is no electricity, we are currently staying away from adding items that require refrigeration, but as they continue to work on bringing electricity to the community, a refrigerator/freezer and new menu options will come likely soon.  

Maria will be keeping in touch as well about lesson plans, how the teaching is going, and how we can eventually expand in terms of homework help and the like, similar to what is done in Tegucigalpa.  As we collectively get a feel for what it is like doing this in a different community, there will likely be many things to talk about and tweak.  

For the meantime, be praying for this new location.  It is a concept we know, but in a location and situation that we have not done before, so how to tie this directly into the Church and more directly involve the Church leadership will be a learning process for everyone.  

As well praying for Oscar and Maria for overseeing this in the opening months and helping with purchasing food and supplies as they get everything set up and working smoothly.  

And be praying for these children, this Church body, and this community, that this would be a physical and spiritual blessing that helps long term in more ways than we can currently see to reflect and glorify Christ!  






​

​

Sometimes I am really proud of those that work in the mission.  Ok...most of the time I am.  But, case in point, during the celebration last month for Children's Day, there was one child from the Milk Project that could not be there, one of our newest children, Luis.  He had surgery and won't be up walking for some time.  So some of the volunteers and children just decided to take the party to him.  

This is the kind of creative and loving thinking we love to see.

We are also going to be working on some creative thinking going forward in the project in general.  We are seeing that as the children age, and we want to help them try to get through high school, that there are other factors other than financial ability that can hold them back, including family pressure to drop out and start working full time as early as 13 or 14.  

There are some things we cannot control, but we are trying to look ahead and in different areas/ways, to see how we can continue to improve and show Christ's love to the kids and their families.  Pray for our volunteers and staff as they daily do this work, and for them and the mission leadership as we continue to strive to see how we can improve this already great program into the future.  

More to come soon about the beginning of the Milk Project in Sampedrana!  

Not a spoiler alert:  We screw up sometimes.  Depending on who you talk to, maybe often.  But whether we think everything is hunky dory or struggling, an important step wherever you are in life is to keep evaluating, looking, and trying to do whatever it is better.

We have done a variety of types and styles of evangelistic outreach in the clinic over the years, and the Church right next door has been doing devotionals in the morning for quite some time.  But it was Doctor Darwin who had the idea of hiring Elmer who has worked closely with the Church for many years, for the mornings to not only help continue the devotions, but stick around to invite people to individual prayer, take prayer requests, invite to Bible studies, and even be available to go into the community to hand out more materials about the clinic.  All with the goal of strengthening the spiritual outreach of the clinic, and hopefully producing new followers of Christ, whether far away or hopefully right next door.  

Lurvin Ramirez is seen in the photo to the right, she lives in the neighborhood next to the clinic up the road.  She came to the clinic to get her son looked at in general medicine, and through Elmer being available and talking with her, she is now going to Church...right next door!  She was not a member of any Church prior.  

Not every new initiative works.  Sometimes they can fail or produce disappointing results.  In work like ours, sometimes concrete "good" is seen right away.  But in creating disciples for Christ, a deep long term vision is required, and that can be hard.  We are praying for the physical work of the clinic, but also for the spiritual impact that comes from it.  Sometimes we get to see glimpses of what God is doing there, often times seeds are planted that others hopefully water, but that growth we do not get to see.  

May God help us all to be faithful to the charge that He gives us all, making more disciples for Him!  
​ 

Luis just started at the Milk Project about a month or so ago.  He is quite small for his age, 11, and is special because he needs crutches to get around.  When I was playing soccer last month with the kids, he was right in there playing as well.  Nothing seems to slow him down, and although I don't know him personally well yet, every time I see him he is smiling.  

His aunt takes care of him.  We are not sure on his full history, but apparently his mother was/is special physically as well.  That is his aunt there in the picture with him.

Please pray for Luis, he had another surgery today on his legs, and is recuperating in the hospital.  Maria was able to help his aunt with some diapers for this time in the hospital that the doctors said he will need for a time.

It would be fair to say that Luis as well as many of the children in the Milk Project face lives with many an adversity, a word that has it origins in Latin for "opposition."

There are things in this world that are opposed to our success, to our well being, to our very existence.  

Our lives are often defined by how we handle opposition.  It is certainly what is most observed by those around us.

Our lives are also defined by how we respond not only to the opposition we face, but how we react to the opposition in the lives of those around us.  

Pray for Luis's recovery from surgery.  Pray for the children of the Milk Project for God's strength and encouragement to face and overcome the opposition in their lives.  Pray for the mission how we can come alongside them to help them in that goal.  And pray for all of us, including you, as individuals to help these kids, and help other people in our lives, wherever we happen to be, to climb the hills of adversity in their lives in Christ Jesus.     
​  

​

I have been meaning to take the time to blog for some time.  To share some deeper and more involved updates on many of things happening around us and in us, but man, time just gets away from me for other obligations, and sometimes those obligations include actively trying to not do anything.  

I'll admit that I have some issues with the large grouping of music labeled Jazz.  Not all of it, but sometimes, in not a judgy, or "I'm better than that" way, it just did not impress me.  Again, not all of it as a whole, but some...sometimes it just felt a little too thrown together, like anyone could just sit down and do it.  

Listening to excerpts from this album (link below)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/well-i-should-have/1049424846 
(from voice actor H. Jon Benjamin, whom I knew best from "Bob's Burgers") who does not know how to play piano, yet still records a jazz album, I found rather interesting and just made me think.

Not to get too much into my train of thoughts and its dirt road, but if I think about life a little bit too much, it all does seem a little jazz-like.  Take that for what you will, I could expound on it...but I fear it would become some kind of small book.

As you might be aware, mission life around these parts has several foci, playing different solos and then also playing together.  

Lately though a new instrument of the road/entrance/gate construction has been taking center stage as we try to get everything ready for when the road officially re-opens all nice, neat, and white concrete.  As I have mentioned, this was not something we anticipated being part of the budget to start the year, since we didn't know the main road was to be paved.  Although, it is a pleasant surprise to be sure, it is a costly one.  We have not received much directed financial help for leveling the entrance, and have had to cut back from other mission efforts to pull it off.  

Fear not, I will include a link below of course if you want to help the mission.  As it stands, this year is proving to be a tough one in some big ways.  General donations are down quite a bit.  We have had fewer groups and group members.  Our upcoming trip to the US  to visit supporters and make new connections seems to be timely indeed.  

The rest of the work on the entrance project should be done in the next week or two, as we finally have a welder on site to tackle quite a few projects that have needed done, and raising the gate is a big one.  (Note to self...start a welding school somehow in the future, as welders seem to be in quite short supply whenever we try to find one.)  

Another big part of the picture above is the mission house remodel.  We have had some big help to get to where that is this year, pretty big strides.  Unfortunately the remodel will go silent for a while.  We had to let Rolando go from full time employment at the end of June due to lack of funding.  If enough donations come together, we might be able to throw him some more work on a job by job basis maybe in a month or two.  We still need to finish off the enclosure and windows, and then focus on walls and wiring on the new first floor.  Hopefully we can get back on that to some extent still this year.  

We completed our first big export of green Hill Climber coffee to a supporting Church in Florida.  How that will play out  to help there as well as to improve our operations side of things here God will reveal in His timing.  The idea is that we will use the money from selling the coffee in Florida to help build/fix/make better systems for harvesting and drying the coffee in Honduras to make its quality that much better.  

The Milk Project in Sampedrana is closer to getting started. We have identified the 25 children to get started (12 from the Church, 13 from the community) and the building is mostly ready to go.  Working on details for the day to day operations and the people that will oversee and implement everything is the missing key right now, and that takes prayer, planning, and discussion.  This takes more time than I would like personally, but it is not something we want to take lightly, as these are big first steps for the future of the viability of the project.   

We still need to figure out how to improve the road to the coffee farm in Sampedrana. And finish the caretaker/harvester house that needs to be built. The work on the clinic entrance and then the start of the rainy season makes it more problematic.  

Thanks to the group from Swiss Cove Christian Church and the Ohlsen family, we did our first group activity in Las Botijas in June, an eye brigade.  We saw just over 50 patients, which for a first event at the Church, which is not exactly downtown like in Sampedrana, this was a pretty good turnout, and very, very few of those patients had ever previously had an eye exam.  

Preparations for our US trip are mostly mental at this point...dates, some wrap up activities, and making sure we are ready to move everything to one of the containers on the property.  We think we are ready...well, as ready as we can be.  Truth be told, it is a scary business full of unknown and possibility for disappointments and failures.  Kind of like Jazz.  But I digress yet again.

I could go on about good things and hard things.....the new ultrasound use in the clinic, the new OBGYN, the new evangelism position for the clinic, the new Ford, work by the Church in San Juancito on their failing roof, the wall progress in Cantaranas, the struggling Church plant in Danli, the green pepper farming in Cantarranas, our special 76th child in the Milk Project in Tegucigalpa, and some of the recent deaths and health issues being dealt with around the mission family.  

I am not one for making grandiose statements, but as I write this, I feel like we are at a sort of key point for the mission...a financial one for sure, and one for many potential good, or challenging, dominos to come (such as some of the those listed above), and several more not yet mentioned but possibilities still in more of silent prayer and thought.  

Your prayers for our ability to be effective for God's work here while in the US would be most appreciated, as well as contacting us if you have any ideas for potential groups that could come, Churches with whom we could meet, or individuals that might want to help the work here.  We want to do our best, but ultimately we can only do that with help to make connections

You as well can always help, with a check sent to the address below or a PayPal donation made via the link below.  

His Eyes
9903 Indian Lake Blvd
Indianapolis IN  46236

PayPal

The Milk Project continues to look for ways to engage the kids and teach them.  The core is Christ, but how that is done on a daily basis can be done in a wide variety of ways.  

Including, taking care of our environment.  And specifically, the environment right around us.  Not just busy work, and not just free labor, but Maria decided to talk to the kids about litter and helping clean up our neighborhood, starting with the clinic property.  

I would be remiss if I did not include that Maria does this in our neighborhood as well as she lives very close, and with the road construction even fewer people are keeping up on keeping things clean, and she has been collecting and taking trash to the appropriate drop off location  for a while now.  
​
These kinds of ideas and opportunities are great because they are about changing our country through changing our neighborhood.  

Same with the continuing sewing ministry.  Sewing is a life long skill, but also just good to develop some confidence and learn new things.  Not to mention that you can then make all sorts of cool stuff.  

Pretty soon we will need to get some new materials for them to use as their skills grow, a good problem to have.

The new machine you see here is part of several that were purchased via a special donation made just for that purpose.  




And there is time for fun as well.  This special day was a time to dress up, do some runway modeling (including dresses as well as sports figures among the different girls that participated)

Celebrating holidays, birthdays, and the like are great fun, because they do not all get celebrated all the time in their homes.  

This year as well everyone has been working towards a special project of making piñatas for all the mission Churches for children's day (which is in September) which means in total they will try to make almost 20 piñatas.  This is great for teamwork, creativity, and saving some money being a side benefit for all told.  





Here are a few of the newly added children to the Milk Project, after a very successful drive at Outlook Christian Church, we are at 75 children total!  That puts all of the children we had on the waiting list, no longer waiting!  

With Sampedrana coming online soon, we will probably keep it at 75 until we get all those new children sponsored.  

We are all learning, and praying God continue to guide us! 


​ 

​

We had a medical team this past month of May, from Bring Good News.  Many of you know that for a few years now, we have been changing the format we use for such groups, and trying to use them more effectively...just better, in a way that makes the most long lasting impact for Christ, both physically and spiritually.  We don't claim to have nailed that yet, but each time we make a tweak, it seems to go well, in different ways, and just leads us to discuss more ideas and ways on how to use these to help the Church, evangelize, and as well provide long lasting physical impact for the families and the community.  

This particular trip was also unique because of the partnership with BGN, and some of the resources they brought to the table.  We were able to take Valerie with us every day to do optometry exams and have readers with us, do ultrasound exams with the new portable unit, and our dentists organized several students to do different dental work.  

​One of the biggest things to juggle is how to balance spiritual outreach, imparting teaching information useful for education/prevention with seeing as many people as we can mostly in areas where the need outweighs what we can do one day a year (for those curious, we saw just under 200 patients average for each day between all the areas.)  All this while not requiring six hours attendance for everyone that comes. We want this to be something that is seen as a value for anyone that comes as well, not something just where we think we are doing it a better way.  

BGN also brought funds to do a leadership/pastoral training seminar for one day.  It was expensive, but we were able to gather 50 people from at least six different Churches.  We look forward to more opportunities to do these kind of events in the future as well, they are so helpful in impacting so many that in turn impact many more.  

How do we use resources, teams, seminars...all questions we continue to wrestle with, in a good way.