MAY DAY

One week from now we are going to flip the pages of the calendar to MAY 1.
Now, you may be wondering "what's the big deal, that day comes along every year?"
If that is your thought, you may need to look back at your TORCH deadlines. If you do, you will discover that your airfare is due on May 1.
If you are thinking, " What's the big deal, Marc has always taken care of me before? A few days (weeks) won't make any difference." If these are your thoughts - THINK AGAIN!

Our group is big and we owe American Airlines a lot of money. READ CAREFULLY- If you are late paying your airfare, you will lose your reservation. That means that the cost of a ticket will be at the new HIGHER price. There is no guarentee that you will even be able to get a ticket.
If you cannot pay the airfare in full by May 1, you must notify me by phone or email. I will need to know when the airfare will be paid. Even then, I can't promise that I will be able to keep your ticket.
Thanks for your help.

More Plans

Today you can start the 100 day count-down. I have just returned from a great 5 days of planning in Honduras and I’d like to share some of the specifics.

Work Locations –

Los Pinos is a community that is familiar to many of us. We have worked there for the past couple of years and we will have an opportunity to visit there however, our major project work will take place in several new areas. There is a team of Baxter students working in Los Pinos that is doing a wonderful work and we will have an opportunity to meet them and hear about their work.

La Paz is about 2 hours outside of Tegucigalpa and we are planning to send a team of 30 to 40 on a “TORCH Road Trip”. This team will be working on a church building project. The church in La Paz has been building a new facility for several years and we are going to help them “Get ‘er done”. We will complete the floor, the roof, and build a simple classroom on the back of the building. When we leave, they will be able to begin meeting in their new building. We also plan to help the church with evangelism and a food distribution. The team will be out for one or two nights.

Santa Anna is a beautiful community about 18 miles outside of Tegucigalpa. Last week TORCH, Mi Esperanza, and the IRC was blessed with a beautiful piece of property that will be the center piece of many ministries in Honduras. Our team will be building a new church building for a group of Christians that is currently meeting in a park. Our evangelistic teams will be working in both Santa Anna and another close-by community called Ojojona. We will be building houses, distributing food, working with kids, and providing health care through medical and dental clinics.

There is a house on the property that will be converted into a medical clinic. By the end of the summer we will have build about 20 block houses on our property. In the next year we will build a children’s home for about 20 kids and we will be well on the way to constructing a training center for Mi Esperanza. God is good…….all the time.

Nuevo Oriental is one of the poorest communities that I have ever seen. There are currently about 200 families living there in houses that are made with anything that they could find. If you have been to Honduras, you know that building materials are in short supply – especially scraps. We will be building houses and feeding people in Nuevo Oriental. The community needs Jesus because He is hope. We will be sharing Jesus by our work and our words. We will have more plans for this community.

Of course we will have many more ministry opportunities than ever. We are planning to work with some very special kids that live in a great children’s home that is managed by a guy named Jimmy Hughes. These kids are all victims of terrible things like having seen their parents murdered or rape or any number of events that can cause mental trauma. We are going to be blessed by working with these kids.

I’ll be sharing even more work plans over the next few weeks. Please keep on watching for more news.

We are going to have great days in Honduras

Marc

Work In Honduras

I am in Honduras this weekend looking at where we will be working and planning our ministries. Being in Honduras has given me mixed emotions. I am very happy to be with my friends Tim & Gena & Joe. Then, when we are out in the communities surveying the potential work - the needs seem so overwhelming. There are so very many hungry people, so many stories of need, 1000's of people that need shelter. Where can we start? If you have never been here, you will see.
We all need to remember the "starfish story"
Remember......the morning after a great storm there were millions of starfish washed up on the beach. One lone young boy saw the peril of the starfish and began to pick them up - one at a time and throw them back into the sea. An old man happened upon this sceen and asked the boy what he ws doing. The boy said that he was saving the starfish. The old man said that there were so many starfish on the beach that he couldn't make a difference. The boy looked at the starfish in his hand and then back at the old man and said, "it makes a difference to this one!"
We can't possibly help everyone here with their needs but, we will definately make a difference.
Yesterday we went into one of the poorest areas that I have ever seen and passed out food bags to about 60 families. The village is called - Nuevo Oriental and we will be building houses and working there this summer.
One new ministry that we will work in this summer will involve sending a few brave missionaries to the city dump. Some of the poorest of the poor in Honduras survive by going through the loads of waste that are delivered all day. They are looking for something to eat and we are going to go there and distribute food to them.
"whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine....."
Stay tuned to the blog for more plans. You are going to be a part of something that will change your life.
As always,
Looking forward to great days in Honduras.........