Jim and Tom Moller worked in the school, teaching classes, befriending children and sharing the love of Christ with enthusiasm. Jim got involved in a soccer match with some girls. One of them picked up the ball and they started tackling each other and throwing the ball hand to hand. A memory etched in my mind is of Jim Kerber playing rugby with a horde of school girls in the tropical sun of Kenya. He came home with a hand bruised and swollen from the game, but a face split into a grin as big and sunny as the Sahara. One afternoon Jim and Randy walked to some public schools nearby. They were greeted with enthusiasm. They were shown into the office of the principal, and on the wall, next to a picture of the President of Kenya, was a picture of Jim Kerber!

The 3 nurses on our team were the "All Stars" and "MVP"s of the trip. Pam Voss, Jill Moller and Alan Bovey (not from GTCC) teamed up with 3 Kenyan nurses, and under the capable leadership of Samuel Kendagor and his RN wife Margaret, visited rural clinics under primitive conditions. Primitive, as in a 6 hour bone-jarring ride that shook every cell down to its neutrino, a house with no plumbing, clinics under the trees and long drop toilets. Hundreds of people showed up and Kevin Voss and Randy Moore did effective crowd control and relationship building. Some folks were in need of the comforting sound of a human voice and the touch of hands filled with Christ's love. Others had truly complex medical situations that required far more than even a fully equipped hospital could provide (It was gut wrenching to the extent that I was totally unable to participate in the medical mission). The heart and soul wrenching aspects linger and the issues of poverty exercise the mind to the point of exhaustion. Ultimately, the only answer lies in reflecting that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we in wee measure follow that pattern. Faith grasps this truth, and then the wonder of the Word, who did not cling to his rights or privileges, comes home with breath taking awe.

Randy Moore was pleased to find some of the micro-business enterprises, which had been started on a previous trip, starting to employ others and pay back their loans.

My role was to teach in the Bible School. There were 6 Pastoral candidates, and 15 other students consisting of veteran Pastors, wives and folk hungering for the Word. These 6 hours of daily teaching were made more intense because the normal student/teacher interaction was hampered by language and culture. The first day I saw huge eye-whites staring implacably at me and it was impossible to get a read on what was being grasped. On the second day the group relaxed and we were able to take questions. By the third day the flow turned to a pleasing chatter as they relaxed into the situation and warmed to the stranger from afar who came to walk a mile with them.

One student walks 25 kilometers (19 miles) every Saturday. He ministers and preaches on Sunday, and then walks back again. I asked how many were in the congregation. He said 10 people.

I am not worthy of tying his shoe laces.

Short term mission trips like these are questioned in some quarters. Their value cannot be audited in mere worldly standards. At Kabenguria there is now an orphanage, a school, a Bible College, a well producing clean water, a clinic with outposts and soon a dormitory for another 100 children, as well as the start of some micro business enterprises. It is a place of refuge where abused women, refugees from violence and orphaned children now call home. That was the vision of the leaders of the Church.  GTCC came alongside to be encouragers and provide the resources.

But the greatest return on investment lies in the changes that God makes in those who go. To experience the generosity of poor people alters the wiring of the brain in a way that sending money is completely unable to do. We were offered something more precious than all the gold in South Africa's rich mines, all the diamonds in the Congo's enormous territory and all the oil in Libya's vast reserves: they gave us their sincere friendship demonstrated in simple but generous hospitality.

In the grip of His love,

Anton Hoffmann

My favorite thing about this trip is how quickly God dismantled one of my reservations and turned it into one of my biggest blessings!  When I saw the age range of the participants going on this trip, my first thoughts were ... huh, what, and how? I knew what skill set I was bringing to the trip, however, when I saw such a large group of people I wondered what my purpose would be if someone else on this trip could hang a picture on almost the first try.

What I learned was, I can paint and trim boards and so can a first grader; I can roof a house right alongside a senior citizen. I learned that in Christ, we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others. Together, the men, women and children worked as one strong body to accomplish the tasks God had set before us in a way I could have never understood until I experienced it.  By the end of the weekend, I walked away knowing there were two incredibly deserving families with brand new homes. I came home with great new friends, and I came home knowing the answer to the construction question, "what comes before part B."  I hope to see you next year!

Don't miss the Homes of Hope Golf Tournament October 5, 2009. All proceeds will go toward our 2010 Homes of Hope Mission Trip to Tijuana, Mexico where we will continue to build homes for families in need.  Think about joining us in 2010.  It is an experience you will not soon forget.

For more information or to sign up for the Golf Tournament or the 2010 trip, please contact Peggy Streb, peggystreb@global.net.

Above: Cesar meets Brian Wiggs during the Micah Project graduation ceremony in November 2008.

To read this post in printable form, click here: www.micahcentral.org/blogs/feb09cesarblog.doc

It’s a question that haunts my dreams every time I hear it: But what about us? It’s what the older street kids ask us every time our street outreach team spends time with them in the market district of Tegucigalpa. “Michael, when are you going to start a program to help us?” It’s a hard question to get asked because for so many years, the Micah Project hasn’t had an answer. In fact, in Honduras, there are few answers to this question for older street teens.

If you are a young Honduran child that needs a place to live, there are many wonderful organizations and orphanages that can take you in. If you are a young teen, between the ages of twelve and fourteen, the Micah Project can take you into our group home and help you begin a new life. But if you are an older teen who is still on the streets, your chances to get help dwindle to zero. What are your options if you are a seventeen or eighteen year old glue-addicted youth who has spent most of your life running the streets? Most often, your options are long stints in jail, a life sentence on the streets, or an early death.

Cesar is one such street boy. At eighteen, he spends most days hanging out with a group of street kids in the sprawling and raucous outdoor marketplace in Tegucigalpa. He has some contact with his mom, who lives in a run-down shack not far from the market, but conditions there are so bad that Cesar’s younger siblings were taken away from her and placed in an orphanage. Cesar was already too old by that time, though, and his only option to make it through the day-to-day struggle of survival was to hit the streets. Like most street kids though, in addition to scavenging for daily scraps of food and making a few meager cents shining shoes, Cesar also learned how to forget about his plight through the fumes of addictive yellow glue.

That’s the situation in which we found Cesar when our street team met him in 2007. A nice kid, a kid with obvious natural intelligence and people skills—but a kid with absolutely no options. Since we have known Cesar, we have taken four of his fellow street kids into the Micah House: Wilmer, Marvincito, Axel and Hector. Each of them had the fortune of connecting with our street team at the age of twelve or thirteen. Besides taking Cesar on the occasional Saturday outing to a park with the Micah boys, though, there was little else that we could do for him.

Until now, that is.

In 2009, the Micah Project is planning to launch the next phase of our ministry, the Micah Project Technical School. This program will offer complete training in automotive mechanics and carpentry to kids like Cesar, good kids who are too old to receive services from other programs, but kids that deserve a shot at a new life. It is a chance for Cesar to learn skills that will help him leave the streets behind forever.

The Micah Project technical school has been a growing vision in the hearts of Brian and Natasha Wiggs for almost two years. The Wiggs are currently missionaries in Portland, Oregon with Bridgetown ministries, a frontline ministry focused on empowering churches to develop personal relationships with the homeless community. Additionally, Brian is a top-rated mechanic and master carpenter. But even more important than all the things that Brian has done, it is his personal testimony—a testimony of how God rescued him from a life of drugs and brokenness—that makes him a perfect person to speak into the lives of kids like Cesar.

We first met Brian and Natasha in 2007, when they came to Honduras on a short trip. Their connection to the Micah boys was immediate and powerful. When they brought their two young sons back on a later trip, it was obvious that God was calling the Wiggs to join the Micah Project as missionaries. Natasha quickly developed strong nurturing relationships with the Micah boys, and Brian has already had an impact on the street kids and on several ex-gang members in the Micah Project neighborhood. After a period of discernment with their church in Portland and with their sending agency Action International, the Wiggs have gotten the green light to join us in July as long-term missionaries.

The most exciting thing about the Wiggs’ vision for reaching kids like Cesar is that it goes far beyond providing technical or job training. The mission of the vocational program is to “teach Biblically, train technically, and build relationally,” a mission that Brian describes as “body-off discipleship.” In the vocabulary of auto mechanics, “body-off” means stripping down a car to the bare bones, then meticulously replacing all the broken, damaged or worn parts with new ones. It is a complete transformation, and it turns an old jalopy into a new car! When Brian talks about body-off discipleship, though, he is not just talking about the cars that his students will work on in our technical school. He is talking about the students themselves!

When it comes to boys like Cesar, body-off discipleship means stripping away the drug addiction, the self-defeating habits of street life, and generations of poverty as he becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus. Even as Brian works with Cesar to strip down an old car and replace the broken parts with new ones, he will help him to replace the brokenness of street life with the new hope that only comes through a restored relationship with his heavenly Father. Brian’s vision for the young men he will work with is perfectly summarized in I Corinthians 5:17: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

I can’t wait to run into Cesar again the next time we do our street outreach. For years, the only thing we have been able to offer him is friendship and empathy when he asks “but what about me?” Now, we can begin to help him dream of a new life. We can help him begin to see himself as a master carpenter, creating beautiful things out of wood, or a master mechanic, stripping down cars and making them new. And, even though he might not fully understand it now, we can begin to help him see himself as a new creature, a child of God with an important role to play in his heavenly Father’s kingdom.

I encourage you to take a look at Brian and Natasha’s blog, www.wiggsfamily.blogspot.com to learn more about their vision for the Micah Project vocational school. Pray for them as they put their Portland home on the market and work to raise the funds necessary to move their family of four to Honduras in July. Continue to pray for us as well, as our vision of body-off discipleship—of helping street kids transform into the people that God has called them to be—takes exciting steps forward this year!

Gracias!

Su hermano en Cristo,
Michael Miller
http://www.micahcentral.org/

Introduction:

One of the best mission trips I have ever experienced was my last one to the Micah Project in June of 2008.  God's hand was vividly in this work.  The theme seemed to be "angels in our midst."

Day 1: Washing the Feet

The heart of the work of the Micah Project is reaching out to the lost of Honduran society - their youth who have been abandoned to the streets and are addicted to sniffing glue. We went to a market place to hang out with street kids.  One of the ways to reach out to them is to wash their feet.  A young man approached propped up on crutches.  We could not communicate well with him, yet deciphered that he was deaf, had been hit by a bus, and was showing signs of medical neglect.  I tried to wash his feet but first had to remove his rotting shoes and peel from his feet, swollen to the size of a football, what was left of his socks.  As I believe I experienced for the first time what gangrene looks and smells like, I wondered if he was an angel among us, saying to us, "Don't talk, just love me."  After cleaning his feet, applying antibiotic ointment, and putting on new shoes and socks, he hugged me for what seemed like an eternity.  Which of us was more blessed by that encounter?

Day 2: Grandma to the Rescue

We returned to the market the next day intent on gathering a crowd by offering them something to eat and an encouraging word.  As we were gathering and trying to organize them into a circle, one boy angrily demanded he be given food.  Continuing to disrupt the entire activity, I told him to join the rest or leave.  As I tried to escort him out, he exploded in anger.  Several other street kids surrounded him to calm him down.  Thinking he was calm, they returned to their seats.  He then exploded again, running toward us and wielding a knife.  As I prepared to stop him, what I can only describe as an angel appeared from nowhere in the form of a five foot 60 lb. white haired grandma of 90. She fearlessly took down this kid twice her size.  In one motion she grabbed his knife, then removing her sandal she whacked the kid and exclaimed, "How dare you treat people of God this way!"

Day 3: A Leader Feeds Others

On the 3rd day we planned to just spend time with the children of the street offering encouragement.  Soon after we arrived God's angel for the day appeared in the form of one of the young men who asked us to form a circle, then proceeded to thank us and pray for us, asking for God's help in our lives and thanking Him for bringing God's word to them.  Later as we left, he walked with us.  He picked up some discarded garbage and began eating it as most of these kids survive this way.  I bought him a sack of bananas which he handed out to the other street kids rather than eating them himself.  It struck me God was letting us know his servants are here amidst this chaos, they just need encouragement and help to minister to these discarded people.

Arrested by the Holy Spirit

On our way to the city dump to minister to the hundreds of families who live on top of the garbage, hunting each day for their food, we found ourselves lost.  I handed my cell phone to Brian to find out from Michael how to find our destination.  At one of the many intersections manned by traffic cops, we were motioned over to the side of the road and informed it was illegal to drive while talking on a cell phone.   Asking for Brian's drivers license, it became obvious to us this was an extortionable offense.  To compound the problem, Brian turned to me and said "I don't have my license with me!"  "No problem," I replied, "use mine, he can't tell us apart anyway."  Less interested in the formality of whose license it was and more interested in how much we might be bribed of, he brashly walked to the unoccupied passenger seat, climbed in and asked where we were going.  Brian explained through our interpreter that we were trying to find the garbage dump.  Catching the traffic cop off guard, Brian asked, "can you show us where it is?"  Still trying to figure out why a carload of Gringos would want to go to the garbage dump, he said "yes" and we were off.  While traveling there, he examined the driver's license and explained how serious an offense driving while talking on the phone was and how this could become very "complicated" (translated loosely: "Expensive") for a foreigner.  "Brian," I exclaimed, "why don't you tell the policeman about Jesus?"  Brian, now back on his game, began to explain in detail how Jesus had touched his family's life, that they were moving to Honduras to minister to the poor, and did the policeman have a personal relationship with Jesus...?  Arriving at the school, built by the Micah project for the children of the dump, we gave him the full tour of the facility.  We explained how at one time all these children knew was rifling through garbage for anything of value to either eat or sell to help support their families.  Now they were receiving an education.  I gathered all of the smaller kids around the policeman and introduced him to them, explaining to them that if they were diligent in their studies, they too might become a policeman.  He attempted to hide behind his macho facade but the emerging tears showed the conviction of the Holy Spirit.  He returned the license and determined the offense could be overlooked.  He spent the next several hours with us and received a covering of prayer from all of us before departing

Baptizing the Burglar

The Micah Project planted itself squarely in the middle of where the greatest need exists.  The neighborhood has its share of street gangs and crime.  One night a burglar scaled the 2 story walls and barbed wire of the Micah home and brashly entered each room stealing from the Micah Boys.  It seems no crime against these street savvy boys goes unsolved.  They quickly identified the culprit.  Michael confronted him in the neighborhood and angrily threatened to run him over with the van if he didn't stop threatening the safety of the Micah Boys.  His anger calmed and turned to counseling as the bandit apologized and warmed to Michael's message.  Brian Wiggs was there and spent several long nights reaching out to this young man helping him see God's purpose in his life.  At 6 am, the morning we were to depart, Brian excitedly knocked on my door, saying the young man wanted to be baptized before we left.  So, that morning at our hotel pool, we experienced another life washed clean in dedication to Christ.

Why Was I There?

I was there to help the Micah Project build a strategy for implementing their idea for a technical school.  Brian Wiggs and his wife Natasha are joining the Micah Project in 2009. He has a great passion for outreach as well as being a highly qualified auto mechanic.  Through a business group I am in, I made contact with 4 automobile dealership owners in Tegucigalpa.  Michael Miller, the Micah Project Director, laughed when I showed him the names; all the names were of previous presidents and very influential families in Honduras.  We met with each of them and outlined our proposal for providing Christian character development and automotive skills training and certification at US levels.  Their response was overwhelming.  They explained how they had struggled to find people with both the right attitude and enough skills.  They currently employed 2 full time people to train in the technical basics AND two additional people worked full time inspecting their work.  The idea that we could supply technicians ready to work and able to produce, without remedial training or having every job inspected, was so novel they fell over themselves asking what they could provide to encourage us with our plans.  We said we wanted 2 things, their partnership in leading the effort and the use of their facilities and tools after hours, so we could start a technical school without having to invest in a structure. I am convinced if God wants this to happen, He will provide in a big way.

Learn more!

Visit the Micah Project blog: www.micahcentral.blogspot.com

     So, what about the kids in Honduras, Kenya, Russia, Ireland and South Africa? Why don't those countries take care of their own people? The answers vary from country to country. In Russia, where I lived for 12 years, atheism left the country morally and spiritually bankrupt. Communism was riddled with corruption that has flourished ten fold since the iron curtain fell. Alcoholism has left people in a stupor. Extremist capitalism has left people insatiable for more without regard for their neighbor. The problems in Russia and many other countries are too big for us to simply waltz in and fix. They are too big for us to throw in a sum of money and expect people to use it wisely. But, what we can do is to look for Christians in each country who have a clear call and a vision from God, and then enable them to fulfill that call. Yes, that may mean some of us should visit and encourage them. It may mean we give our own resources to help them achieve their goals. It may require sacrifice on our part. Christians in Russia face daily sacrifices that would seem foreign to us, such as constant ridicule, prejudice, and harassment by official government agencies and the list goes on. Many Christians brave brutal weather, long walks and crowded buses and trolleys just to get to church. Now that does not make them more spiritual or better Christians, but it is simply a fact of life that being a Christian in Russia takes more energy and sacrifice than being a Christian in well-developed countries.

     Do we give and go because we feel guilty for what we have? Do we give more to these countries than we give to our own because they are more economically downtrodden?

     The answer is no to both of those questions. My perspective is that we give here in America and we give to foreign countries because we can. We give because Christ has poured out His grace and mercy and blessings of all kinds. We give to our own and we give to others who are not in a position to care for their own. We give to those who are investing wisely and using their resources for God's purposes and His glory. We give because our neighbors need to know Christ just as much as those in far away countries. We go on short term trips because we need community and those trips create a sense of community and interdependence on each other. Short term trips are a tremendous encouragement to our own missionaries. We come back inspired by the examples of Christians in foreign countries and we are challenged to care for our own with the same passion, dedication and care.

     So, my answer to the question of, "why should we send our money and resources to foreign countries when we have our own problems? is this: We do both. We serve our own and take every opportunity to serve those in other countries.

     "For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again." 2 Corinthians 5:14-15