January 2011 Photos

The Micah Project jumped right into 2011 with both feet! It promises to be an exciting year, with new avenues for ministry and a new facility in which to operate. Please pray for us as we plan and build Micah 2.0, the new facility that will house the Micah Project! Also, pray for growth for each one of our boys, for energy and passion for our staff, and for God's will to be the center of all we do!


How do you celebrate New Year's in Honduras? Try loading a dummy full of firecrackers and setting them off at midnight...		...this is what it looks like! The old year goes out with a bang!

One of the blessings of this new year has been the ability to build a house for Roger in the Villa Linda Miller community. Roger has been our main Honduran missionary...working with us since the very first day of the Micah Project. Thanks to a generous donation from the First Presbyterian Church of Meridian, Mississippi, and a team that came from that church to help us build, Roger's dream of owning his own home became a reality! Above: Roger places the first block of his new home while Villa Linda Miller's foreman, Santiago Giron, supervises.

Below: Luis works on the wall with one of the young women from First Presbyterian.

Above: Miguel and Nelson work on a wall of Roger's house. Below: the First Presbyterian team smiles in Roger's house on their last day of work.

On January 7-9, the Micah Project board of directors met in Houston for our annual board retreat. There are so many exciting things happening at the Micah Project that I think we could have met for a whole week! This passionate and talented group of people is laying the foundation for our next decade of ministry.

Above: Left to right: Eduardo Barahona, Michael Miller, David Miller, Mary Floye Federer, Jonathan Rogers, Mark Mavromatis, Chris Herbold, Howard Jacobson, Dianne Becker, Bill Marshall. Not pictured: Carol Marshall.

Below: While we were in Houston, Israel and Jenna stopped in while headed back to Honduras from Los Angeles. There was a lot to celebrate: they had gotten engaged over Christmas! Israel is a young man from El Salvador who joined our staff in 2010. Jenna is a graduate of Biola University who works as our communication coordinator. Both are PK (pastor's kids) and they are a good match!

Every January, the Bells take our older boys to the Honduras-Guatemala border to support a medical brigade from the First Presbyterian Church of Houston. This year, we decided to take all of the boys along! We had a great road-trip! Above: Miguel, Maycol and Axelito peek underneath a monument at the Mayan ruins of Copan.

Below: the boys favorite part of going to Copan is getting rides in the little three-wheeled taxis called tuktuks. They even got a couple of taxi drivers to race them around Copan! Here, Miguel, Luis, Miguelito, David, Maycol and Nelson get ready for a trip in the tuktuk. Here's a joke for you: How many people can you fit into a Honduran tuktuk? Answer: always one more!

The First Presbyterian team joins hands with the Micah Project in a small village called Otuta, where they held their clinic, in order to pray over their ministry for the week. Otuta is an indigenous village in the mountains outside of Copan.

Below: Maycol and Roger register patients at the door of FPC's makeshift clinic.

While the older boys worked with the team in Copan, the younger boys moved on to the Caribbean beach town called Tela. We spent a whole day in a Garifuna village called Triunfo de la Cruz (Triumph of the Cross). The Garifunas, also called Black Caribs, are a people group descended from Carib, Arawak and West African people. They live in villages dotting the Honduran Caribbean coast and maintain their own culture heritage and language.

Above: Our boys stop to chat with a Garifuna boy on the beach of Triunfo de la Cruz.

Below: a Garifuna man teaches our boys some words in his language. The only phrase I learned was "buiti bifani" which means "good morning!"

During the last week of January, we had a visit from some friends of the Riverside Church in St. Louis, Missouri. Above: Dan Knarr works on Roger's house with Santiago. The house is nearing completion!

Below: Dan's mom Carolyn Knarr works with Grupo Mama Jo on some sewing projects at the Micah House.