July-August 2003 Update |
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August
17, 2003 Dear
friends, Last Friday, the director of a local
orphanage called the Micah Project just as the sun was setting over the
western rim of Tegucigalpa’s mountains.
Surprisingly, instead of asking for me, she asked to speak to Marvin,
the oldest Micah boy, whom she knew well from the many activities that we’ve
done together with her orphanage. As
I sat at my desk, I heard Marvin say, “lately at Micah, we’ve been really
blessed and are learning a lot about God.
We’d be glad to do it.” When
he hung up, I found out what “it” was.
The orphanage had planned to do a “vigilia” which is a long,
sometimes all-night prayer service that is very popular in the Honduran
church. Unfortunately, the people who
were supposed to coordinate the service cancelled at the last minute, and the
director asked for some of our boys to fill in! Marvin and Danilo headed out to the
orphanage at 6:30 p.m., with their backpack full of Christian music tracks,
and didn’t get back to the Micah house until after midnight! When they got there, ninety kids and
thirty teenage orphans were waiting to hear if our boys had anything valuable
to say that would be meaningful to their own lives. Both Danilo and Marvin spent over three hours sharing what God
has done in their lives and leading the boys in energetic times of
worship! The older boys from the
orphanage especially paid great attention as some of them began to
understand, perhaps for the first time in their lives, that God loves them
and is willing to use them in a mighty way, just as he is doing in the lives
of Danilo and Marvin. As they were
leaving, the director stopped to thank them. She told them that lately, her older boys seemed to lack hope
for their lives and their future, and that Marvin and Danilo’s message is
exactly what they needed to hear. In retrospect, it is not hard to see why people
such as the orphanage director see hope embodied in a special way in our
boys’ lives. In fact, if you think
about it, “hope” is the one word that best describes the difference between
the Micah boys and the majority of Honduran young people. First, hope eternal—their knowledge that,
because of the great sacrifice and victory of Jesus Christ, they are sons in
his eternal kingdom. And secondly,
they have hope that, in the here-and-now, God has an extraordinary plan for
each one of their lives…for His good purposes! How have these young men been able to grab on to
hope so fiercely? It is because they
have seen God so obviously working in their lives at the Micah Project,
allowing them to take great steps forward in their education and in a life of
servant leadership. He has
graciously granted them a sure knowledge of his presence every step of the
way. Recently, a couple of exciting
things have happened to confirm yet again to the boys that God is preparing a
future for them. The first of these exciting signs is the purchase
of the Leadership House! As I wrote
to you in my last letter, we had identified a building that would be perfect
for the Leadership House, the home where our older boys will live as they
complete their higher education and move into Christian adulthood. The house
we identified costs $43,500. While we
have not yet raised the full amount, we felt that we should put a down
payment on the house now to prevent it from being sold and to avoid having it
looted (a common reality in Honduras), since it currently sits empty. After a negotiation process, the owner and
I agreed that Micah would pay $23,000 as a first payment for the house, with
the rest of the price to be paid in November. That was pretty amazing, since at that time we had $22,800 in
our Leadership House account! On Friday, July 25, Micah Board treasurer Bob
Bewley flew down with the cash to make the first payment. That same day, we met with the owner and
signed the contract, officially claiming the Leadership House as our
own! What an amazing moment of
answered prayer! Another amazing thing about this event is that so
many of our supporters were present for it.
In addition to Bob Bewley and his wife Jo, also present were Dr. Gene
Alford and Mary Zavala from the First Presbyterian church medical team in
Houston, Matt Darr, the gentleman who will coordinate the Leadership House
next year, and twenty-seven members of the youth group from the Greentree
Community Church. The day after we
bought the house, we all gathered there for its official inauguration. We crowded onto the front terrace of the
home, which has a beautiful view of downtown Tegucigalpa. There, we
asked God’s blessing on the house and all who would pass through its
doors. What a special touch of God’s
providence that so many friends were on hand to ask for God’s blessing for
this new phase of our ministry! Making the first payment on the Leadership House
was a physical sign of hope to our boys that God has a plan for their
future. Yet, that same week, there
was another, even more eternal sign that God is working in our boys’ lives.
As I mentioned, the youth group from the Greentree church in St. Louis was
spending the week with us in Honduras.
They ran a four-day sports camp for the teens of Villa Linda
Miller. During the week, the
Greentree youth and the Micah boys were focused on sharing their faith with
the teens from Villa Linda Miller.
After four days of presenting the gospel through word and deed, the
group finished their camp last Thursday evening with a bonfire. As we surrounded the fire, we had one of
the most open and joyous times of worship that I have had since being in
Honduras. After the worship time,
several teens from Villa Linda Miller gave their lives to Christ! Additionally, a couple of the Micah boys
renewed their commitment to their Lord.
It was truly a Spirit-filled and joyous event! To see God breaking down barriers in
some very difficult and hardened teens was a sign of hope for all of us
present. It was also amazing to some
of our boys that God was able to break through some barriers in their own
hearts that they did not even know existed.
You can imagine that our boys, having lived through terrible abuse and
trauma in their childhood and while on the streets, aren’t naturally trusting
of other people. A defense mechanism
that many street kids demonstrate is that they keep tight control over their
emotional lives, carefully guarding their souls, in order to avoid the risk
of being rejected or abused all over again. While many of the boys have been able to open up their lives and
their hearts while in the Micah Project, some still have these old barriers
that they constructed in their hearts to avoid being hurt again. However, God really used that night of
worship, along with the other clear and recent signs of his grace, to begin
to remove them. Recently, two of the
boys’ have opened up to me about some difficult experiences of their lives
that they had not shared with anyone.
To me, that is another sign that hope is ever-increasing in their
lives; they are beginning to trust that God will shine his live into these
locked corners of their hearts and
will prevent the darkness of this world from hurting them so terribly again. It is truly a blessing to be
surrounded by so many signs of hope.
As Marvin and Danilo so clearly demonstrated at the orphanage last
week, we cannot keep all these signs of hope to ourselves! In order for hope to increase in our
hearts, we must be willing to share it to a hopeless world. Our boys will get that chance again this
week. On Sunday, we accepted a new
boy into the Micah Project. His
background includes such acts of degradation that he sees almost no hope for
his life. In recent months, he has
been hanging out with a group of friends on the streets that will surely lead
him to destruction. As this boy steps
out of a fallen world over the threshold of our hope-filled home, will he be
able to experience the same hope that lights our boys’ eyes? Every time we get a new boy, erasing the
habits of hopelessness seems like a daunting task. However, there is a group of verses in the Lamentations 3 that
speak well to our boys as they enter this process: “I
remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall…Yet this
I call to mind and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his
compassions never fail. They are new
every morning; great is your faithfulness.” We have full confidence that God will continue to
demonstrate to Micah boys, both old and new, that his compassions will not
cease in their lives. We pray that as
this miraculous process happens in our boys’ lives, that it will give you
hope in your own journey as well! “May
the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that
you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:!3) Your
brother in Christ, Michael
Miller P.S. In this exciting time in the Micah Project, we ask that you would prayerfully consider donating to this ongoing ministry! Currently, we have raised approximately $29,000 toward the $43,500 purchase price of the Leadership House. Additionally, we will need an additional $20,000 to remodel the home and prepare it for opening in January 2004. Please see our website, www.micahcentral.org, for more details! |