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The Micah Project - Honduras Fall 2007 Update "Joy comes in the Morning" I will exalt you, O Lord,
for You lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me. O Lord my God, I called to You for help and You healed me. O Lord, You brought me up from the grave; You spared me from going down into the pit. Sing to the Lord, you saints of His; praise His holy name. For His anger lasts only a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime. Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning... Psalm 30: 1-5, 11-12 (NIV) Rejoicing and Weeping Hello all…
In these months at the Micah Project we have gone camping, studied, prayed together, played soccer, gone for mountain runs, laughed, shared, frolicked in the rain, talked about life, hiked in national forests, reached out to those around us, worshipped God, taken in two new boys from the streets, received new staff ready to labor for Christ, heard wonderful reports from our college guys, supported local family members, learned the importance of the truth, given concerts, produced a CD… that list of rejoicing goes on and on. But we have also wept… lies have been exposed, we have seen the power of addiction, we buried the 16-yr-old stepbrother of one of our boys who was shot and killed a block away from our home, we have heard death threats against boys that we love, we’ve experienced the pain of seeing guys choose sin and its consequences, we have seen Satan try to regain a foothold for his agenda of death, and at times we have felt such discouragement and deep sadness. So it has not been an easy time, but God is good, and I am reminded that without His mercy ALL would be evil and would lead to death – there would be no place for the rejoicing!! And I am so grateful that the morning ALWAYS COMES! En El Proceso
“Los Micah Boys” (the musical group made up of five of our guys) chose to call their new CD “En El Proceso” – In Process. Over and over I have thought about how fitting that name is… this is a process!! Discipleship ministry is a process by nature, as God changes us throughout our lives to be more and more like Him. That process is certainly not always a steady uphill improvement – it can have some pretty deep valleys (as well as “pits, depths, and graves” as Ps. 30 pointed out.)
The Good, the Bad, and … Some of you have been praying for years that we would get some more staff here at Micah, particularly guys to reach out and be examples for OUR guys – and your prayers have been answered! Not only is Dan Paul (in the photo on the right) now here from Toronto, Canada for a year (coordinating the street ministry and working as a weekend house parent), but we also have an intern from Mexico, Jorge, living at Micah for four or five months and teaching music, etc. So go ahead and celebrate – and then keep praying! That time will pass quickly… and we will be looking once again! More good things… a few months ago we began meeting every Sunday night with all of the Micah guys for a time of prayer and worship and reflecting together… I know that it sounds like an obvious idea, but while the boys have daily devotions together before classes, this was a new thing for us to do formally all together. And it has been an amazing encouragement – we have not only experienced the fellowship of praising and seeking God together, but have had Spirit-led times of repentance and great honesty among the boys and staff. I am SO grateful for this.
These first few months with them haven’t been easy – for example, after five weeks at Micah Wilmer ran away, and was in the streets inhaling yellow glue again for more than a month. He came back several weeks ago, and has been so much more compliant and cheerful this second time around… again, it’s a process, and we’re walking it with them, day by day. Marvin was hit by a car in his second week at Micah, and was immobilized by a severely broken leg for more than two months, which in the end was probably what saved him from giving in to his addiction and anger and returning to the streets. This gave us the opportunity to love him and serve him in EVERYTHING during the time he couldn’t do it alone, and he is already able to express verbally the desire to be a part of Micah and do big things with his future. Pray for them – and for us! It’s VERY different having such young guys again, straight from the streets without any concept of rules or order, and they know how to try the patience of everyone in the house! J
But we know that as we work to be the hands and feet
of Christ here in Honduras, the spiritual battle is raging, and the
devil
would like nothing more than This month the seriousness of the situation multiplied, as he received various death threats from people he had encountered during several nights that he slept on the streets, and as he then still left Micah once again one Sunday and went to those same streets, taking two of our other boys with him. I will never forget the following night when I and some of our guys found him there in the dangerous abandoned market area, wild-eyed and ready to flee, shoes stolen, ear already pierced, and he looked me in face, high on glue, and said that he couldn’t explain what was happening, but that all he wanted now was to be left alone. He slipped away into the night, and all we could do was let him go. The other two boys are now safe and we are working through this with them, but we are at the point where we aren’t able to help this one at Micah and we cannot continue to allow him to endanger us all in his road to destruction. However, we love him and can’t allow him to destroy himself in this way, so when we found him again a few days later we convinced him to enter a 40-day lock-down Narcotics Anonymous program that we recently found… As we left him there last week, I still felt so angry about what he is doing to himself and to the rest of us, but I knew I needed to reach out and to hug him goodbye… and once I put my arms around him he clung to me like a lifeline, and I wished there was some way I could fix the scared little kid inside of him... but once again I had to push back tears and let him go. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ As a missionary who has now been in Honduras for several years, I've come to realize that I’m not here for the “results.” I’m not here to see how many college graduates I can help produce, or how many kids we can get off the streets, or how many of these guys can break the generational cycles of pain and addiction. I love it when those things happen, but none of that is up to me – only God can change hearts. I’m here because I feel like this is where God has asked me to be, and because He daily gives me the grace and the love that I need to continue on. On the days when I feel like I can’t take one more temper tantrum from a13-yr-old, or another funky teenage attitude, or one more disappointment, I remember that you too believe that God has me here for a reason, and I take a deep breath and continue on. I always feel awed that you all continue to stand by us, and it helps us to dream big about what God has for the future as well.
19-yr-old Pedro told me the other day that he wants to one day be the father that he never had, and that he will then pray that his own son is also a better man. (From the powerful Kirk Franklin song “Let It Go,” which I recently translated into Spanish with the older guys -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ4uWwZMq5M .) I told him that is what God wants too, and that is why we are here. It is a process, and God does not leave us in the pit.
On November 10th, we will have our third high school graduation (2004, 2005, and now 2007… there weren’t any seniors last year). Fredy (20), Jose (19), Daniel (18), Jerson (19), and Olvin (20) have all fought their battles as well through the years, and this will be a major milestone in their lives. We are excited about the opportunity to gather together and rejoice! We’re once again inviting as many of their family members as we can find, as well as many friends from the States.
Thank you for being in this process with us! Love, Rebecca
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Well,
I started this update over a week ago, and after hours I had only
gotten as far as Psalm 30 (above). It resonated so much with my
heart, and God’s Word seemed so much better than any of my words…
But here I am… praying for some words of my own to describe
the past few months of ministry in Honduras to you… to tell you
about both the moments of rejoicing and the times of weeping.
Another
amazing change in the past few months is the addition of Marvin
(pictured on the streets with his bottle of glue on the left – he’s
our third Marvin, so he’s usually called Marvincito) and Wilmer
(picture on the right on the streets with Mocha and with his glue
bottle in his shirt) to the Micah family. We met them both while
doing outreach with the
street people under the bridge, and in the same day at the end of
June they both asked if they could leave the streets behind and move
into the Micah House. Marvin and Wilmer are both about 13 years
old, and have spent the last few years fending for themselves on the
streets of Tegucigalpa. Wilmer has never gone to school, but
is a joyful and enthusiastic kid to be around, hugging strangers and
prattling on and on about anything. He gets mad easily, but it
passes quickly. Marvin is far more reserved and needs to observe
before stepping into something. He asks a lot of questions, and is
wildly defensive to the end if he thinks he’s in any kind of
trouble, and his anger can be a force to be reckoned with. He’s
very bright, and reads and does math on a third or fourth grade
level, even though we think he was never really taught to
write. 
to try to take lives back and even the
score. He wants to hit us where it hurts the most, and that is
what has happened with one of our guys in a tragic way this
year. This tall and gregarious 15-yr-old is so special to me,
and has been by my side since the day I arrived in Honduras in
2004. He is emotionally and academically intelligent and a natural
leader, and has the kind of personality that wins others to him in a
matter of minutes. This and other character traits are why we often
speak of his powerful ability to do either great good or do great
evil… and we have seen this battle rage in him like never before in
the past few months. He comes from a childhood of extreme abuse and
addiction right here in our neighborhood and, despite all our
efforts, has started following that same cycle as he began to buy
drugs from these childhood contacts and spiral downhill in early
summer. This led to several tries in various rehab and detox
centers, but here in Honduras our options are limited and most
rehabilitation options are not lock-down, but require complete
voluntary involvement. While he is willing to check in voluntarily
(he has so many times wept as he confesses, and he says he only
wants to stay with us at Micah), the desires take over and he
quickly escapes or is released from the programs. We have struggled
with the line between showing mercy and at the same time having
limits. 
