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September 2002 Update |
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“Aren’t you afraid that the Micah boys will forget where they came from?” This is a question I am often asked by friends and supporters of the Micah Project. After all, the boys have a world of opportunities before them; there is no limit to what they can achieve in their lives after leaving the Micah Project as adults. Should we fear that they will forget their roots and all God has done to lift them out of their nightmarish childhoods? Is it possible that, knowing what it is like to go days at a time without food and shelter, they will focus their futures only on material gain in order to avoid living through such need again? These are fair questions. Indeed, for young men who spent the first years of their lives fighting for survival, it would seem logical that they would use all of their education and career training to become as comfortable and secure as possible. Yet when I see the choices our boys are making in their lives, even now as teenagers, I am filled with hope that their future lives will truly be about servant-leadership, and not just about financial security. One reason for this hope is that the boys are getting a taste of what a true joy it is to serve others. Seventeen year-old Danilo confessed this joy to me last night as we were chatting. Danilo serves at our new ministry at Villa Linda Miller and Villa Madrid fives days a week in the afternoon. These two neighboring communities are home to over 300 families that lost their homes during Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Since May 2002, the Micah Project has served the children and teens of these communities. Danilo is in charge of the entire children’s ministry, meeting once a week with five volunteers to help them plan the Bible activities, crafts and games for the week. He also teaches the third-through-sixth graders. Much of his free time at the Micah house is spent planning for the children’s program! A true testimony to his success is that his kids have fallen in love with “Professor Danilo!” In fact, Danilo is such a good teacher that it recently got him into trouble with the Villa Linda Miller children. When we began our ministry at Villa Madrid a couple months after launching it at Villa Linda Miller, Danilo began teaching in the new program, leaving his volunteers to take over the classes at Villa Linda Miller. When his kids heard about the change however, they threatened to go on strike until they got Professor Danilo back! He finally decided on a compromise, teaching at Villa Linda Miller one week and at Villa Madrid the next. As we talked about his responsibilities last night, Danilo said that working with the children of these two communities is the beginning of his life’s ministry. He expressed amazement at the strength and confidence that God has given him in his work, and at how blessed he is to be used by God in these children’s lives. (see www.micahcentral.org/vlmmin2.htm for a picture of Danilo at his ministry!) As Danilo talked, it was I who was amazed. For such a young man, Danilo has learned a lesson that many of us never quite get: the pure joy that comes from serving others without asking for anything in return. Seeing his face light up as he talks about his ministry gives me the confidence that he is already well on the way to a life of service, a life that will model Christ’s love to those who do not yet know it. There are many examples in our boys lives that show that the lessons they are learning are not just staying within the four walls of the Micah Project. Oscar, for instance, is not directly involved in our ministry at Villa Linda Miller, since he practices five days a week on a national junior soccer team. He dreams of being a pro soccer player, and it is very likely that he will achieve it! Even though soccer takes most of his free time, he is still showing servant-leadership. Often, he invites his teammates to our bi-monthly youth groups at Villa Linda Miller. Last week, one of his teammates accepted Christ at the meeting! The cut-throat world of soccer in Honduras is not the easiest place to maintain one’s testimony; yet, Oscar is showing what it means to be a light in the darkness on his soccer team. Last Saturday, I received another assurance that the boys would not forget their past. Two Micah Project founders, Randy Mayfield and Neal Nielsen, came to Honduras for a few days to support us in our ministry. On Saturday, they joined us on home visits with six of our boys so that they could meet and pray with their families. As we climbed steep dirt tracks into some of the most dangerous neighborhoods of Tegucigalpa, we were able to see firsthand why the boys would choose living in the streets over their homes. Most of the homes we encountered were little more than wooden shacks. Magazine ads were pinned to the walls to cover holes in the rotting wood planks. While many of the homes had multiple extended family members living in one room, conspicuously absent in the homes were fathers. You might think that, after visiting these places, which are often filled with cruel memories, the boys would work even harder to escape them. On the contrary, after the visits, the boys did not talk about escaping their families as much as helping them. Micah boys Harvin and Darwin are a good example. Their tiny one-room home provides shelter for their mom, aunt, sister, brother-in-law and several children. Their aunt is pregnant yet alone, since her boyfriend was stabbed to death in a drunken brawl just outside their front door in early March. Harvin’s mom is 44 but looks closer to 60; years of hardship have etched themselves into the lines on her face. One of Harvin’s cousins no longer lives there; at the age of ten, he has already chosen the same path that Harvin and Darwin and is living on the streets. Yet, as we visited his family, Harvin didn’t focus on the hopelessness. “Part of my goal in life is not just to transform my life,” he told Randy and Neal, “it is to help transform my family as well.” After we joined hands and prayed with them, Harvin prayed for his family as well, asking that Christ’s love would enter and change their lives. That day of family visits was difficult; the poverty we saw was hard to comprehend. Yet, there were hopeful moments as well. We saw in the boys’ eyes that they still loved their families, still pray for them, and still believe that God can transform them. No, the Micah boys will not forget where they came from, or live life simply to escape the poverty in which they were raised. The boys are and will continue to be witnesses to God’s transforming love in their families’ lives. One other conversation struck me at Harvin and Darwin’s house that day. Their brother-in-law mentioned that he too grew up in an orphanage. In fact, one year, he won the award for the best-behaved boy in the orphanage. After leaving that project, however, things went bad for him as he moved back into his gang-infested neighborhood. Today, he barely scrapes by, sometimes making only a couple of dollars each day selling plastic containers on the street. Judging from his glassy eyes and Harvin’s stories, he probably drinks away what little money he earns. That is an all too common story: kids receive a shot at life at an orphanage or home, only to fall back into misery upon leaving because of a lack of support. At the Micah Project, we feel that we must continue to support our boys until they can make a successful transition into adulthood. Cutting the ties of support too soon will leave them adrift in a hard city where even kids from stable families struggle to make a living. Because of that, we are earnestly planning the next stage of our project: the Leadership House. This will be a place for young men aged 19-22 who want to continue their studies but will not be able to without support. It will be a place for our young men to make a deliberate and successful move towards independence. In this city of 1.2
million, which has doubled in size in the last ten years, apartments are
almost unheard of. A young
person often finds himself in sub-standard living
conditions—conditions that can be almost impossible for a serious
student. To make matters
more complicated, the National University does not offer student
housing. The “Leadership
House” will provide a residence for young men who are leaving projects
such as Micah while they are completing their university studies.
A residential director will help the young men make a successful
transition into adulthood by providing such services as discipleship,
tutoring, career counseling, personal budget management, and
relationship counseling. The goal of this new phase of the Micah Project is as follows: “To prepare young men in the last stages of adolescence who lack familial support to become confident, competent servant-leaders who have the spiritual, emotional, intellectual and material means to transition successfully into Christian adulthood.” The Leadership House will allow the young men to move into independence while providing them with a supportive Christian community through these formative years. We hope to raise funds to purchase a facility by July 2003 in order to have the Leadership House operating by January 2004! I
will be bringing our five oldest boys to the United States with me this
October: Marvin, David,
Cristino, Olvin and Harvin. These
boys are our first candidates for the Leadership House; three of them
will be turning eighteen before the end of this year!
This trip will be a excelleny chance for you
to see how God is transforming these ex-street kids into
Christian leaders! We will be in Houston from October 3-10, in St. Louis, Missouri from October 10-23, and in Washington D.C. from the 23 to the 28th. If you live in or around St. Louis, your best bet to meet the boys will be at Randy Mayfield’s concert on Friday, October 11th. Randy, vice-president of the Micah board of directors, will be debuting his new, missions-oriented album, “A Heart for the Nations.” The boys will be singing and giving their testimonies at the concert. Please feel free to call Randy at the Central Presbyterian Church for more information about the concert at (314) 727-2777. Let me know if you are interested in meeting the boys at another time as well! As our boys continue to grow, please pray that they would continue to listen to God’s voice in the present as He prepares them for His work in the future. We hope to see you in October! Your brother in Christ, Michael Miller
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