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The Micah Project’s oldest participant, Marvin, has had two radically different travel experiences lately. The first was a trip into the past…to be reunited with his mom after nineteen years of absence. The next was a trip into his future, as he packed his bags in order to begin his college studies in the United States. Both trips were enormous answers to prayer for this young man who has been through so much in his short life! While the first trip brought healing from past wounds, the second brought hope for a bright future. The trip to his mom’s house was amazing for several reasons. The first is that, ever since I met Marvin in 1993 when he was nine years old, it was assumed that he just didn’t have a mother. He was raised by his alcoholic father and his hard-working grandmother for most of his young life until leaving his home for the streets of Tegucigalpa. Marvin’s mother abandoned the home when he was just a baby, escaping the same alcoholism and abuse that Marvin would later flee from several years later. Marvin and his four brothers and sisters lost track of their mom and eventually assumed that they would never see her again. When Marvin’s grandmother died this January, it was really like losing a mother. Coronada was a courageous Christian lady who raised her grandkids (and great-grandkids!) by selling little packs of peanuts on the streets of downtown Tegucigalpa. When she was 83, she finally got too old to make her way down the mountain every day to the downtown streets. I think most of her grandkids felt orphaned all over again when she passed away this January after several months in the hospital. But God, in His gracious timing, had other plans! He chose this moment to reintroduce Marvin and his siblings to their mother. A few weeks after Coronada’s death, one of Marvin’s distant cousins showed up saying that he knew where Marvin’s mom lived! Marvin went with him the following day, deep into the eastern mountains of Honduras, in order to meet his mom. When he got back, he was filled with stories and excitement! He decided that, before he left on his second journey to the States, he wanted me to meet his mom. In June, I accompanied Marvin and his brothers and sisters to one of the most remote spots in Honduras in order to finally meet his mom. It was a trip that required four hours on the lone highway that leads into eastern Honduras and then another three hours of precipitous mountain tracks! As we drove on and on, our bright red pick-up bounced farther and farther away from Catacamas, the cowtown that is the last spot of civilization before heading into the mountains. The truck (with Marvin driving) almost got stuck several times in the muddy mountain streams that flowed over the road, effectively blocking the path. Each time we reached one of these streams, a cloud of yellow butterflies lifted up from the water and surrounded our car, dancing out of the way as we prepared to cross the stream. That more than anything demonstrated both the beauty and the remoteness of the spot! It was a relief when the adobe and tile roof ranch of Marvin’s mom finally appeared over the horizon. It was a single house, surrounded by the green hills and separated from its nearest neighbor by several miles of trackless land. As we pulled our mud-covered car up to the fence that kept their cows in, Marvin’s mother, step-father and half brothers and sisters came out to see what rare visitor had come to their ranch. Marvin’s sister Sandra, who accompanied us on the journey, wept as she hugged her mom for the first time in almost twenty years. His mother Maria looked at her sons and daughter with a wonderful expression, nervous and excited and moved to be seeing her kids after such a long absence.
As darkness fell that evening, Marvin’s half brothers lit a fire on the dirt floor of their patio while Marvin’s mom and sister got reacquainted by preparing dinner over an earthen stove. After dinner, as we sat around the fire talking, Marvin sat by the kitchen stove with his mom for several hours, telling stories about his brothers and sisters from their youth. His mom, a shy and humble mountain woman, would smile every once in a while at one or another of the stories they told, but mostly she just took everything in with a silent look of wonderment. After a couple of hours of listening to the night sounds around us, Marvin’s stepfather took off into the woods with his two dogs at bay. After about an hour, he came back holding an armadillo by the tail. As we sat around the dying embers, one of Marvin’s half brothers began to skin the armadillo in order to prepare the next day’s dinner! The following day, the entire family was up with the sun at 5 a.m. Marvin trooped off with his step brothers to cut some sugar cane for breakfast while his sister and mom re-started the fire for breakfast. After breakfast was finished and the cows were milked, it was time to start back up the track for the long trip back to Tegucigalpa. Each of Marvin’s brothers and his sister took turns hugging their mom and posing with her for a picture. Marvin was the last two take leave of his mom, knowing that it would probably be a long time before he would see her again. Again, God’s timing for this blessed reunion was absolutely perfect. Not only did it happen just after losing his beloved grandmother, but it also happened just before he was to make a huge decision regarding his future! Before making definitive plans about possibly leaving Honduras for his studies, it was absolutely necessary to answer some of his lingering and painful questions about the past. The few days that he spent with his mom, while not sufficient to erase a childhood apart, were still able to answer many of those questions and to provide a peace that he would not otherwise have had. A few weeks after his journey to meet his mother, it was time for Marvin to begin his other great journey. On a Wednesday early July, I took Marvin, Olvin and Tino to the U.S. embassy here in Tegucigalpa to attempt to get their visas to travel to the U.S. All three had been accepted as freshman into Missouri Baptist University, which was a huge and exciting opportunity for them! However, before they could go up to study, they had to get their student visas—no easy task! Hundreds of Hondurans line up outside the U.S. embassy every day, hoping for a chance to go to the U.S.; most, however, are rejected. It had been almost a year since our guys had decided that they wanted to try to study in the States, but in all that time they had no way of knowing if that dream would come true or not. They began making plans in faith, hoping that they would be granted their visas. Frighteningly, the guys’ visa applications were rejected at their first interview with the embassy because of some paperwork that we were missing. They gave us a week to collect the rest of the paperwork to take to our new appointment. What a long week that was! While we trusted that God’s hand was firmly on the process, it was hard to escape the feeling that their entire future was hanging on one up-or-down decision made at the embassy! It was an exciting day the following Wednesday when the embassy official congratulated the three guys and granted them the visas! As they left, she encouraged them by saying that she hoped they would use their education to come back to transform Honduras one day. With those words, the door to the next stage in their lives had been thrown wide open! After being in a holding pattern since their graduation in November, suddenly the young men only had a month to pack up their lives in Honduras and prepare for their studies at Missouri Baptist! That month flew by as the guys said good-bye to family and friends, packed up their things and began the mental transition to life and study in the U.S. Before they knew it, the day of their departure was upon them! Marvin left a few days before Olvin and Cristino in order to start soccer practice at Missouri Baptist last week. His father, sister and brothers accompanied him to the airport, as did most of the other guys from the Micah Project. It was a bittersweet moment when our friend and brother went through security and boarded the plane! Going off to college is a momentous event in the life of any young person, but the significance of Marvin, Tino and Olvin’s departure was even more remarkable. From the world’s perspective, these young men were destined to failure from a very young age. By this stage in their lives, they should have been in gangs, in jail, or starting a life of alcoholism and drug use. That is how so many kids who spend time on the streets end up! To watch each of these three step onto the plane and head off to college was to know how firmly God has had His hand upon their lives. No worldly barrier was able to stand in their way because their heavenly Father had already ordained the path that they would take. While getting on that plane and heading off to college was the end of a long planning process for these young men, in the same way it is the beginning of another stage of preparation in their lives. As I read through the essay Marvin wrote for his application to Missouri Baptist, it helped me to know what this time of preparation is truly about. He wrote: “Because of my time on the street, I know what the true meaning of the word to “suffer” really is. So like God used other people to help me, I would like to prepare myself in a good university like Missouri Baptist and let God use me with the street kids from Honduras. Gaining this education will help change my world by allowing me to better help other Hondurans.” Reading these words helps me to remember that this journey that Marvin has been on for these last five years at the Micah Project, even so recently meeting his mother and finding healing in that relationship, is a journey that has a definite purpose. Not even Marvin knows in what manner God will choose to use his life to bless others. But, looking at all the ways God has acted in his life up to this moment, we can be sure that His purposes will be victorious in the life of this young man. I want to take this moment to thank each one of you for keeping the faith through these last five years as well. Your continued support and commitment to these guys, and your prayers for them, played a HUGE role in getting them to where they are today. It is an honor for me to be a part of this ministry with you! I look forward to writing you as God continues lead these young men through this next stage in their journey in the next four years. As Marvin, Tino and Olvin begin their classes at Missouri Baptist on August 22, we would appreciate your continued prayers for them. University classes in English will be a shock to their system! I talked to Marvin last night on the phone, and he excitedly told me that he has made the varsity soccer squad at Missouri Baptist. Pray that he will successfully juggle athletics and academics this year! Also, pray that God would raise up good Christian friends at the university who will be a support base for these guys. We also ask for your prayers for David, who will be going to study in Costa Rica in January, and for Jarvin who will begin his studies at a college here in Honduras in September. Finally, pray for Oscar, Danilo, Miguel and Edwin as they graduate from high school this November and begin to seek guidance for their future as well! May our God, who is the restorer of hope and the great guide on this journey, continue to bless you just as you all continue to bless others! Your brother in Christ, Michael Miller |
