Monday, June 22, 2009

2009 Adventures

Thanksgiving week we will be hosting an amazing building project.
The Plan - let's build 30 houses in 5 or 6 days, spend Thanksgiving day in a feast, and show our thanks by giving! It's simple, make your flight reservations, start asking everyone you know to help us build houses, and come on down.
December 9th will be the Jesus Banquet at the dump. We are going to have a sit down meal for everybody that spends their days in the dump. We will follow lunch with a Christmas party for the people there too.
Any and everyone is invited to come and be a part of either or both of these events.
Be a blessing to somebody today.
Marc

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Finally

When we ship a container from the USA to here - it usually takes about 10 to 14 days from shipment to our warehouse here in Tegucigalpa. On May 9th we shipped a container of rice meals from Minneapolis to here - expecting that the time would be a bit more. The load went through the Great Lakes and Erie Canal - to NYC and then to Puerto Cortez. It arrived in the country on June 3 and we did everything to make sure that the inspections and paperwork would allow the shipment to be released quickly. Bad paper work means that your shipment doesn't get released and demurage charges then add up. Well, our good intentions didn't make the system work very fast and instead of 3 or 4 days in port, it took 17 days. Finally the container shipped out of Puerto Cortez yesterday and was to arrive at my warehouse on Monday or Tuesday. Got a call at 11:45 this morning and surprise, the truck was rolling and would be at the bodega at 1:00. Quickly changed plans and FINALLY, soemthing like 300,000 servings of a wonderful rice and vegetable meal have been unloaded in the warehouse. I can't wait to see the kids that will benefit from this food.
Be a blessing to somebody today!
Marc

Monday, June 01, 2009

May 2009

May began in Texas for me. I was able to spend about a week in the Texas Panhandle visiting with my parents and speaking in 3 different locations.
On May the 5th, an amazing event took place. Trey Morgan, the minister of the Childress, TX Church of Christ had heard about our work in the Tegucigalpa city dump. Trey writes a very popular blog and for several weeks he had been announcing that May 5 was going to be "dump day". The goal was to raise funds to help us with food purchases for the weekly feeding program. Nobody really knew just how much would be raised and we were all amazed that the end of the day total was almost $11,500. Most of the pledges have been sent and the total is very close to the amount that was pledged.
I returned on the 8th of May and quickly began to prepare for the coming TORCH Mission season. My first group of the year arrived on May the 20th. It was a small first time group from Middle Tennessee State University. There is a CoC student center there and in late 2008 they decided that they wanted to come to Honduras. We were blessed to have this team and they worked very hard while they were here (20th to the 31st). We built 3 houses, distributed food to 150 families, helped complete a block house and added walls to another house, we fed the people at the dump - the first home cooked hot meal -, we visited the Santa Katerina mission area, Hospital Escuela, the special needs home, and Casa de Esperanza.
The dump fund raiser was instrumental in allowing us to change the menu and the first home prepared hot meal was a rousing success.
While in the Santa Katerina area, I was able to interview a young family man that has experience in preaching and has a desire to work in the church plant project. I secured a list of references from him and will be making contact with them to help make a decision. The ground in Santa Katerina is prepared for construction and the community is more than ready to begin. I plan to begin making block and supply purchases within 2 weeks. We hope to begin feeding and teaching in July. There is a container on the water with food for the center. It should arrive in Tegucigalpa within days and there are more than 271,000 rice/vegetable meals that are dedicated to feeding the children of Santa Katerina.
Casa de Esperanza is doing very well and we are preparing to add children to our new house. This will happen in the month of June. Cash flow here is a bit slow so please pray that people that have made pledges to take care of our kids are able to continue to do so.
June and July are very very busy months. I will be helping with several mission teams in June and from June 28 to August 9 will be leading more than 250 people as they come here to work and minister. Please pray for the work this summer.
Be a blessing to somebody today!
Marc L Tindall