Christmas 2010

Pictures from the Jesus Banquet - The Dump, Tegucigalpa, HN Dec 8, 2010

The past 4 weeks have been a crush. Tons happening in Honduras leading up to the 11th of December - when our teams departed and we too headed to the USA. My good intentions of sharing something more than a new FaceBook status were not to be.

We had an amazing team of builders in Honduras during the annual build week - and Thanksgiving at Casa de Esperanza was wonderful. Some folks stayed around and we moved quicky into the week of the Jesus Banquet and once again, our God "blew us away". We served over 1100 an amazing meal, at the same time people were being fed, we had a store set up at the school - Amor, Fe, y Esperanza. People were able to shop for clothing, toys, shoes, and other things for themselves and their families. And! While the food was served and the store was shopped, a water purification system was being installed for the community around the dump. We finished the week with the construction of 2 houses, feeding children, working in the Mololoa Day Care Center, and buying and distributing more than 300 bags of fresh veggies for the families in Nueve Oriental.

We flew out to the USA on the afternoon of December 11 and were able to spend Sunday with churches in Shawnee, OK and Wheeler, TX. A few days with family in Borger and then on to IL - just outside of St Louis. We have many more miles to go before we head back to Honduras on January 19 - we will be back in TX for Christmas this weekend and we get to speak 3x at the Borger Church. In January we will be in Columbus, MS, Tupelo, MS (twice), Starkville, MS, Baton Rouge, LA, & finish up at the Gulf Coast Getaway in Panama City Beach - FL.

We are finishing up an amazing year and having a great time with our friends and family here in the USA. We believe that 2011 holds even more surprises.

We already have in the plans a lot of construction projects -

The Garden of Eden at the Dump will begin in mid April and will hopefully be operational and producing 1000's of pounds of food every month - by the end of 2011.

Casa de Esperanza II will be housing our mission teams and will b e very close to accepting new kids by this time in 2011.

The Garden of Eden - Campemento will likely begin construction by December of 2011.

Teams are already forming and formed - for much of 2011. Spring break will likely increase from 25 in 2010 to 65 in 2011. We will have a team in Honduras every week from May 12 to August 7. We will have at least one team on the ground in every month of the year - with the exception of February 2011. Amazing that just 4 years ago, we led one team to Honduras. We are so blessed to introduce people to the work that we love and that so many love it as much as we do.

Casa de Esperanza will be drilling for water in February of 2011 (we hope and pray).

We will continue to work with churches and communities in Honduras that need churches. We are working on ways to disciple people in the dump. We want to put Jesus at the center of everything we do.

This time of year, the world remembers the birth of Jesus. With that in mind, I want to wish everybody that stops by a very happy Christmas. I pray that your day is blessed and that you know that the Jesus of the Christmas story is alive and well. He is real and he is the reason for this season - although, I am not so sure he would care so much about the way many choose to celebrate this season.

My prayer for 2011 is a bit different - I pray that God will shake things up and make lots of people uncomfortable. I pray that people will start to look around for ways that they can help somebody that really needs a hand - and then do it. I pray that more of us will learn to give - maybe even learn to be excited about selling something important and giving it away to somebody that is hungry or can't pay a bill. I pray that people will stop thinking that good and faithful means going to sit in a pew once or twice a week - instead, I pray that they read about what Jesus says about helping others when he said "whatever you did for the least of these...you did it for me".

Blessings,

Marc