We are home

After 6 weeks of family and traveling in the USA, we returned to Honduras on the 24th of September. We hit the ground running and that is the way life in Honduras is. Just as an update, we are working on a number of ministry areas and projects. Today, I would like to update some of them and introduce others.
1. Casa de Esperanza is our home and where 19 beautiful kids live. We are working toward a small expansion in numbers - while we were gone, we added 2 new kids but, there was some issue between the mother, IHNFA, and the judge and they were taken back to the mother after living in Casa for about 2 weeks. It now looks like they will be coming back to live at Casa permanently however, in the true spirit of government work, the once completed paperwork must start over.
2. The Farm at Zambrano is progressing under the watch of Nathan Hale. Nate with several of our teams has completed more than 20 drip rows and is working toward getting electricity and fish tanks installed. Once built, we will be seeking employees from the dump to come and work with us.
3. Work at the dump continues and we feed every Wednesday, we support a minister that is doing a bible study with about 20 to 30 every morning at 9. We are also working to help any way we can with the school Amor, Fe, y Esperazna - this school educates children of the dump and teaches them about Jesus. We have agreed to help them with a scholarship for one of their students that is part of the first graduation in the 9 year old school.
The annual Jesus Banquet at the Dump will be on December 7.
4. We continue to work with the import and distribution of containers of food, clothing, and medical supplies. So far this year, we have imported 14 food containers - each with about 280,000 meals and a total value close to 1.5 million dollars. We have also imported another 12 containers of clothing and medical supplies with untold value. Right now, there are 2 containers waiting release - one of them has a new Cat Scan for the public hospital in Tegucigalpa.
5. We just purchased in partnership with Bread for a Hungry World, two pressed earth block machines. We are excited to begin using these valuable tools - one of the first projects will be in Campemento where we will build a village of eventually 200 homes, a feeding center, a church, and a school.
6. We are moving toward development of our mission house project. This place will house our mission teams and will support the planned development of another Casa campus.
7. We have begun discussions on developing water projects as a part of our ministry. Plans are to have a conference call in the coming days to formulate our strategy.
8. We still have 4 teams coming in the balance of 2011 and already have plans for 20 in 2012. New teams from Oregon and California are already making plans for next year.
We want everything we do to have Jesus in the middle of it. We want to be able to share the good news of the Kingdom to the people that need His Hope and are confident that when they see his good news in action, they will be receptive to hearing about what he can mean to them.
Blessings and thanks for keeping us in your daily prayer.
Marc