Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Forgotten Children's Ministries trip

from the Forgotten Children's Ministries website: 
Our mission is to rescue the forgotten and abandoned street children of Honduras. Psalm 9:18 states, "The needy will not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the afflicted perish forever."

FCM changes the lives of "high risk" children.
Many of these children come in at a very young age addicted to huffing glue, used to lives lived on the street, and doing anything they can to provide for themselves.

They are transformed into children who know the Lord loves them, they know they have a family who cares for them, they have a passion for serving the Lord, and they have a passion to help children who are still on the street.

One boy shared his testimony with us one night. He came into the program at 10 years old addicted to drugs after living on the street for 4 years. At his initial psychological assessment the doctor said his brain was fried from all the drugs and he would never learn anything new. He admitted the first few years were tough, he ran away at one point. They allowed him to come back and now he is in university studying to be a computer programmer. All he wants to do now is find the doctor and let him know that he( the doctor) and the world might have said one thing about him but the Lord had plans for him. He hopes to work as a computer program and mentor the new boys who come into FCM.

Another boy names Carlos - I am not sure his story but if I had to guess probably very similar to the boy's testimony.  Carlos is in high school. Every day when he gets out of school he hurries to his room grabs his bible and his guitar.  Sometimes he even  forgets to even change out of his uniform. And he heads to the streets of Tegucigalpa to preach. We actually met him out walking the streets while delivering food one day. He joined our small group. I thought he would probably just walk around with us but at the first house Carlos totally took me by surprise. He pulls up a chair next to this lady gets out a bible and begins to share what the Lord has done in his life. No holding back for this teenager. I know the Lord has HUGE plans for him.


Grace was loved on in one week more than she has been in her entire life… and that says a TON. She was spoiled by all of our friends from Alabama and she has 16 new big brothers.  The girl has it made.
Before each meal we all gathered in the courtyard in a circle held hands and prayed. One afternoon I am not totally sure what happened because my eyes were closed but Grace fell during the prayer hitting her head on a step. The sound itself told me it HURT. She began to scream at the top of her lungs. I fell to the ground holding her as tight as I could while praying her skull was not cracked open and afraid to look. After everyone finished praying 16 little boys circled around Grace, very concerned, rubbing her back, and giving her their brand new toy cars. Everyone went upstairs to eat and I stayed in the courtyard with a few others to calm Grace down and access the damage. Turns out she got her first goose egg and that was all. But she was still pretty upset for a while. The boys teacher came out and said "okay, y'all can go upstairs and eat now" and the boys refused to go until Grace was better and able to go with them.  That might have been my favorite moment of the trip, seeing so much care, love, concern in the eyes of these little boys who not too long ago were rough, tough street kids.

Monday, July 16, 2012

We are HOME!  We had a wonderful time of serving with friends at Forgotten Children's Ministries. I will tell some stories in another post. I was very encouraged and blessed and Grace had a BLAST!