June Ministry Update

Tegucigalpa, Honduras: I pressed the money in her hand while fighting back the tears. It was all I had on me; just $4.00, but it represented half a day’s salary in this place. This woman, who looked much older than me, but who was undoubtedly younger, had just lost her 25 year old son. In this place of cold hard reality, he had made a deadly mistake. While digging through garbage in the dump just outside Tegucigalpa, Honduras for food to eat and plastics and cardboard to sell to recyclers, this young man had found a bottle of pop. There is no water at the dump so he opened the bottle and drank it. It wasn’t pop, it was poison and in a matter of minutes he was dead.

I told his mother I would pray for her and for her son’s children as well. Her grief-stricken face held no hope. Most people in this place know no hope. Just mind-numbing work full of danger from disease, violence, and a poisoned environment. The life expectancy at the dump is forty years, a desperate reality for 1,000 people, including 250 children who live in the dump.

Along with the national church, WGM is reaching out to these people by providing free education for the children, with a hope that with education we can save them from this hell on earth. And by introducing them to Jesus we can save them from an eternal hell without Christ. Their parents are willing to let them come to school part of the day if we pay them something to compensate the loss of income to the family. These children earn a dollar a day digging through the trash. The norm in this place is for girls to sell their bodies starting at age ten. That is if a garbage truck doesn’t back over them as they scramble to get the choicest morsels as it is dumping its load of garbage. That is unfortunately part of the hard reality of this place.

Nothing has quite effected me like the Tegucigalpa dump. I didn’t even know this existed in the years I served as a missionary in Honduras. Now I know. The Honduran pastor and his wife who pour out their lives in this place left good paying jobs in faith when they learned of this place and dedicated themselves full-time to rescuing these children.





Mendoza, Argentina: I sipped mate, a hot drink made from a local herb mix and shared amongst friends, while my friend who lives and ministers there led a Bible study with Daniel and Maria, two new followers of Jesus Christ. Daniel is in the highest economic levels of Argentine society, working with international investors in the economy. We were in their beautiful home enjoying their gracious hospitality as we studied God’s word together. We were studying Luke 11 where Jesus tells the people he will give them no sign except the sign of Jonah. Daniel commented, “I’ve don’t know the story of Jonah.” So we went to the book of Jonah and read the whole story. We spent another hour discussing it.

These two stories from my travels to our fields of Honduras and Argentina are vastly different with one common thread. Both people at the top echelons of Argentine society and in the dumps of Honduras will go to an eternity without Christ unless we do something. Spiritually, they are equally needy.

Of course, we all have people all around us who don't know that God knows them completely and loves them so completely that He gave his only son so that whoever believes in Jesus can spent eternity with Him. Who will help them understand what that means?

Welcome to our Blog!

With all the busy-ness of today, hopefully we will make good use of the weblog technology in attempting to keep you up-to-date on our family and our ministry.

I have to admit to clinging to old ways for quite some time now until the practical matter that I just wasn't getting news of our lives out frequently enough forced me to try something new.

In 1995, when I started working at WGM headquarters we were still using a dictation machine and typing letters up on an IBM selectric typewriter! That has all been replaced by e-mail and has gone the way of too many other items from our lives--placed in a museum display in the Indianapolis Children's museum.

So, we'll give this a try and see how we all like it. Here's to keeping in touch!