Our Most Recent Mystery

Could Our Honduran Foster Kids Spend The Holiday Season In The USA?

Last year Kim and I announced to our family in Memphis that after 8 years in the foreign mission field we will be home for the 1^st time for Thanksgiving, Christmas and `09 New Year’s Day… and, we’ll try to be here with our Honduran kids for everyone to meet & know. We knew that the process for them to travel with us would be complex. Birth certificates had to be corrected (they had multiple errors). Honduras passports had to be obtained. Then, visas from the US Embassy had to be granted. Our prayer was that if God wanted them to travel with us, then He would make it happen. My 4 Honduran children and I entered the registry of persons in Tegucigalpa in May, as the starting point to this process 7 months before Thanksgiving, so that we would have plenty of time. And, for 7 months we lived in “mystery”, as to whether or not God would make it happen. We prayed faithfully and we asked others to pray with us through this process. As parents, Kim and I “coached” our kids to have faith and to trust God regardless of the outcome. If we can travel together God is good, but if we cannot… God is still good and worthy of our praise. True faith is trusting God during seasons of mystery and trusting Him when He does something different than what we want.

Indeed the process was complex. In a word, our 2 oldest foster daughters (Michelle & Nuri) could not obtain Honduras passports. Being without living mother or father, their maternal grandmother has legal custody of them. But, her last names are different than the last names of the girls, so Honduras immigrations would not let the grandmother sign for their passports. There was no solution to this problem, so they could not travel with us. The 2 younger boys were able to obtain Honduran passports and eventually visas to enter the USA. But, the 7 month mystery continued until 1 day before our travel day when we received in-hand the visas.

The Lord taught me some life-lessons through all this. Allow me to briefly share one with you. Don’t confuse faith in God with optimism. Consider, again, the Abraham/Isaac story (refer to front page). Before Abraham and Isaac headed up the mountain Abraham said to his servants to wait here and the boy and I will return. Hebrews 11 is a commentary for us that Abraham thought that he would kill Isaac and that God would raise him from the dead. That is not what happened. Abraham was optimistic in the midst of a mystery, but God did not “fill-in” the details. There was no “Thus saith the Lord…” Now, faith comes from a Word from God. When God is silent and mysterious we must optimistically trust him. But, just like Abraham’s conversation with his servants keep your optimistic ideas to yourself. They are not to proclaim as “the word of the Lord”. Abraham did not say what was in his mind that they would go up the Mt., he’d kill his son, then God will raise him from the dead. Faith is reserved for the “word of the Lord” because it will come to pass. This is not to be confused with our optimistic thoughts, because we might be wrong.

I was in a similar position for 7 months. I know that God would have Kim and I raise these 4 kids, but to travel to the USA for the holidays… we had no “word from the Lord”. We were tempted to change our optimistic thoughts into the “word of the Lord”, but this would have been wrong. I even had to buy airline tickets based on optimism, based on what I thought would happen, but I could have been wrong and could have wasted our much needed money.

Praise the Lord! Kevin and Jimmy were able to travel with us to the USA and spend Thanksgiving, Christmas, and soon New Year’s Day with us. Thank you all for praying with us and for supporting us as we minister to youth in Honduras (the kids in prison, the youth at the city-dump, the Tolupan Indian youth), but especially to our foster kids during this very exciting time for them.

This Morning's Headlines Were Of More Gang Killings

This Time It Was Our Isabel

Sadly enough we become accustomed to headlines of youth violence and gang killings. But, me and my 4 Honduran kids gathered around the paper today and did no more than just stare at it. It was their sister who was photographed face-down in the street. We had received the news yesterday, but seeing it in the paper today seemed to authenticate the news and opened the emotions that for some reason were dammed-up initially.

Our emotions were of sorrow, of course; we lost someone that we loved. She was one of the first of the girls in the youth prison who placed her faith in Christ when we moved to Honduras nearly 7 years ago. As a new believer in Christ, her request to Kim and me was to visit and help her brothers and sisters, so that they would not follow after the criminal, gang life that she had lived. Kim and I politely refused to go searching around some gang ridden neighborhood with our broken Spanish searching for children that we did not know. The risk would have been too much, but we prayed faithfully with Isabel each week for her little brothers and sisters. And, as the Lord would have it… they came knocking on our front door, begging for food, clothes, or whatever we could give them. Well, to make a God-story short… these 4 little brothers and sisters became a part of our home and our hearts.

Not only did we feel sorrow, upon hearing this news, but we all shared the surprising emotion of anger. It was not anger at the gun men. It was anger that seemed to be directed at Isabel for not taking what was offered to her by the Lord, and by so many others who wanted to help her live right. Shortly after her release from the prison nearly 2 years ago, we all saw a gradual redirection to the life-style that eventually lead to her death.

A pessimist would look-on and doubt our effectiveness… that there was no change and she died tragically like most other gang members. “Tragedy”, yes, it is a tragedy, but I believe that her faith in the Lord Jesus Christ was real and that she was born-again as a daughter of the Lord Most High... the same Lord who gives tragic stories tremendous endings. I believe that just seconds after Isabel closed her eyes on that dusty curb-side path, she opened her eyes to see her heavenly Father, face to face. Not only would the optimist consider this, but would also consider the victory that is won in the lives of her 4 little brothers and sisters who are now my sons and daughters. They each have also placed their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They all just finished their school-year strong last week, as they all studied their hearts-out. Because of their history of years on the streets, they are all behind educationally. But, that has just given them each a gratitude for school and a desire to study all the more, and to be whatever the Lord leads them to be.

Regarding Isabel’s prayer from 6 years earlier and her request to Kim and me to help her brothers and sisters, it is being fulfilled. Her little brothers and sisters are not following in the life-style that so entangled her life. Accepting the Lord’s wisdom, Michelle, Nuri, Kevin, and Jimmy see through the lies of the devil and, now, know well the end result of the popular and glamorized gang-life.