Our Trees Are Official

Just this past Friday, we were able to celebrate a major accomplishment for Give Hope 2 Kids.     We try and be intentional about planning for the future of our ministry.  Our long-term plan to help send the Give Hope 2 Kids' children to university (and hopefully to set up an endowment for our work), is to plant tropical hardwood trees.  So far we’ve planted about 11 acres of mahogany and teak trees that will one day help us launch “our kids” into life. 

The main obstacle to  realizing this  goal is that in the past it has been difficult for people to obtain government permits to cut the wood they've grown.  Several months ago, we became aware of a new move in Honduras to give incentives to people who have planted tropical hardwood trees, now that people are committing themselves to reforestation.  We jumped  on the opportunity and joined a USAID program which provides free permits to a limited number of hardwood plantations that are already underway.  This will save our ministry thousands of dollars and means that we can grow with our trees into future  self-sustainability. 

We  often struggle with how long we’ve waited for the government's permission to take in children and this reminds  us to look at the great number of positive things happening as a result of our ministry.  In the past couple of years we've made  big strides in the construction and development of our facility, which will propel us into a great future.  Already we’re touching the lives of the children in our community, through the classes we teach in our local school, as well as our weekly library activities.  And, as you can see in the above photo, our two-year-old trees are growing tall and strong.  Some are already 14' tall and have a 6" diameter and speak of the great future to come.