Since we started GiveHope2Kids, we have had some great volunteers walk these paths, teach classes, play with kids, and just in general get the job done.  We always hope and pray that the time they spend here leaves an imprint on their worldview and changes their lives for the better.  The hard part with volunteers is saying good-bye, parting ways, and not knowing when our paths will cross again.

We've just had to say good-bye again.  In the month of August, we had two volunteer families head off to the next adventure.  But even in seeing them leave, we are excited for their futures and what God will do through them.  They are headed out with the long-term goal of launching more homes for orphaned and abandoned children!  

It is humbling and exciting to see God use our imperfect selves to help plant other Children's Homes.  Both of these families saw GiveHope2Kids as their training ground, so we can pass on the model of a family-style and community-focused Children's Home.

To the Johnsons and the Bakers, we want to say thank you for the time you served here.  We want you to know that we are praying God's fullest blessings upon you as follow his path for your lives.

Kelvin & Monica Johnson served with us for 2 1/2 years and you can now find them in Ecuador.

Jacob & Cynthia Baker volunteered here for just over a year.  Their family will soon be headed to India.

We live in the country of Honduras, where girls can be stolen. 

In Spanish they use the verb robar, to rob or steal.  Where we live, people use this word to describe a few different relational contexts.

1)      Getting Married – If young people don’t have money for a wedding (meaning that they can’t afford to feed the whole village a nice meal), then they might choose to get “married” unofficially.  This is how most of the previous generation got married.  They would generally have their parent’s consent.  The guy would come get the girl in the night sometime and then they’d be considered married.

2)      Eloping – Sometimes without parental consent a girl will be stolen in the night.  The girl is choosing to run away and live with a guy.  Maybe it’s a secret relationship with the boy down the street.  Or, maybe it’s a married guy in his 50s (or older) that’s promised a better life to a girl (we’ve seen as young as 11).

3)      Kidnapping – And then there’s kidnapping.  Men do it as revenge between feuding families or because they think (know) they can live beyond the law.  Thankfully this isn’t commonplace anymore, but it does still happen.

The first two methods of “marriage” are the norm here and often just what’s expected.  Girls often don’t see any other choice for their lives, so they settle for these (usually) short-term relationships.  Some of these “marriages” work, but generally it seems that they’re over in a few months or a couple years. 

The girls are normally left with a kid or two and no way to support themselves, since they probably never finished their education and live in a country with an unemployment rate of about 30%.  They often move home with their parents until they find a new relationship.  And often the new relationship isn’t interested in the kids from the last one, thus more “orphans.”  There’s not much hope in this system. 

So, how are we offering hope?  We’re helping to educate kids from our community and teaching them skills like English and computers so they’re more employable.  We’re encouraging kids to stay in school (and not get “married” so young), and giving some young people work so they can pay for their school fees.  In our Friday Youth Group, we’re teaching about good marriages and how to break out of negative family cycles.  And we’re providing a solid family and home for some of these orphaned and abandoned kids in our Children’s Home.  We hope and pray that God will use our efforts to help change a generation!

Part 1: Teenage Moms

We had a very busy summer with four different groups that came to serve here at GiveHope2Kids.  It was a summer of reconnecting with good friends, as all were repeat groups for us, full of familiar faces.  Each and every team worked hard and were a joy to host.

To start out in June, and just 10 days after the birth of Micah, we hosted a group from Destiny in Alabama.  This team helped us build wooden tables, benches, and a couch for each of the kid's homes.  They also painted and moved fill dirt into our Community Kitchen.  One of the most special moments from this week was watching this team teach some woodworking skills to our kids.

Then we hosted a team from Cloverhill in Virginia. They tackled organizing, painting, and more with a lot of energy.  They got the very "down to earth" experience of building a mud oven for our Community Kitchen and they took time to do some leadership training for our house-parents.  

We planned our bridge project around a group from Cornerstone in Virginia.  They brought lots of young, eager workers who helped dig, move rocks, paint cables, and more.  It was a BIG project that week and really made the difference to have so many hands.

Our last group of the summer was from Lancaster, in Northern Minnesota.  They mixed a LOT of cement by hand to help us pour the floor in the Community Kitchen.  This group also did some organizing projects and helped us with fun activities for our kids.

We want to say a big THANKS to everyone who came to serve at GiveHope2Kids.  We enjoyed having you and appreciate the sacrifice you made to come and work.

The bridge project was completely finished this week, and just after it was done we started to get our first big rains of the year. This bridge is going to be a huge blessing!  Many thanks to the Sowers family and their expertise in these projects and the youth of Cornerstone Assembly of God for making this project possible.

When I started this grand adventure May 31, 2013, I never knew how much of an impact it would have on my life. I went from not knowing about my future to being almost one hundred percent sure. I give all my thanks to God and to the wonderful opportunity I have had here at Give Hope 2 Kids. 

Before this year I have never been involved in missions. I have always had a heart for mission work, but have never listened. This year has made me realize how much I want and need to be involved in mission work. When I get home I plan on becoming more involved in missions with my church. I am really looking forward to this. 

Give Hope 2 Kids is my family. I have multiple moms, dads, brothers, and sisters. I have witnessed some amazing parenting from all of our wonderful house parents. They all have so much love and patience for all of the children here. One of the things that I really love is how the kids call their house parents mom and dad. They have made a huge impact in their lives. 

I have also had the privilege of being friends with some fantastic young men and women. It makes me so happy to see the young teenagers and adults take on leadership roles in the church. I love attending church and seeing them praise God with song, speech, instruments, and dance. I know that God has huge plans for all of them.

This year I have been able to work with two little boys in particular who have special needs. They have made tremendous progress and continue surprising us with their new abilities. Even though I was teaching them, they were the ones that changed my life. I always knew that I wanted to work with special needs children. These two little boys have made me realize that I want to go back to school to earn my masters in special education and start a non-profit preschool for special needs children. The idea of the center is to prepare the special needs preschooler for kindergarten. This is a very big dream, but I know this is God’s plan for me. I thank God every day for what he has done and what he will do. Big dreams are possible. 

This brings me to my last paragraph. It’s taken me a while to write this because I know I will be leaving soon. It’s hard to believe that I will going home April 6th. I have had several people ask me if I am ready to leave. The answer is always no and yes. No, I’m not ready to leave everybody and my work here. Yes, I’m ready to turn a page in my life. Honduras has been one of the best chapters in my life and it will never end. I may be going away now, but I will always come back. My heart will always be in Honduras and with Give Hope 2 Kids.

Young teenage moms are commonplace in Honduras.  Statistics from a major hospital here record that the average first pregnancy is at 15-years-old. 

I could probably write all day on our observations of and experiences with teenage moms here, but I’ll try to simplify it into a few main points:

• It’s common and even fairly acceptable for a girl of 13 or 14 to run away with an older guy.  Teenage girls often see this as an escape, often from boredom or an abusive parent or stepparent.  People here call this “getting married,” but there’s usually not a wedding and the relationships generally don’t last long.

• Young girls here often feel trapped by poverty and a lack of options for their lives.  In Honduras, most kids don’t study beyond the 6th grade or the 9th grade, especially in rural areas.  It’s common to be 14, be out of school, and have no job prospects or anything else different over the horizon.  For a young girl, finding a guy and having a baby might seem like a "start" to their lives.

• People here, especially in rural areas, assume that you have to have your babies very early in life.  You’re supposed be finished having kids by your mid-20s.  People don’t criticize teenage moms; it’s normal and expected.

It’s a common scenario for a girl of 20 to have two babies from two different men and be currently alone.  What options does she have?  She’ll either have to move home and hope her parents can support her family, or leave her kids behind and look for work in the city, or find a new man.  If she does find a new man, he very well may say he doesn’t want her other kids.  

Teenage moms often can’t support a baby, financially or emotionally.  Moms sometimes abandon their kids in an effort to "start over" in life when they feel they've run out of options.

In our years in Honduras we've seen this story repeated over and over.    So many girls we know have gotten pregnant young and stopped short their dreams of an education and career.  Unfortunately, they don't believe that they have any other options in life.  

Part of our job here is to encourage girls and help them set goals for their futures.  We tell them to wait for marriage until they're older and educated, and tell them that they're worth waiting for.  We are teaching young people how to have healthy marriages and good parenting skills.  Hopefully we can encourage positive change, for a better future for Honduras and it's young people.

As we head towards the winter months and the holiday season, it means certain things to us in Honduras and at Give Hope 2 Kids.  Since they don’t celebrate Halloween or Thanksgiving here, things move from celebrating Honduras’ independence in September, straight to Christmas decorations in October.  (Thankfully, I don’t think I’ve heard Christmas music in the stores yet, but now that October is over, I’m sure “Frosty the Snowman” will make the airwaves.  Let’s not let Frosty get us too off-track  though.)

The end of October means that school is wrapping up for the year.  We never quite know when the public school will end, until about a week out.  This year there are two different heads over the public education system giving two different end dates for classes!

For our Afterschool Program, we’re ending along with the private schools.  All the kids just finished their final tests for the quarter and now we’re hosting a carnival day to celebrate how well they’ve all done.

Our Afterschool Program went so well this fall.  We’ve taught classes full of enthusiastic learners and seen so much progress in them.  Having a more focused program, with kids that are attending because they want to be here, makes a great learning environment.  The English students have made faster headway than in their previous classes, the drum class can keep time with a simple drumbeat, and the youngest class experienced learning as an adventure through oceans and cities and a pirate treasure hunt, among other things.

Here the winter months include long rainy days, where it gets cool enough to enjoy sweatshirts and warm drinks.  It’s a time where things move a little slower, so we can take a few deep breaths and regroup from the busier months.  During our months of school vacation, we’ll pare back our educational activities to a simple Library Program, more like what we did in the past.  We’ll offer reading time and activities in an informal setting. 

So here’s to more time for family and friends in this next season of the year!

September is a busy month in Honduras, mostly because two of the big holidays fall in this month.   First we celebrated Dia del Niño, Kid's Day.  This year the kids had a party with a piñata in either school or preschool, depending on their age, and then we hosted a carnival during Library time.  Click here to see more photos of our Dia del Niño partying.

Right after Dia del Niño comes Honduras' Independence Day.  The biggest tradition here is that all the kids march in parades with their school.  This year we had kids in every section of our village parade, from the military corp, to the pom-pom squad.  The kids really enjoy participating in this show of national pride.

This September though, we were even busier than normal, because of our new classes, called Tutoria Estudantíl La Esperanza.  Below you can see all the kids lined up on the first day by class level.  We have 60 kids coming, from 4 villages!

The older kids are studying English and computers, taking a music class, and participating in Bible, library time, and sports.  These classes are much more formal than anything we've done on-site before and the kids are really responding and rising to the occasion.  More parents are asking when their kids can start.

Somehow we always think we're building as much building as we'll need, and then we start a new program like this.  We've already outgrown all our Library and office areas!  The above English class is in the "garage."  Plans are already in the works to add on more classroom space to this area.

We're tutoring the younger kids in the basics: reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, and incorporating other fun learning activities into their class time, like pirate treasure hunts!

We just had a heartbreaking thing happen around 11:30 this morning. For reasons that are still unknown to us, the six new children that have lived here for less than a month were taken away by social services. We all gathered around them, gave them hugs and kisses, and prayed together with them. I don't know why things happen the way they do sometimes, but I do know that God has a plan for every one of those precious kids. Please help us pray for Carlos, Ingris, Agustín, Jorgito, Yensi, and Dennis. Even though we are all upset, I feel that in the time we had to watch over them, that we did the best that we could of showing them that we love them and that God loves them. We'll send out more updates as soon as we know more. We would appreciate your prayers for our ministry and our work here.

Update:  These kids were put up for international adoption.

The ministry of Give Hope 2 Kids couldn't function without great volunteers.  We've been blessed through the years with awesome volunteers, people who have come and helped us love kids and do excellent ministry work.  This season, we have our largest volunteer force to date.  We're doing more than ever before with education for our community and it's all thanks to these great people.

Kelvin & Monica Johnson, with their daughter Kelly, have served with us for over a year and a half now and have made a big difference in our ministry.  They have tackled a wide range of projects while they've been here, from hosting groups, to working on construction projects, to throwing parties for our kids.  They currently lead in the planning of the Friday Night Youth Group and the community classes we teach.  The Johnsons plan to stick around GH2K for at least another year or two and we're certainly grateful for the role they've played in our lives and ministry.

Recently, another family moved down to work with us: Jacob & Cynthia Baker, and their girls, Maddie & Myra.  All four of them have jumped in here with hearts to serve.  They expect to be with us for a couple of years and we're looking forward to spending that time with them.  Their family is involved in a wide variety of activities, from collecting eggs (the girls big job), to co-leading the preschool class, to administrative work, to leading the volunteer "church."

Leah is an awesome gal who is part-way through her year volunteering for GH2K.  She is our resident librarian, who organizes the Library and much of the Library Program and classes.  The spark she's added to the Library is huge!  Leah also co-teaches the preschool class.  We really appreciate her great attitude and willing heart.

In July, Kaitlen came and started her year of volunteering here.  Kaitlen is assisting with teaching English, preschool classes, and is using her passion for soccer to spend time with kids here.  She has a great heart for the kids and we really enjoy that about her.

And here's an updated photo of the our family.  We're Jason & Sarah Furrow, the directors of GH2K, and our kids are Josiah & Eliana.