Building Character and Discipline With Taekwondo
El Progreso is the home of a Taekwondo training center that is benefiting more than 250 children through a Complementary Intervention. This extraordinary activity is getting the attention of boys and girls and is a valuable tool that is helping to improve each child’s character.
Continue Reading ›Ministry Highlight: Honduras
We first began our ministry in Honduras in 1974 when child development centers were opened in Guatemala and El Salvador. Today the ministry in Honduras is made up of 175 child development centers and approximately 41,000 children are registered.
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Who Are the Diamonds in Your Community?
The House of Diamonds Student Center in El Guanabano, Honduras, serves people whose livelihood is found in garbage. But that doesn’t mean they’re garbage themselves.
Rebuilding a Broken Heart
This week I received a letter from Ada, my 13-year-old sponsored girl in Honduras. Compassion had sent me a note a couple of months ago letting me know that her father had passed away.
Who Translates Your Letters?
The Honduras Compassion office receives an average of 15,000 to 18,000 letters per month. The handling of so many letters and packages requires a well-trained correspondence team. This group of people takes their job seriously and knows well how to manage the pressure of receiving so many letters. Every one of them is an expert in every process and committed to keeping up the good work.
It Comes Down to This (Why We Love the Church)
It all comes down to this: The church is not just essential, it is necessary, imperative to change lives and bring social, spiritual, and physical development in this troubled society. Communities see their congregations as a shelter of love, a ray of hope in the midst of the difficult living conditions, a place where their children receive spiritual values that will make them better citizens in the future.
Celebrating Christ and Honduran Culture
One priority of the celebration is to present the gospel through the living testimony of children who are registered in different child development centers. One by one, groups from every center head up to the stage for a special cultural and evangelistic presentation, including messianic dances, mimes, choreography, and songs to exalt the name of Christ.
Undercover With Compassion
I have been feeling challenged lately to get closer to the heart of Compassion, where we interact with sponsors, churches and children. I recently read a quote from a top executive of a large retail chain (I can’t remember which one — maybe Best Buy). He said, “I have never wasted a day visiting a store.” So, I arranged a trip to Honduras where I spent six days at two different child development centers in the central zone of the country … the Honduras Country Office did a marvelous job of setting this trip up so that I could be a regular guy without any fanfare or protocol.
How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating and Get Back to Letter Writing
I’m not sure that I should be admitting that given that I work for Compassion, but there it is. At 31, I’m part of a generation of Canadians for whom letter writing is virtually a foreign concept.
Facebook? No problem. Twitter? Easy. E-mail? Sure. But to sit down and write a letter? That’s different.
“Look After Your Sisters, and Do Something Good With Your Life.”
Just before passing away Vilma’s mother asked Vilma for two things, to look after her sisters and to do something good with her life. So when the news came to Vilma, a graduate of our sponsorship program, that the Compassion Honduras country office was looking for a Partnership Facilitator for the western region, she was immediately interested and started to pray.
Sponsored Child, Radio Evangelist
It is 6 a.m. in the community of Talanga, just 45 kilometers from Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras, and the radio program for children, “Oasis of Love,” is about to start.
One of the commentators is 12-year-old Olvin, the voice for the children in this special radio program produced by his church pastor.
The radio program is organized by the Iglesia de Dios de la Profecia and intends to spread the message of God’s love to every child, through music, Bible stories, a prayer time, and a question and answer time — an important part of the program in which Olvin has a big participation as he expresses his comments over the questions, and later prays for the children’s needs.
Helping Street Children in Honduras
They live in abandoned buildings, cardboard boxes, parks or on the street. They frequent street corners, markets, gas stations, traffic lights and fast-food chains, meddle with the garbage, or sniff glue. Without a doubt, one of the biggest concerns for the Honduran government has been the rising number of children living in the streets — a tough environment without the care and protection of a family.
Children may end up on the streets for several reasons. They may have no choice — they are abandoned, orphaned or disowned by their parents. Or they may choose to live in the streets because of mistreatment or negligence or because their homes cannot provide them with their basic needs.
The majority of street kids live in the capital city of Tegucigalpa or in the second-largest city of the country, San Pedro Sula. Most fled from homes where abject poverty, violence, alcoholism and familial disintegration are the norm. In order to survive, they steal, dig through trash, shine shoes, or do other odd jobs.
Sadly, an estimated 90 percent of them become addicted to toxic “yellow” glue and paint thinner, which is highly addictive and extremely damaging to the human body, causing kidney failure, irreversible brain damage and, in some cases, death.
The reality is that many Honduran street kids do not make it to their 18th birthday because of the dangerous living conditions that prevail in the country. (more…)
