It's been 11 days since I left home, 8 days since I left the USA, and 6 days since we arrived here in Honduras. Seems like so much longer! Still hard for me to believe that it's barely week 2 of this 11 month adventure. Nuts!
Our ministry for Month 1 is located in in El Tizatillo — about 15 min south of Tegucigalpa, Honduras (the capital). This fabulous place is called 'Ministerio Puerta de Sion', in English: Gates of Zion Ministries. It's a boys home, run my an American named Tony Deien, who came to Honduras on a mission trip, from his comfy home in Salt Lake City, Utah 4 years ago, and has never the same guy since. As Tony puts it, "I had 40 years of living the American dream, and after coming here, I decided – why not write a new book?" And so he does.
While here on his mission trip, Tony met a Honduran pastor who changed his life. He told Tony, "I want to disciple you. And not the North American way — an hour a week in my office. I want you to do life with me. To move in with me and my family and actually do life day to day with me to see how God works in our lives and in our community." At first, Tony (like many of us) was not so sure about the proposition. He went home to Salt Lake City, but he couldn't get this pastor or his offer out of his head.
After a few months of wrestling with it, he figured what the hell — and he headed down to Honduras. For 6 months, he did life with this pastor. And during that time, he started his first outreach. He was at church and noticed that some of the children complaining they were hungry– so he started a Breakfast Outreach. He would bring breakfast to church for a handful of boys to eat. He asked them to bring their friends, and pretty soon he was feeding dozens and dozens of children every morning of the week. And for Tony, that was the beginning of the end!
Now, he is married to a beautiful Honduran woman named Nydia, who has a background working in the nonprofit world and a similar heart to serve the lost and forgotten, and the two of them now run a 10 acre property where about a dozen once dumpster-diving, paint thinner-sniffing, homeless boys from the ages of 5 to 18 call home. Tony, Nydia, and the North American missionaries they are almost always hosting send these boys to school, feed them 3 meals a day, hold nightly bible studies, and basically serve as an adopted family.
Tony took to heart what that Honduras Pastor taught him, he not only teaches, houses, and loves these boys, he disciples them day in and day out. He does life with them. He bandages bumps and bruises on the little ones and deals with the rebellious drama the teenagers bring in on a regular basis.
Tony doesn't expect the boys to learn to trust God the Father's love until they've been shown an earthly Father's love. Think about it, if you'd never been loved and then someone told you there was a God in Heaven that loved you infinitely — would you believe it? Heck, it's hard enough to believe even when you are familiar with love! So Tony does what I aspire to do– he shows people God's love in a tangible way. The boys learn to trust Tony & his love, and then they learn to trust the Father God Tony introduces them to and His infinite, transforming love. It seems to be working out pretty well 😉
Tony leaves the gates open here. The boys know they are welcome to stay and they are welcome to leave. All of them are here by choice. And some have left to go back to the streets. Some have left and returned. But many more have stayed. The Gates of Zion here in Honduras and just like God's gates– they swing both ways. You stay on your own regard. But for those of us who have walked in and out of those gates, we know it pays to stay 🙂
I am proud to be serving alongside someone like Tony who wholeheartedly follows what God puts on his heart — even when he doesn't know what the end result will look like. He listen's to God's voice and he follows. There's about 53 World Racers here who are glad he did. And I'm looking at a few budding young men who are also glad he did. Tony is definitely writing 'a new book' — not only for his life, but for generations to come in each of these boys' lives.
