Larenda Haden is a tall, pretty, friendly 20 year old from Rogersville,
MO.
How do you even get from Rogersville, MO
to Antigua, Guatemala?
She and her roommates blessed us with dinner and fellowship
a few weeks ago. She reminds me a little
of one of my former “students”. When you
were a youth minister for 16 years that happens!
Larenda is barely 20 years old. She’s got two older brothers and a younger
sister. It’s not terribly unusual to
meet a 20 year old American girl in Antigua. The town is full of college-age students
spending a semester or more down here learning Spanish. There are maybe 75 language schools in town!
What is unusual is that a 20 year old girl from Missouri
is down here getting ready to launch a Ministry that God laid on her heart
about a year ago.
Larenda has a contagious smile- and the braces make her look
even younger than she is. She loves art
and thought from the time she was about 5 years old that she would be an Art
Teacher. But things happened as they so
often do. She and her closest brother
both became Christians when they were little.
Their parents didn’t go to church but because they were persistent,
(demanding, Larenda would say), her Dad made sure they either got to church or
to their Grandparents for church on Sundays.
When Larenda was 12 years old she attended church camp with
her Grandmother’s church, rededicated her young life to Christ and began to
grow in that relationship. That’s when
she started demanding to go to church!
Between her junior and senior year of high school she went
on her first mission trip- to Mexico
I think, and God grabbed her heart for missions. She managed to squeeze in one year of college
in Springfield before coming to Antigua
for 3 months of language study last January. She already had an internship in Mexico
lined up for the summer of ’06 and just assumed God was preparing her for a
life of missions in Mexico. And she was close. What happened next I think is still as much a
surprise for her as it is to anyone that hears her story.
Nearing the end of her language study last March God powerfully spoke to her
about her future using Jeremiah 29:11,
“
For I know the plans
I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to
harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”. The message wasn’t just about her
future. It was about the future and the
hopes and the dreams of children and teenagers on the streets of Antigua. Kids
she had been befriending while learning the language. It was about the future and the hopes and the
dreams of kids too poor to even have hopes and dreams. God was calling her to Antigua
to begin The Jeremiah Project.
Larenda finished her 3 months of language study. She completed her internship in Mexico. She went home. Came back.
Went home again. But she couldn’t shake the kids in Antigua and she
couldn’t shake God’s call on her life.
So in January of this year she returned to Antigua
with a laptop and a mission. Much of her
time since then has been spent researching all the “how to’s” of starting a
ministry. She’s learned a lot! At this point she’s probably earned at least
a minor in “Dealing with Beaurocracy/ Starting a Non Profit in a Foreign
Country/Leasing Land/ Hiring Staff/ Developing Programs” and the list goes on.
The Jeremiah Project is on target to begin on July 2, 2007. It is
essentially a Lunch Program with Activities.
Kids will be required to “enroll” in the program to ensure some
accountability on their part. The program
will be free for them with funds being raised through sponsorships and other
funding avenues. If a kid misses 5 days
in any given month, they’ll have to wait until the next month to re-enroll and
begin again.
The actual program will look something like this:
·
Hired cooks will arrive early enough in the
morning to prepare the lunch meal.
·
Kids will arrive and eat lunch between Noon and 1:30.
·
Clean-up between 1:30
and 2:00
·
Activities from 2:00-3:30ish…
to include but not be limited to:
o
Monday-
Reading/Writing
o
Tuesday-
Art Class
o
Wednesday-
Bible Study
o
Thursday-
Math Tutoring
o
Friday-
Recreation
You can really hear Larenda’s heart when she starts explaining that this is
so much more than a Lunch Program. She
said she would welcome short term help in the form of mission teams and
individuals, but she really wants long term help because her heart beats to
build relationships with these kids.
These kids need the free lunch.
And the activities certainly won’t hurt them either. But they really need long term relationships
with Christians that will love them into the Kingdom. Larenda is praying that a lot of her long
term help will be from Guatemalan Christians.
How Can You Help?
Larenda is still praying about a location to house this ministry. She thinks she has one but it is overpriced
and doesn’t have a kitchen and needs some repairs. I could think of at least one Mechanical
Engineer/Best Friend that could come down here and help with that project! Or maybe your Men’s Ministry from your church
would like to connect with her sometime before July. Maybe you can sponsor a child- Larenda
estimates it will take about $70.00 per kid per month- ½ of that for the actual
meals and the rest for the activities and overhead expenses. She has a friend in the States working on
Graphic Design for her but she could use some Webpage/HTML help. She has a Myspace for the ministry (www.myspace.com/jeremiahproject07
and her email is: [email protected]
