A New Friend From My Old High School

Recently I started thinking about my old High School and posted some of my post-high school history on a website called Classmates.com wherein you can attempt to make contact with those old high school friends you might not have seen for ten or twenty years. I got this email in response to that post. I included my reply here for those of you who would like to know a little more of our story. It wouldn't even fit in the reply space on the website.

Roger,
I'm sorry, I don't remember you from high school but I wanted to write to you because of the work that you are doing in Honduras. My family and I have gone on three missions trips to Tegucigalpa with our church. Every year we(our church) build homes, distribute food, conduct medical clinics, and have Vacation Bible School for different communities, and much, much more. We are currently fundraising for a work we are doing in one particular community. There is a church building that serves not only as a church but also as a feeding center for the children in the community. We have built a kitchen next to the church and we feed the children in the community one hot meal a day, six days a week. We have hired the women in the community to cook and serve the meals. We have just recently finished building a day care center. Now the older children of a family will be able to go to school instead of watching the younger children while mom is working. Again, we will hire women in that community to run the day care. I have a heart for Honduras and I love hearing about all the work that God is doing there. I don't know if you have read "My Story" but I am a home school mom of four. My oldest will graduate college this year and my youngest is 16yr. I am also a freelance Producer/Director. My husband and I have been in the production business for over twenty years. Here is a link to our church website where you will find two Honduras Video Productions that we have done. www.palmettochurch.org
I would love to hear more about the work that you are doing in Honduras.
Blessings,
Tammy

Dear Tammy,Thank you for your message. It is good to know that I am not the only redeemed product of that decadent and hedonistic decade in which we grew up. That's kind of a joke. The eighties were decadent, no doubt, but many of us were trying, even then, to follow the Lord.I can't say that I was the type people would wish to remember from High School, unless it was for a good belly-laugh. I graduated in '87, but was not officially part of the senior class because I was short one credit that I made up that year so I could graduate on time. I was overly busy trying to fit in with everyone in every crowd and failing miserably at it. I was your basic geek. I tried too hard, which resulted in people not liking me. Well, here we are, twenty years later, and there are still those that don't like me, but I don't try to fit in like I used to. Hasn't stopped me from being a geek, though... :DMy wife and I live and work in Honduras, but it's not the Honduras you know and visit. When we visit Tegucigalpa it takes us a trip by airplane and a 7 hour trip by bus to get there and we buy supplies for at least a month when we go. Puerto Lempira is way out East on the North Coast, about 45 miles from the Nicaragua Border. Do you remember hearing about the Iran/Contra Affairs back in the '80s? It had something to do with illegal arm sales to Iranians in order to create a slush fund for support of clandestine operations that "never happened" in and near the borders between Honduras and Nicaragua. I had friends that were "never there". Anyway, this is the area in which all that happened.We live in the midst of an indigenous people called the Miskito Indians, who are neglected and/or oppressed by the government that claims sovereignty over their land. Children die daily due to malnourishment and life threatening diseases. Pre-teen girls as young as seven years old are forced by their parents to prostitute themselves for income. Crack is sold in broad daylight. Drug smugglers in league with Colombian cocaine producers have the best vehicles, largest houses and most prosperous businesses in the town.We are a relatively small influence for good in this town full of truly bad influences. My wife, Katrina, is dearly loved by people here because of her work with children. She feeds malnourished children and heads our ministry in a complex called House of Hope, or Casa Esperanza in Spanish. House of Hope was built and is funded by a non-profit organization in Allen, Texas, that goes by the name of Send Hope, thus the name of the local ministry. The purpose is multiple, in that we not only feed and work with malnourished children, but we also help handicapped children to receive the surgeries and/or prosthetic devices they need to live a better life. During that process we also seek to infuse their lives with as much of God’s Word and practical application of the same as possible.We were doing all that we could in our rented house five years ago when the founder of Send Hope, Tom Brian DDS, on one of his many visits, stepped over a toddler sleeping on our living room floor and voiced his opinion that we needed to stop bringing so many people into our home. My wife replied that when the Lord built her a separate place where she could perform the tasks He had given her, she would cease the invasions of our living room floor.Tom, unbeknownst to us at the time, had a rather large amount of non-profit funds saved up with which he did not know exactly what to do. He had always thought a home for handicapped children would be a good idea and when he saw Katrina and me working in that area but needing a facility in which to work, he decided to build a ministry house that became House of Hope.
We began our ministries as single young people with a fire in our hearts for the mission field. But our story begins earlier than that. It actually begins where my High School story leaves off, with me trying to fit in and wondering where I COULD fit in. I fell into drugs and rock and roll because that was easier than anything else. I eventually came to a point in my life where a fairly nasty character was looking to kill me and I wanted completely out of that lifestyle.
My wife’s story is similar. The only difference is in whom it was that wanted to kill her. In her story the nasty character was herself. She almost succeeded in suicide several times before she realized the call of God on her life and began to follow Him. We both went through Teen Challenge, the recovery/discipleship ministry that David Wilkerson started after the events told of in the book, The Cross and The Switch Blade. (Which incidentally is being reprinted in a 25th Anniversary edition this year. So look for it. We’re in the Epilogue!) Katrina graduated from Teen Challenge and became a counsellor there. I was so rotten they threw me out. They are some of our most faithful financial supporters now, but at the time they wanted nothing more to do with me.
I need to mention here that although we were both in the same Teen Challenge location, Katrina was already in the mission field by the time I went to Teen Challenge. So, we were never there at the same time.
I went on to volunteer at a street mission in south-central Florida. The pastor of this mission and church had discipled Katrina and licensed her as a missionary before she went to the mission field. I was cleaning toilets and learning to humble myself when one day we heard that Katrina Ryan, our rising star, our missionary hero, had been in an airplane accident and was hospitalized in critical condition.
Nobody knew this yet, but God had revealed to me before I went to Teen Challenge, that Katrina Ryan would one day be my wife. So I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she was going to be okay, but we were all praying for her.
When she was released from the Honduran hospital, where she had been for two months, she returned to the USA and to our little street mission, where her ministry had really started. While she was there, recuperating, she and I got to know each other and I shared with her what God had shown me. She naturally thought I was a nutcase and wouldn’t even allow me to speak to her for months, but she came around.
I spent almost a year in the mission field myself, corresponding with her by way of a journal in which I wrote daily. When I filled up a composition book, I sent it to her and so forth. Eventually she got to know how my heart worked and fell in love with me through my journals. I got a letter from her telling me the wedding day was set, the reception and honeymoon were paid for and I needed to get home and think about how I would pay for my tuxedo.
We were married 6 months after my return to the United States, on January 21st, 1995. That time frame was special for another reason also. It was the time frame of her grandmother’s 25th wedding anniversary with her second husband.
Katrina’s people have always been very close-knit families on both sides. Her father is Irish and her mother is Czech/German. Both are from Chicago, where she was born. Because of this “close-knitness” they were accustomed to celebrating together as a family on big special occasions. So when the “Grands” called Katrina and invited her to a family cruise to Cozumel on the 23rd of January and she reminded them she was getting married on the 21st, they began to conspire together and decided to spring for the Honeymoon Suite on the cruise for us, so we could join them and still have our honeymoon. Spending your honeymoon with your wife’s entire extended family on her mother’s side is not usually recommended, but it worked out in this case.
Somehow, she came down with a blood virus that veritably incapacitated her for most of the cruise and I spent half my time nursing her and half my time, when relieved by her sister or a cousin, hanging out with the rest of the family and getting to know them. We also managed to conceive our first child, Roger “Bubu” Engle, during that cruise, which led to a long line of “Made in Mexico” jokes that he has yet to live down.

About three months after he was born we were on a road trip together and passed through a neighbourhood I had once lived in. While driving by I recognized the parents of an ex-girlfriend and we stopped to say hello. We were surprised to meet their grandson who looked just like me. They explained that their daughter had not known where to find me when she discovered she was pregnant and they had helped her raise him now for three years. Immediately I made every effort to become a positive part of Joshua’s life and my wife insisted on doing the same. Joshua, now sixteen years old, is to this day a very special part of our lives. He is living with his mother currently. When he is not with us we miss him dearly.
Well, we continued to work as volunteers at the street mission in Sebring, Florida, until after our second child, Christian, was born in June of 1997. Then, in the same year, we returned to Honduras as a missionary family, where we floundered around, dealing with disappointments and learning about God’s purposes in our lives. Eventually we found the place where God wanted us to be and in 1999 we settled our family in Puerto Lempira. We still live here, where I home school our children and Katrina has studied nursing in the Honduran government nursing school and now uses what she learned to better help the sick and unfortunate children of this area.
We have had one more child of our own, our little girl, Victoria, and taken several Miskito children in as family members at one time or another. Little Selvin is the one we decided to keep. When he was brought to us by one of our workers who had found him almost dead in the village where she was visiting family in Nicaragua, we did not know if he would survive or not. He was literally skin and bones and looked to be on death’s doorstep.
When his mother died, his father “gave away” all of his eleven or twelve children to various families in the area and went off to start a new life with another woman. Unfortunately for Selvin, the family he had been “given” to viewed him as cattle or at best a slave. They fed him very little and when they did feed him it was only scraps. We tried to serve him chicken and he would peel the meat off the bones, give that to one of our boys and proceed to chewing up the chicken bones as was his customary way of surviving.
A couple years later when his “adopted mother” came demanding that her child be returned to her, we asked her to leave us with him for a little while longer. We explained to her the respiratory problems he had suffered as a result of his sever malnourishment. He had been diagnosed with pneumonia numerous times and hospitalized several of those. We explained to her that he needed to be near a proper health center, (which is a stretch in describing the local hospital), in order to begin nebulisation treatments quickly in case he came down with pneumonia again. Doctors had told us that all this was directly caused by his previous malnourishment and lack of immunity development that stemmed from it.
When she stated flatly that she did not care whether he lived or died, but that he must come with her immediately Selvin, who had to be forced to approach her in greeting and then ran back to me crying from fear as soon as possible, was quickly nudged behind my legs as I stood to face her down. I told her that Selvin would only leave that house with her “over my cadaver!” Thankfully, the local authorities, knowing of our love for Selvin and our works of kindness in the community, backed up our impromptu and informal “adoption” of Selvin. He still lives with us and is now a healthy and strong, though short, ten-year-old. He amazes visiting Americans who do not know us when they come to Puerto Lempira. “This little dark-skinned Indian boy,” one man related to me after we met, “just walked up to me and said in perfect American slang…Hey dude! What’s up?”
“That’s my son, Selvin!” I proudly stated.
We hope will probably live with us until he is grown, as he has become, in every way but by blood, our own son. There is no Department of Family Services involved in our lives or his, but this little boy sure is a big blessing in our lives!
We are a happy family though we have our struggles, and we are currently attempting to FINALLY get our residency. Our idea is to stay in Honduras, making it our home, and change the culture of Puerto Lempira, by raising the standards of the children we work with.
House of Hope now has its own school, School of Hope, which is actually run, funded and staffed, in part, by the Honduran government. We also have full-time and part-time volunteers that provide much needed help in all areas. Some do construction, some do maintenance, and some do therapy with the children. We have 12 employees, all local people, and 43 children at present.
Our family’s support comes from individuals and churches in the United States where Katrina tours the country, whenever possible, as a modern day Robin Hood, stealing the hearts of our rich American friends and giving their money to the poor in Honduras. (If you’ve been among the victims of her Robin Hood approach, don’t resent it. It’s all for a good cause!)
We have truly been blessed in this difficult, but rewarding life.

Mary is a Big Help!

We have a new volunteer that goes by the name of Mary Nicewander. Mary is a physical therapist from Michigan who spends her days working with the children on an individual basis. She has a daily scheduled routine with them in which she provides them with flexibility and mobility workouts that are designed to help the children improve their motor skills, range of motion and strength.

When she is not doing physical therapy exercises with one of the children she works with them individually or in small groups teaching them to do crafts, such as bead necklaces, and puzzles, things to improve their ability to reason and recognize patterns. My wife, long ago realized how beneficial a jigsaw puzzle can be for a child's cognitive reasoning developement. She noticed that the adult workers at House of Hope could not even begin to do a 30 piece puzzle while the children, with whom she had done lots of puzzles, could sit down and fire out a 30 piece puzzle in 5 or 10 minutes.

Mary has been to Dominican Republic and Haiti on previous short term mission projects and therefore the living conditions and poverty don't tend to shock her and rend her incapable of working effectively the way we have seen them effect others. She is a blessing to House of Hope and to Katrina, especially, since it is Katrina they call when a problem arises if there is not someone as responsible as Mary on the campus already. So Katrina's phone is not ringing off the hook as much anymore.

She also said she was very pleased with the accomodations in the new Guest House that is almost finished. House of Hope will be able to host small groups and/or individual volunteers in the future without them having to stay in a room next to a crying infant or a bunch of playing children.

Belki

We have had a girl in and out of our lives and ministry for about six years now whom we affectionately called "Belki". Her mother is a drunk and a drug-addict who resorts to prostitution to meet the demands of her addictions. Needless to say, Belki and her younger brother, Richard, were prime targets for our love and intervention.

We have had both of them in our care at different times during our ministry here in Puerto Lempira. Sometimes it was just helping to buy uniforms and supplies for school. Sometimes it was the whole nine yards. They both lived with us for a length of time when the mother was sexually assaulted in a very violent way.

Well, Belki decided she wanted to follow in her mothers footsteps, so to speak, and left House of Hope. She said the rules were too strict and since she was not court ordered to stay, we let her go. She has been "raped" several times, (according to her stories), and recently we saw a few different episodes that proved to us that her life was in danger. She received an oral death threat in the hospital while my wife, Katrina, stood by and witnessed.

We have been fortunate with Belki, in that the seeds we have been planting in her heart are beginning to take root now. Hopefully, there was enough "fertilizer" for the seeds to grow, and not too much of the same, which would burn the roots and kill the tree.

"She is such a smart girl!", Katrina continually marvels to all who ask about her. And it's true, she learned more English in the year she lived at House of Hope than most of our House of Hope kids will learn in their lives. She is not in the predicament she's in for lack of intelligence. She just had more negative influence than positive, until now.

Recently, seeing the state of Belki's life, Katrina began to look for a way to rehabilitate her and get her out of Puerto Lempira, at the same time. Thanks to Lauren Keck, who heads a ministry called Doors of Hope in Tocoa, Colon, we found what we hope will be the right fit.

Lauren runs a tight ship of a ministry at Doors of Hope. The girls who go there are being rehabilitated in much the same way we experienced in Teen Challenge. That is to say that it is a Word-Based ministry for the centering of lives on putting the Word of God into action in the lives of those who go there. We believe that is just what Belki needs.

Pray for her as you say your prayers today. We will.

Panhandling

When I mention the word panhandling do you think of the northern part of Florida? Or maybe one of the less desireable sorts you see on the streets downtown on your way to or from work? What image does the word bring to your mind?



We recently had our own panhandling experience here in Puerto Lempira. Believe it or not, our own Katrina was the culprit. She went from person to person, even went into restaurants, asking for people's spare change. She wasn't seeking a little more cash to buy that next drink or fix. She wasn't trying to play on people's sympathy for any of the normal reasons you would see someone panhandling. Don't worry. God, through you, our supporters has been doing an excellent job of making sure our needs get met. Let me back up a bit and give you the details of the story.



Some of you remember Ricardo, our old friend and sometime employee. Well, he had to go to Tegucigalpa to have his prosthetic leg refitted and repaired. While there, he is caring for his sister-in-law, mother of SEVEN of his nephews and nieces, Elda Garcia, who was just diagnosed with cancer of the fallopian tubes. Doctors want her to start radiation therapy ASAP, but she cannot afford the cost. He called us to ask if there was any way we could help.

Chagrined, I started to shake my head no when my wife told me about the request. I have no idea how much this sort of thing costs in the US. All I know is that it's more than I have at my fingertips. Not God though! Right? Well I almost fell over when my wife told me how much it would be...

$500 or less!!! How many people have you known or known of that had a bill like THAT for radiation therapy for cancer? It's inconcieveable to me that health care and treatments so vital for life and death can cost SO MUCH MORE in our wonderful, technologically advanced country. Time and time again I am astounded at how inexpensively serious illnesses can be treated here in Honduras because I have been trained to believe the prices for health care in the US are necesarrily as high as they are.

Anyway, (sorry for the rant), now I saw it as do-able. But I still knew we could not just plop the money down on the counter. House of Hope is limited in who they can help in a financial way. They help children. If it were a child we could have looked into the House of Hope coffers for at least part of the help. Neither did we have anymore of our personal funds to dole out. We had already helped Ricardo with his prosthetic, a prostitute whose life was in danger to relocate, and another young lady who got stuck in Tegucigalpa and needed airfare home.

What would we do to fill the need? I didn't know, but Katrina had an idea. "These local merchants can't tell me no!", she proclaimed, boldly, "I've taken care of their children, grand-children, nieces and nephews when even they couldn't do so!" So she took her show on the road day before yesterday and raised MORE than was needed for the treatment. Ricardo got mugged a week ago and they took his cell phone, which was his only connection to us and his family at home. With the extra money he will be able to purchase a new, if cheap, one AND put $20 of time on it.

Please Pray for Elda. We don't know her as well as we do Ricardo, but her condition weighs heavy on our minds. The Lord has promised that "He that began a good work in [ Elda ] is faithful to complete it!" We know that He is working to bring help in her direction. We sincerely hope you will believe with us and her children and loved ones for remission and recovery.

God Bless You!!!

Visiting the USA

Well, the time has come for us to decide whether or not we will be returning to the USA for a visit this year. We have several concerns that we must address in making this decision;

First, do we have the finances to visit the USA this year? Normally we wouldn't worry about this because our main activity while in the states is fund raising. However, everyone knows that the economy has been in a bit of a bad way for our country this year and that could affect giving. What's more, we are looking at higher than normal airfare due to higher fuel prices.

Second, where will we go and whom shall we visit? You have all been so kind to us in the past, but we feel, at times, like the house guest who has overstayed his or her welcome. We know that none of you, our friends, would say to us, "No, we just can't afford a visit from your family this year.", or, "You just came here last year! Don't you get tired of bothering us?" Even so, Proverbs 25:17 says: "Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbor's house, lest he be weary of thee and so, hate thee."

So, we have decided to leave it up to you. If you and/or your church would like to have us visit, let us know. We will plan on visiting between the middle of December and the end of January, if we visit.

God bless you!

Aaron

This an excerpt from a letter Katrina wrote today to her brother. I have posted it here with her permission:

'After dinner the other day a little boy walked into the H.O.H and said to me I came to stay here. I was a little taken aback by his statement a very handsome child i asked why do you want to stay here? "My dad died Saturday of cancer and my mom said she does not want to take care of children anymore and left us.", he told me. It turns out he has been dead two years.'
'He is eight years old. So, I have come to realize that we are probably not going anywhere soon. Too many children here who are in desperate situations. Daily now I am getting caught up in rescuing a child in one way or another. I sometimes marvel how God has prepared me for this, and how he has opened the doors and given me favor to be able to do it.'

What Katrina says is true. She is daily caught up, sometimes for up to twelve hours a day, in rescuing children. While I don't know how she does it I DO know where she get's the strength. Her life revolves around and is filled with the word and spirit of God. Without that wellspring flowing into, through and out of her heart, she would NEVER be able to keep up with the demand that this town and culture heaps upon her particular ministry. Nobody could. That's why so many people who have come here with similar work in mind have cut htheir time short and moved on.

We praise God for His marvelous work in and through us.

(Picture of Aaron will be posted later today.)

Bubu Visits Mocoron With Master Stephen

Well, our firstborn is almost 13 years old and is beginning to have a desire to wander further from the nest. He spent a week in Mocoron, a village near an army base closer to the jungle, with our Teakwondo instructor. I decided to post some of the pictures he brought back. He returned to us that friday telling excited stories of jumping off tree branches into the river below, floating with the current and climbing out again when he reached another tree branch extended into the river further downstream.

Master Stephen is a 7th degree black belt in Taekwondo. He is an Olympic Medalist and trainer AND a pastor with the Korean Methodist Church. He loves the Lord intensely, as is evidenced by his strong prayer habits.

The following is a quote form our newsletter that has been sent to be printed and mailed out:

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In April, Katrina heard about a Korean man who was teaching “Karate” in a small, remote village, here in La Moskitia. She expressed a desire to contact him and offer to pay his way and give him room and board in our house if he would come on weekends and teach martial arts to the children at House of Hope. Knowing that some martial arts teachings involve spiritual aspects, I told her to pray about it first.
She went ahead with her idea, after consulting with the Lord, and he came to visit so we could talk about the idea. Lo and behold! It turns out thet Grand Master Steven Kwunsoo is not only a 7th degree blackbelt, an Olympic medalist in Taekwondo, and an Olympic trainer. He is also a Christian missionary!
Pastor Steven began visiting our house on weekends late on in the month of May and after a month of his visits, we have learned to make Kim-Shi, eat Sushi and he has come to be a loving father figure to our family.
He is a prayer warrior! Waking up at about 1:00 AM every morning he goes out onto our dock and prays until about 6:00 AM. Since we told him we usually wake up at about that time he waits until then before he begins to sing his loud, reverberating Korean praise songs, waking us with a serenade. We forgot to mention to him that on the weekends we might want to sleep a little later.
He has made contact with the local police, the local military base and just today with the Naval base across the lagoon, offering to instruct them in his martial arts, as well. In addition, Katrina and I have helped him to organize some paying students by which he can raise some support for his ministry in Mocoron, the little village we originally found him in.
Even Katrina and I are involved in the classes, though it would be an insult to Steven’s teaching abilities to say that we are his showcase students.

If you are not on our mailing list and wish to be added or would like a PDF copy of our newsletter please feel free to email us. I believe there is a link to do just that on this page. A simple comment here including your email or snail mail address will also work.

You can also subscribe to this BLOG with an RSS feed to the right side of the page. That will set you up to receive an email of every post I make.

Please Pray for Tom Brian

We received an email from Tom, President of Send Hope, the funding organization for House of Hope. In it he informed us that he will soon be having triple bypass surgery on his heart as well as a stint.
We know that God has His hand on Tom and has done so much through him. We ask that you agree in prayer for his healing and speedy recovery. We are asking God for a miracle. May the glory be His.
God bless you,
Roger

It's Been A While

Well, if I've proved nothing else, I've proved that I'm not very good at sticking to the daily routine of blogging. Let's see if I can keep you people updated a little better from now on.
We got the seawall in front of our house finished. Well, half finished... It was a two-phase project. The half in front of our new house was first so we could be free of worry about erosion destroying our new house. In the picture you can see the West, (closest), end of our waterfront still has some fallen trees and debris in front of it. We plan on leaving it there until we can afford to extend the seawall to cover that side of the land.
We have our house about half way finished and I have no idea when the rest will get done. People ask me all the time when do I think I'll have it finished. MY wife wants to know as much as they do...as much as I do. I always have to remind them, as I remind my self, that I'm not a contractor, nor am I a fortune teller. When we get the money to finish it, I'm sure it won't take long. Right now I'm doing my very best to save every penny I possibly can toward that very thing.
Let me see if I can figure out how to put some pictures of it on here and we will go from there. Okay?
Figured out how to put the picture in. It's the one at the top of the page. It shows our new house, still under construction.
Hopefully you'll be hearing from me again soon.