By Lynette Wilson, March 25, 2011
[Episcopal News Service] Tucked high in the mountains of Honduras, an hour's drive south of San Pedro Sula, a Florida couple is working with the Episcopal Diocese of Honduras to develop a self-supporting ministry aimed at helping the Central American country's vulnerable children.
Mike and Kim Miller, missionaries serving with the Society of Anglican Missionaries and Senders (SAMS) , co-founded and are working with Honduras Bishop Lloyd Allen and support from the diocese to build the Hope of Jesus Children's Home and nearby Hope Farm, which includes a coffee plantation and the beginnings of a diary farm, to be a self-sustaining project and source of income for the children's home.
The children's home, located in La Esperanza, is run by the Millers and Vanessa Aguilar, the Honduran sub-director who will eventually take over the ministry, which provides a home for orphaned or abandoned children.
Allen has one firm rule, Kim Miller said; "Your job is to work yourself out of a job."
There are an estimated 200,000 orphaned children in Honduras, according to government statistics. Honduras, a country about the size of Tennessee, has a population of some 8 million, close to 50 percent under the age of 18. There are between 150 and 200 children in San Pedro Sula's three government centers (the court system manages child placement in Honduras) at any given time, Kim Miller said.
The Diocese of Honduras, the largest of the Episcopal Church's seven Province IX dioceses, promotes sustainable projects among its 156 congregations.
"I told them [the Millers] you have to raise the necessary funds to start the program," said Allen during a Province IX conference on financial sustainablity in Tela, Honduras, in early March, adding that right now they are using coffee revenue. "Whatever these programs can do to help themselves, they have my blessing."
Hope of Jesus's funding plan currently breaks down by thirds: a third raised locally through product sales, coffee and dairy products, a third through mission outreach grants and a third through individual donations and child sponsorships.
"For every 100 bags of coffee sold, one child can be supported for one month," said Mike Miller. It costs about $3,800 per year to house a child.
Mike Miller was raised Baptist; Kim Miller was raised Roman Catholic. They found common ground to worship and were married in the Episcopal Church. The are members of Church of the Redeemer, in Tallahassee, Florida, which is part of the Gulf Atlantic Diocese of the Anglican Church in North America.
In 1999, for their first wedding anniversary, the Millers spent a month at El Hogar de Amor y Esperanza, what was then a school and home for orphaned boys run by the Episcopal Diocese of Honduras. Now called El Hogar Projects, the ministry also serves girls.
Mike Miller, who has a background in construction and years of experience growing up on a farm, worked on construction projects and ground maintenance, and Kim Miller, a physical therapist, helped out in the laundry room and the kitchen, she said.
"When we left, Mike had tears in his eyes, he just started sobbing as soon as we got on the bus because he has just fallen in love with these children. He felt like, as he tells it, he was leaving 80 of his little boys behind," said Kim Miller. "And I left with tears of joy and said Honduras is a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there, loved the kids but had an aching back and mosquito bites. But the Lord slowly changed my heart."
The Millers continued their involvement with El Hogar over the years, handling their international shipping and leading short-term missionary teams to Honduras.
"Mike said, 'well Lord I hear you calling me to long-term missionary work in this capacity, but you need to talk to my wife,'" she said, with a laugh, adding that in 2003 they contacted SAMS and got serious about becoming missionaries. "It was between '99 and 2003 that the Lord continued to work on me, and just break my heart, and not just for the children of Honduras, but just children in general who are coming from that kind of background."
After working with SAMS on discernment, the Millers became missionary candidates and spent three years raising funds and defining their vision. Then SAMS issued a call throughout dioceses in Central and South America, advertising the Miller's skills and their desire to work in a children's home, and Honduras was the first to reply, Kim Miller said. They were willing to go anywhere, she added.
The Diocese of Honduras already had plans to start a day care center and children's home, plans previously started by another SAMS missionary, who opened the day care program. The Millers took over the plan for the children's home.
The original plan was to build the home on part of a 38-acre parcel owned by the diocese in Santa Ana de Chasnigua, but the nearby community lacked the required infrastructure, so with Mike Miller's vision and advice from locals who said the property was perfect for coffee, Hope Farm was created there, and a three-acre site in nearby La Esperanza was chosen for the children's home.
Both the children's home and the farm rely on local labor. The house mother and the aunts come from outside the immediate community to facilitate a family structure. A Honduran farmer and his wife live full-time in a home built for them on the farm. And the Millers, along with their two children, live at the children's home, approximately three miles away.
Construction on the first home began in 2009, as the paperwork was being filed and competed to license the children's home, and the first child arrived in December 2010, and by the end of February there were seven children ages 2 to 10, who are cared for by a full-time housemother and a "house aunt." Two of the four homes are still under construction; when they are completed the home will have capacity for 32 children.
There is a chapel under renovation on the property, which will also serve the community. There is also an offsite hospitality house that can accommodate church mission groups.
-- Lynette Wilson is an editor/staff writer for Episcopal News Service.
Source: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79425_127705_ENG_HTM.htm
Reprinted with permission grom Episcopal News Service
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