Our Journey into Missions (Pt. 6) Finding our Calling.
Casa Juan Marcos was our attempt to help students aging out from orphanages. We began with 3 young men from orpha #2 and one young man from orpha #1. We provided a rented home, a cook, a staff member as house leader, and food and educational expenses. It seemed to us to be a good program, but what we found was that the young adults from the orphanages did not like the discipline we were expecting from them. We required that they get good grades, communicate with the house leader, go to school daily, and do their chores and such. The four boys that we had lasted just over a year before one by one, they decided they would prefer to not be under our expectations for success that we had.
A year after we opened the boys home, we opened one for girls. We rented a house, hired staff, and outfitted the home for four girls from the first two orphanages. When it was time for them to come, three decided not to participate, and the fourth came for two days, filled two backpacks with items from the home and left. There we were with a year lease on a home, a hired staff member and no girls to fill the home. Meanwhile, at the boys home we had a couple of boys leave and only had two in the home at this time.
Julie and I wondered if we had made a mistake. This seemed like the direction we were to go but the young people we wanted to help did not want our help. The orphanage life had spoiled them to some degree. All the teams from the United States, all the dependence on the system, had made them unmotivated to compete in the real world. All they had to do, they thought, was stay connected to the Americans who would support them for as long as they could play the game. We were frustrated at this attitude, but also realized that for years we had been part of the problem. Our attempt at providing a solution this late in their lives was futile.
And then I had an epiphany. As I was working and praying one day I had a vision. There we were with a bus load of orphanage kids at a theme swim park. The kids were playing in the pool, sliding down the water slide, and eating restaurant food all sponsored by a visiting church team from the US. The children were having fun but were also ungrateful for the opportunity because it was something that they would do regularly as teams came. Each team had to out do the previous one to keep the kids happy. In my epiphany I saw a couple young boys, teenagers, who were outside the chain link fence looking in. Their hands clawing on the fence. They were dressed in ragged clothing and I could see in their eyes that they wish they could enter the swim park, but did not have the money to do so because they were poor. I sense the Lord tell me, “I want you to go after those boys.”
I interpreted that message to mean that we were looking for the wrong young people. Instead of trying to help young people who didn’t want help, look for the ones who do. Immediately we began to offer our program to young people who wanted to study but due to lack of resources in their families, they were prohibited. We began to make contacts with pastors and educators who would then refer potential students to us. We refined our program to not only focus on studies, but also on discipleship. Just as we utilize local universities and trade schools for the educational component of our program, we have a relationship with a local church to provide the discipleship component. We found that students with too much time on their hands leads to problems, we require that our student maintain a full schedule throughout the day and week. If not in school or church, if not studying, then they need to be volunteering or in on-the-job training. A busy person is a productive person. We don’t allow boyfriend/girlfriends relationships while in our program as that is just a distraction. What we are trying to develop is leaders that can lead in all aspects of life. After 7 years in this program we are starting to see the fruit of our labors. We have graduated an agricultural engineer, a nurse, a mechanic, and have over a dozen students in the pipeline working towards their degrees.
Since leaving the orphanage environment, we have found freedom to invest in young people who need our help. We are not reinventing the wheel or creating a new ministry that we can write a book about. We are simply trying to help young adults move ahead in life. If there is anything good in what we do, God gets the glory. He knows we’ve made our share of mistakes getting to this point. Its not to say that the orphanage programs are wrong. We just weren’t a good fit for them. Our expectations were different than theirs. But we have found that in our part of this small country, the focus within the orphanages, in general, has not developed young people who lead, but who simply survive. Our desire was to develop leaders, and we were working with the wrong raw materials.
A year after we opened the boys home, we opened one for girls. We rented a house, hired staff, and outfitted the home for four girls from the first two orphanages. When it was time for them to come, three decided not to participate, and the fourth came for two days, filled two backpacks with items from the home and left. There we were with a year lease on a home, a hired staff member and no girls to fill the home. Meanwhile, at the boys home we had a couple of boys leave and only had two in the home at this time.
Julie and I wondered if we had made a mistake. This seemed like the direction we were to go but the young people we wanted to help did not want our help. The orphanage life had spoiled them to some degree. All the teams from the United States, all the dependence on the system, had made them unmotivated to compete in the real world. All they had to do, they thought, was stay connected to the Americans who would support them for as long as they could play the game. We were frustrated at this attitude, but also realized that for years we had been part of the problem. Our attempt at providing a solution this late in their lives was futile.
And then I had an epiphany. As I was working and praying one day I had a vision. There we were with a bus load of orphanage kids at a theme swim park. The kids were playing in the pool, sliding down the water slide, and eating restaurant food all sponsored by a visiting church team from the US. The children were having fun but were also ungrateful for the opportunity because it was something that they would do regularly as teams came. Each team had to out do the previous one to keep the kids happy. In my epiphany I saw a couple young boys, teenagers, who were outside the chain link fence looking in. Their hands clawing on the fence. They were dressed in ragged clothing and I could see in their eyes that they wish they could enter the swim park, but did not have the money to do so because they were poor. I sense the Lord tell me, “I want you to go after those boys.”
I interpreted that message to mean that we were looking for the wrong young people. Instead of trying to help young people who didn’t want help, look for the ones who do. Immediately we began to offer our program to young people who wanted to study but due to lack of resources in their families, they were prohibited. We began to make contacts with pastors and educators who would then refer potential students to us. We refined our program to not only focus on studies, but also on discipleship. Just as we utilize local universities and trade schools for the educational component of our program, we have a relationship with a local church to provide the discipleship component. We found that students with too much time on their hands leads to problems, we require that our student maintain a full schedule throughout the day and week. If not in school or church, if not studying, then they need to be volunteering or in on-the-job training. A busy person is a productive person. We don’t allow boyfriend/girlfriends relationships while in our program as that is just a distraction. What we are trying to develop is leaders that can lead in all aspects of life. After 7 years in this program we are starting to see the fruit of our labors. We have graduated an agricultural engineer, a nurse, a mechanic, and have over a dozen students in the pipeline working towards their degrees.
Since leaving the orphanage environment, we have found freedom to invest in young people who need our help. We are not reinventing the wheel or creating a new ministry that we can write a book about. We are simply trying to help young adults move ahead in life. If there is anything good in what we do, God gets the glory. He knows we’ve made our share of mistakes getting to this point. Its not to say that the orphanage programs are wrong. We just weren’t a good fit for them. Our expectations were different than theirs. But we have found that in our part of this small country, the focus within the orphanages, in general, has not developed young people who lead, but who simply survive. Our desire was to develop leaders, and we were working with the wrong raw materials.
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