Introduction
We have been a little sporadic in keeping you informed since we came back to the USA to get Julie’s cancer treated because we have frankly been a little overwhelmed at all of our life changes. However, God has continued to be at work in Honduras through the work that He started and invited us to join. There have been a couple of key changes in the legal processes surrounding foster care in Honduras. Specifically, there is a heavy preference towards local foster parents (even though there are very few Hondurans willing to foster) due to cultural sensitivities. These legal changes as well as our life changes have driven us to our knees to pray about exactly what God is doing with at-risk children and how we should continue to join Him in that work. Out of that focused prayer time has come an understanding of a desperate need for a ministry to at-risk children throughout Honduras and God has provided the opportunity for us to begin it in Gracias. The children’s home will continue to operate with the two foster children that are still present. Dean and Tamara have moved the children’s home from Gracias to Tegucigalpa so she can be better positioned to recruit and train Hondurans to become foster parents.
Overview of Opportunity
Honduras has a population of 8 million. Of those, 1,905,610, or 24 per cent, are adolescents, according to official figures from the National Statistics Institute. Honduras has the second highest fertility rate among adolescents of all Latin American countries, and adolescents in Honduras face the same reality as elsewhere in Latin America. These teen mothers and their children just continue to be part of an existing cycle of neglect, abuse and/or abandonment, all of which are linked to the cycle of poverty. Sixty percent of the Honduran households are run by single mothers, many of which became mothers during their teenage years.
Teenage pregnancy must be viewed as a social problem, for when a teenager becomes pregnant, all society should mobilize. Indeed, teenage pregnancies affect the development of adolescent boys and girls, who are confronted with new situations that frustrate or modify their life plans, especially in terms of study, professional careers and achievement of personal goals. This also effects the development of the country because teenage pregnancy deters increased education and leads to significant amounts of lost earnings, which negatively affect the economy as a whole, specially in a poor country like Honduras.
We would like to start a “Teenage Pregnancy Program” to address some of the issues mentioned above. The ministry would have three programs. The first program is to begin a “New Beginnings Home”, which will be a transition home for pregnant teenagers that have been abused, abandoned and/or neglected. In this home, we will take in these teenagers while they are pregnant, provide a safe environment for them to live, provide for proper prenatal care of the baby, and teach the teens the skills they need to be a good mother. After the baby is born we will care for the baby during the daytime so that the teen can complete her education. We will also teach life skills necessary for her to be able to financially provide for her and her child in her own home after she completes her education. The second program is to operate a “New Beginnings Center”, which would be a center where pregnant teens or teenage mothers that haven’t suffered abuse or abandonment can come to receive the same training as the girls in the New Beginnings Home. The third program will focus on prevention of teenage pregnancy, working with teens from local churches about sexual education and what the Bible says about the subject.
We have a Honduran believer that we believe may be a great candidate to run this ministry for us. We are still in the process of vetting this individual, but she is assisting us with locating land and building partnerships with a large local congregation in Gracias. She has located property that is ideal for both the New Beginnings Home as well as the New Beginnings Center. This property is about 10 minutes outside of the city and is located in a very safe area. The photo above is a picture of the property. It is approximately 4.3 acres. The seller is allowing us to pick which 4.3 acres we want out of all of his property located here. We have put down earnest money to purchase the property and have 3 months to complete the purchase.
For those of you who have known us personally for a while, you are probably aware of a youth transition home we ran in Central Asia for 10 years for orphans that were leaving the orphanage. That program was a tremendous success with some of the orphans that came through the program now serving as full time missionaries themselves. This success came with us physically located here in the USA and leading and supporting a native of that country to run the home. The new Teenage Pregnancy Program will operate similarly with us leading, supporting, and holding accountable a Honduran who will run the ministry on a day-to-day basis.
What We Need From You
We do not believe in borrowing money for ministry so we will need to raise the money to complete the purchase within the next 3 months. The total that we need for the land purchase, legal fees, taxes, etc. is approximately $50,000. We are setting a goal to raise the $50,000 for the land purchase by March 31, 2018. We have an anonymous donor that has agreed to match the first $20,000 dollar for dollar, which means if we raise $20,000 without this match, we only need $10,000 more to have enough to complete the purchase. No amount is too small. Your $5 becomes $10, your $100 becomes $200, your $1,000 becomes $2,000….. get the idea? In the event that we raise more for the property than is required to complete the purchase, we will save the remaining funds raised in an account designated for the building of the first building on the property.
Will you please share this message with everybody that you can? Will you pray for us to meet the goal? Will you pray about how much you can give towards this purchase?
You can give online by clicking on the link below. Please send “Property Purchase/Building” as the fund/project to have your funds matched.
You can also write a check, note in the memo that it is for “Property” and mail it to the following address:
New Beginnings Missions, Inc.
P.O. Box 5813
Saint Marys, GA 31558
Thank you for all you do!
Blessings,
Ben Agee
