Welcome to Trinity Sermons.
Thanks for joining us today here at Trinity Church, Streetsville, as we journey together
to love Jesus, live like Jesus, and lead others to Jesus.
This is a very special message today from guest speaker, Karen Ramos, from World Vision.
Karen is the program director of World Vision in Honduras, and today she shares with us
the needs of the children in Honduras and about the impacts that programs such as the
Chosen Program through World Vision have had on the lives of these children as they become
empowered to move towards the vision World Vision and Jesus have for all people to live
life to the fullest.
Definitely a relevant and important talk today that you don't want to miss.
God bless.
I'm reading this morning from Micah chapter 6, verses 6 to 8.
With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you?
To do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.
This is the word of the Lord.
I will share to you a little bit about Honduras, about Nueva Frontera.
You already saw that amazing video.
I was really touched by that video, seeing the images of the previous director, Oscar
Chica was there in the video.
It was very good to see how this church has been working with World Vision Honduras for
so many years.
But before we start, I want to say it's Chosen Day.
So it's a great day to remember and to see the children that are around the world, but
in my case, to talk about Honduras.
This is me in the Chosen event last year.
I was with the pastor and the team there.
And these children are part of the children who chose their sponsor during that celebration.
In Honduras, we face a really complex social, political, economical environment.
There is more than 70% of population is in poverty and more than 40% is in extreme poverty.
And what that means is that we have a lot of inequality, violence.
Some people have no jobs, so there is food insecurity for children especially.
And I want to start telling you about a girl that I met on Friday during a visit that I
did in the morning because that was our celebration day, but I had a field visit in the morning
and I talked with Lisbeth, a woman.
She's now 22 years old.
And Lisbeth and his family is a face of this inequality and poverty and violence that leaves
many children in Honduras.
When she was 12, 13 years old, her father lived in the house.
More than 40% of the homes in Honduras are lived by women, are held by women because
men live in the house and live with the wife and the children.
So this mother also lives in the house and lives with Lisbeth with her two siblings,
one of the two or three years old and the other one a little bit bigger.
But Lisbeth was only 13 years old and she has to take care of her siblings, brothers
and sisters.
And Lisbeth was telling us how difficult it was to her, so she decided at that age, it's
a very difficult age, she decided to leave the house and to go to the streets.
And she lives in an urban neighborhood in Tegucigalpa, so in Tegucigalpa the violence
is very complicated, especially in urban neighborhoods.
And she started using drugs and the gangs were trying to support her and she started
to see that that could be a way to leave all her work and to start a new life, a bad life
and a new life where she could belong to something.
And she told us, I just wanted that someone sees me, I just wanted that someone know about
me and my family and help me.
And everyone was listening to this story and everyone was crying.
Of course her story is very long and she told us a lot of details, but Lisbeth is one girl
that represents the story of many other women, men, boys and girls in Honduras.
Not only in urban but also in rural areas like Nuera Frontera.
In Nuera Frontera because of food insecurity and the lack of opportunities, economic opportunities
for families, many children are at risk of child labor.
We made a research in the last month about child labor in Honduras and we found out that
around one million of children in Honduras are at risk or are in child labor.
Child labor that makes them to leave the school, that makes them to go to the fields and to
work in dangerous places like fishing or cropping coffee beans or in other agricultural activities.
When we think about these children we think that the importance of remembering that we
need to bring hope and love for these children because they felt like Lisbeth alone.
They felt that no one is seeing them.
They felt that no one loves him and they don't have hope.
I can continue telling you stories but I'm not here just to tell sad stories.
I want to remember two children from the Bible, Ishmael, do you remember Ishmael?
Son of Haram.
He and his mother Hagar had to leave the house and she was desperate.
She was crying.
Her son was crying and she thought he would die so I preferred to leave him dying alone
and I will go to a separate place because I don't want to be there seeing how he will
die.
But in the Bible Genesis 21 says that God has heard the boy crying as he lies there.
He told Hagar, lift the boy up and take him by the hand for I will make him into a great
nation.
So the Lord listened, listened to the children, listened to Christ, listened to us, listened
to Lisbeth, listened to all these boys and girls in our front who are in poverty and
that brings hope in the middle of the most difficult moments.
And this hope comes from the hand of other people around.
In the case of Ishmael, it was his mother who left the boy and continued the trip.
In the case of Noa Frontera, last year many of you sponsored some kids that that brings
hope not only for the children in Noa Frontera but also for the entire family, for the entire
communities, for all the Noa Frontera program and especially for Honduras.
But another story is about Moses.
Moses, it was he born in a you remember in a moment that all children will be died and
will be killed and his mother tried to save him and put him in this basket and throw him
in the river and the daughter of the Pharaoh come and saw him when she was in that river
in the bathing.
She saved him.
And that's why because God not only listened but also sees Moses.
And we all know the story of Moses.
He was the one who helped the entire Israel people.
So that tell us that we have a Lord, we have a God who sees children and makes them feel
love.
He was loved by the Pharaoh's daughter.
And that is so good that he made that his mother was the people who cared about the
Moses during his childhood.
This was not only the Pharaoh's daughter but also his own mother was with him during his
childhood.
And this reminds me again how can we be these people, these channels of hope for so many
children in Honduras and around the world.
Jesus also said another child who came to the world in a very difficult moment and he
was also born in a very vulnerable moment in a very vulnerable place.
But he as his God but at the same time he was a man, a child, he received the care,
he received the love of his family and also of the people around him.
And when he grew up, you remember, he said let the children come to me because children
are very important.
Children are in a priority part of the heaven.
Children are a priority for God.
And that's why we in World Vision have children in the center of our work, in the center of
our heart.
For us, the boys and the girls are the main, the center of all our strategies or our programs
or the things that we do is because of the well-being of the children.
And I will finish before we continue with the other slides.
I will finish the study of Elizabeth.
She didn't end with Elizabeth in the guns.
She was seen by God.
She was listened by God.
And God put people around her who support her.
It was a sponsorship program in the UCGALPA that came to the community of Elizabeth.
And someone tell Elizabeth, hey, in World Vision they are enrolling people, youth people
for a training, maybe you can do it, maybe you can have something there.
And she said, I don't have anything to lose.
Maybe they give me something, a t-shirt or something.
So I will try.
So she went, she enrolled herself in this training.
And she started to receive not only a training because this is very easy.
You can even be trained by courses in YouTube.
But she received love.
She received people.
She was surrounded by people who loved her, but people who listened to her and people
who really cared about her life.
So she started to training.
And she finished her training.
And during all this time, because it was not only training, but she and her family received
other support, when she turned 18 years, she started to work in a company in Honduras.
It was not a great job, but she had a job.
And she could support her sister and his brother and his grandma, her grandma, because she
was in charge of her grandma too.
She started to thrive.
This was some years ago.
Then in 2020, when COVID came to Honduras and to the world, she has to leave the job
because most companies in Honduras closed.
So there were no jobs for people.
So she started again thinking, okay, I am alone again.
I don't have a support, economic support again.
I have to take care of my brother and sister.
Her sister also has a disability.
So she needs special support.
But she remembered training that she had received in World Vision.
And she said, okay, they trained me not only for having a job, but also to start a new
business for myself.
So she started to make, then she used YouTube and she learned how to bake pizzas and bake
bread.
And she started.
She started and she started to sell it in the community.
And as everyone was closed, everything was closed and people were very afraid about COVID,
she started towing every door and people buy her pizzas, donuts and bread.
And she started this small business that supports her until now.
But she also said, okay, it's not fair that I received all these.
I received love.
I received training.
I received, because she received many trainings after the first training.
But it's not fair that I have this only for myself.
And she remembered that World Vision has this program that works with the community, people
in the community.
We call them agents of change.
Our volunteers who help, who are the hands of the work that World Vision do.
And she started to, she enrolled as a volunteer in World Vision.
Now she has reached many children in her community.
She is a channel of hope for thousands of children in Honduras because she brings them
training.
She is an amazing leader.
And she remembers me, she remembers me that we don't have to be millionaires to help others.
We don't have to be brilliant.
We don't have, we just need to have the heart to help.
We just need to have the heart to support.
You just need that the Holy Spirit give us that heart that help us to understand children.
And as I said in the slide, and gives them a place of honor and respect.
This is the place that Lisbeth has now.
She's very well respected in the community.
Everyone knows her, but knows her for the good things, not for the past.
Knows her as a leader, as a good leader.
And Lisbeth is one example of many others that we have in Honduras and around the world
about the job that World Vision is doing not alone, but because of the support of many
people who believes not only, not in World Vision, but believes that we can be, we can
be the channel, we can be the hands of God in many hard places in this country.
And one example of this is Chosen.
This is a picture of that event in last year.
This girl, this girl shows a group of children who decided to, Daniela is her name, who decided
to sponsor a child in Honduras.
And Daniela is a small girl in a family that is not, small family too.
But they have been, since they have been in the sponsorship, their family have this hope
to do something else.
Her father wanted to leave the community.
Many people in Honduras, especially men, leave the house because they are looking for another
opportunity, economic opportunity to support their families.
And her father wanted to leave the house because he said, I can't do something here in Nara
Frontera, but I will leave the house.
But after this opportunity, he decided, it's not because we bring a lot of things, but
because we bring hope and something changed his mind.
And he said, okay, I will continue working here.
I will continue working.
I received training in agricultural tools and agricultural, sorry, I don't remember
the word, but training to produce better in his land.
And he started to produce more and his family started to receive more support, training,
but also his children are now in school.
And this is the kind of love that we give them.
Because it's not only that we take some gift to the sponsor child and the sponsor, and
the child receive a gift and that ends.
It's not like that.
It works in a way that the entire community, the entire family, but the entire community
receive this support.
In Nara Frontera, as in many places in Honduras when we have a sponsorship, through the sponsorship,
communities has water.
Many of these communities doesn't have water.
Women and children has to leave the house in the morning to get water.
And when we get there, we start with our programs, with giving them water, food security, training
for entrepreneurship, nutritional, spiritual nutrition for children.
We work very close with churches.
We work in Honduras with many churches, including the Anglican Church in Honduras.
I had a meeting with Reverend Lloyd Allen, he's the head of the Anglican Church in Honduras
on Friday too.
So it was a very busy Friday.
But we work with them also there.
And in every place where we work, we have the opportunity to see and to love the children
around us.
And I invite you to see not only the girls and the boys in Honduras, but sometimes the
girls and the boys that are in our neighborhood, in our house, sometimes they don't feel they
have been seen by God or by us.
So we have to start loving and seeing these children that needs a place of honor and respect.
Because in the kingdom of God, every child has a place of honor and respect.
It's such a blessing to be here today talking about Honduras.
And from the bottom of my heart, I can tell you that Honduras is a place, is a country
with many challenges, but also too many opportunities.
We just need someone to believe in the communities, someone to believe in the children, someone
to believe in the mothers and the fathers for them to thrive.
They can do it.
And we are the channel for that.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
If you enjoyed the show today, please take a few minutes to rate and review our podcast
so that we can continue to spread the good news with others.
And join us next week when Rob is back for another sermon here at Trinity Church, Streetsville.
Thanks again for listening.
Today's talk was taken from the June 16th, 2024 service at Trinity Church, Streetsville
in Mississauga, Ontario.