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Well, good morning.

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Good morning.

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Good morning.

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Welcome to our between service little conversation that we have here called Trinity Talks.

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So during our Trinity Talks, we will often bring guests into this studio to have a conversation

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about things that are going on within our church and to share that information with

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everyone who's either listening or watching.

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So welcome to Mike and welcome to Karen.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Well, today is Father's Day.

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So I would be a miss not to say happy Father's Day to you, Mike.

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Thank you.

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And thank you for the great sacrifice you're making in missing donuts for dads out in the

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hall.

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I'm glad to be here and it's really exciting to celebrate Father's Day by bringing Karen

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here to first time to Canada.

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Absolutely.

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So welcome, Karen, to Mississauga and to Trinity Church.

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Thank you very much.

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And we hope you feel welcomed.

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I am.

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It's the first time here.

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Yes.

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I'm so happy to be here.

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And it's the first time here, Mike, but there's nothing you came in June and not December

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or February actually.

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Beautiful weather.

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Well, Mike, you are the president of World of Vision Canada.

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Could you let us know maybe just a little bit about what that role is?

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Sure.

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I get the real privilege of leading the way that we engage with Canadians to invite them

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into World Vision's mission.

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So we are one of Canada's largest charities but also one of the most impactful, focused

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on the needs of children around the world.

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We respond in emergencies and we engage with policy makers as well to ensure that laws and institutions care for children.

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I love that.

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So we get to engage with Canadians, raise funds of course, but really what we want to do is share our heart for children,

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invite Canadians to respond by caring and understanding more, and of course by giving, like through child sponsorship.

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Amazing, alright. And Karen, you are the program director of World Vision in Honduras, correct?

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Yes.

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So what does that mean?

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Well, I am in charge of the entire operation of our vision in Honduras. It's a small country, but we have more than 50,000 sponsored children.

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Wow.

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And we have helped support them, and not only the children, but the entire communities for more than 50, for 50 years now in Honduras.

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Really? Well, thank you very much for joining us. This really is a pleasure and an honor to have you with us here today.

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Because World Vision actually holds a very important part in the hearts of us here at Trinity.

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We've been connected with World Vision for a while, but more specifically, last year we entered into a relationship with the children of Honduras through the chosen program.

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So I was hoping we could talk a little bit, maybe about Honduras and a little bit about the chosen program here on this, on the show today.

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So take us through what it's like to be in Honduras, because myself, I've never been there, and probably most of the people here at Trinity are never going to have the opportunity to visit the country.

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Sure.

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So what's Honduras like?

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Well, Honduras is in a small country. We have less than a million of inhabitants in the entire country, and it's in the center of Central America.

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We always said that this is also in the center of Scott's heart.

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Honduras has tropical weather. We don't have snow as you have here.

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But there are many challenges in Honduras, political and economical challenges, especially economical.

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And in the recent years, also environmental challenges, Honduras is a very vulnerable country to the storms and hurricanes and also to the drought and the communities.

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But at the same time, Honduras has many resources, forests, rivers, and especially people with a very kind heart, people who want to do something else.

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And that's what makes the work of World Vision so amazing in Honduras, because it's not only World Vision doing and bringing things, but it's the same people who wants to try, who wants to do something.

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And that combination makes great work in Honduras for World Vision.

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That's beautiful. And I must say, I love seeing the pictures and the videos that Trinity has taken when we went and visited last year.

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And you can see some of that resonate just through the faces of the people there. So that's great.

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Now, Mike, you've been there a few times. What have been your impressions of Honduras?

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Well, first of all, Honduras is a beautiful country. I mean, it's this gorgeous green and rolling hills and beautiful landscapes.

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It's a less developed country than Canada, so there are certain challenges around infrastructure.

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So the trip to Nueva Frontera takes place on some roads that may not look like the 401.

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Which could be good and bad.

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Well, it could be good or bad. That's right. Traffic is a little different.

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But you know what? What I always focus on is the things that are the same.

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Parents in Honduras love their children. They want the best for them.

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The churches there are thriving and are looking to make a difference.

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And really, it's just a privilege. I just think about it.

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We are people after God's heart in Honduras and in Canada when we get to come together and express that and really help unlock the potential in these children that we see.

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Beautiful children who are so excited to welcome us, to learn more, and really to step into this life-changing journey, this transformation that comes through the long-term development that's supported by Child Sponsorship.

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They get started with Chosen.

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Absolutely. Which is a great segue into my next question because that is why we're here today is talking about the program Chosen.

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And some of us may not be that familiar with the Chosen program.

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We've heard of Child Sponsorship.

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But what is exactly the Chosen program look like in Honduras?

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And how is it different from other sponsorship programs?

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The usual sponsorship programs make children, we take pictures of children and we send those pictures to World Vision Canada.

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And then these are uploaded in our web page.

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And people who want to sponsor a child look for the picture and choose a children.

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Right.

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And this is amazing. But Chosen is the other way around.

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Okay.

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So Chosen, the people who want to be a sponsor, takes these pictures and send the picture to Honduras.

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I will take personally some pictures for our next Chosen party on Thursday.

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And then the children are who decide who will be their sponsor.

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So they choose the sponsor.

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And this is not only a process because this process also changed their mindset and the heart of the children because they have the power.

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They are being empowered to choose something, to decide something.

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So it's not only that they choose a picture, but they choose who is going to be their sponsor.

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They feel the power to decide.

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So this is amazing for us.

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Yes.

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I think I noticed on the website, the first quote that you see if you go on to the Chosen website is the power to choose in a child's hands.

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And that's really core.

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So the child sponsorship work that we've done for many, many years, our development model has evolved away from World Vision coming in and giving things out to really engaging the children and seeing their potential.

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But this is just a chance for us to start the whole relationship between a sponsor and a child in that way, giving the power to choose at the very beginning of the relationship.

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It sets the stage for so many exciting transformations to come.

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I love that.

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And I know that there's even some amazing biblical references that are deep foundations for this model.

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I know last year in a sermon, Mike, you mentioned a story where Jesus asks a man, do you want to be healed?

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And giving him that power and autonomy to make a choice.

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That's right.

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We know that God chooses us and Jesus demonstrates that.

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And he could have just come into that man sitting at the pool of Bethesda and just healed him and said, go, but no, instead, he actually gave him the opportunity to have agency in the midst of that.

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And did that change the healing?

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Well, I mean, he walked no matter what.

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But I think it changed something in his heart and gave a sense of, you know what, you have the opportunity to step into your God-given potential.

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And that's what's really exciting.

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Oh, that's great.

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And Karen, you just mentioned there's a chosen party on Thursday.

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And I assume you've been to a few of these ceremonies before where the children are presented with pictures and they get to choose who may be their sponsor.

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Could you take us through maybe what these chosen ceremonies are like?

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How many you've been to and maybe Mike as well, if you've had that opportunity?

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Yes, yes.

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I have been in many, many shows and parties in Honduras.

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We call it chosen party because for the community is exactly that, a party.

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The children dress their best clothes, their families are celebrating.

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The families bring some food to share with the other families in this party.

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Normally we do this in schools or in open fields for people to feel, especially children, feel free to play, to run.

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And we put all the pictures into a tent and with pins, all the pictures hang out with a pin.

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And children get into this tent.

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And I have seen many, I have seen children who goes directly to a picture and take the picture out and there, then they show the picture and someone takes another picture of that.

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But some kids goes and stay to see everyone, everyone of the pictures and decides someone.

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And when we ask them why, why, why you decide these people and she said because it was smiling, because has a dog in the picture.

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Because it's someone who likes like me.

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They have many reasons, but I think when I have seen this in both ways, when someone chose directly on someone takes time,

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that should be God's hands there being this connection.

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Because it is so powerful.

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And I have seen these children with these pictures and also I have seen the sponsors, some sponsors there in the Chagos and Padi starting to cry when they see that someone chose them.

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It is heartbreaking, but it's beautiful.

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That sounds beautiful.

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Yeah, it's such a powerful moment to see that.

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You know, one of the things I love in Honduras when we were there with Trinity last year is that, you know, often you think of, you know, we say children.

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You think of children as just like a mass, a crowd, right?

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This is a moment for them to be the center of attention.

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And it starts as they enter into that tent where they're prayed for by name by the local pastor, you know, a blessing on them at the beginning as they choose and then they have a chance to go and make that make that choice.

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It's a powerful connection right from the start.

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And I was moved.

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I mean, I've been part of World Vision for 30 years.

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I've seen lots of things, but there's something so powerful about this connection and it never gets old.

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I'll tell you that.

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That's great.

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That's great.

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And I love knowing that there's just another one coming up just in a few days.

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So this is continuing on.

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So we've been doing this now for over a year.

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It's actually over a year now at Trinity and this relationship has been going on and some of our sponsors here at Trinity have now been sponsoring children for well over 12 months.

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What have been some of the impacts that we've seen from the chosen program, especially in this village that you mentioned, Nueva Frontera?

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Yes.

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Well, Inua Frontera.

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I told the people in the church that Noa Frontera has many challenges, lack of water, education is not easy for children.

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But when we started with this sponsorship program in Nueva Frontera, we started to work with the local government, but also with local organizations.

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And we started to work with parents and the churches.

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And now many of the communities, Nueva Frontera, has more than 20 communities.

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But in some of these communities, we have bring water.

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People now has water in their homes.

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It's not water that they have to go and bring from a community tap water, but they have water in their homes.

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And this is another thing that makes them power because they not having water is really complicated, especially for women and children.

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And when they have water, they have now time, time to go to school.

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Women have time to do something for themselves, start small businesses or work in social development in the communities.

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Also, children are going to school.

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And this is very important.

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In Honduras, from 2.5 million children who has to be in school, one million is out of school.

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Especially after COVID.

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Okay. That's a big ratio.

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It is really big and it's a big concern for us.

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And we are working hard for making efforts together with the school, the education department of Honduras, to make the children come back to school.

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And in Nueva Frontera, we are seeing that children are going to school and the children who was left behind because they drop out of school.

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We are helping them to learn, to read, to learn some math for them to feel comfortable to go back to school.

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And well, many other problems, economic development programs, especially in agricultural, Nueva Frontera is rural area and they produce beans, coffee and corn.

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And we are helping them to learn how to produce better.

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Excellent. Wow.

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Maybe I can just add to that. The other thing that I love, the fact when we can come together as a community and do something like this here at Trinity,

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is that not only do we have these relationships between the child and the sponsor,

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but there is a relationship that the church has is partnering with the whole community.

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So we have seen the history of that with Honduras and Trinity for many years.

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But even last Christmas, when we did the special Christmas gift here, we were able to raise funds to come alongside,

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even add additional funding for economic empowerment for women in these communities.

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And so it even just says it's a platform for deepening our engagement, even beyond just the basic child sponsorship program.

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And that's exciting too. Wow, it's like a ripple effect.

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Exactly. Yes, I love to see where this is going.

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And maybe even next year we can come back together again somehow and see even more of the impacts that have been had.

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I think it's amazing.

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And we hope at some point as well to take another team from Trinity to come down, not so much to participate in the chosen program,

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but just to learn and to share in the community and to learn more.

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Hopefully Karen, that will be OK. Of course it will be OK.

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And to see from your own eyes how things are going in front of data.

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It sounds amazing. And that would definitely strengthen the partnership and the relationship that is fostered through this program as well.

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So before we wrap up, I'd love to hear both of your thoughts on what your hopes and prayers maybe are for the children,

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specifically of this community as we raise them up and as they are empowered to then be the leaders

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and be the leaders of their families or their churches or their schools in the future.

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So what would be your hopes?

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My hope is that someday these communities in La Frontera doesn't need to be sponsored because they can't do it by themselves.

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Right now they need our support.

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But my hope is in a few years these communities have had a new phase of development.

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They are developed and the children and their parents can't fight by themselves.

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And my pray is that God help us to strengthen the wisdom to do the things that will help for that.

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Thank you. Thank you very much.

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Yeah, at World Vision we have a vision statement.

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It says, our vision for every child, life in all its fullness, our prayer for every heart, the will to make it so.

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And that word, the idea of children having life in all its fullness comes from Jesus' own words.

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In John 10.10 he said, I've come to give you life, life to the full.

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And so when we think about that, we want to see children in Honduras have full lives.

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As we say in that vision statement, it goes on to say that we want them to experience a life that's free of need but full of promise.

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That's what we're committed for and that's the transformation that we know God empowers obviously through engaging with Jesus

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and the true, you know, dealing with poverty at all of its levels.

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But we have a chance to be Jesus' hands and feet to help accomplish that end.

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It feels elusive sometime, but it's through these commitments, through compassion, through partnership, through taking a step forward to being chosen.

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It gets us one step closer to that amazing vision.

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Well, thank you guys very much.

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That's exciting work and it's exciting to see what God is doing in the midst of all of this as well.

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And thank you for your insight into just this beautiful country of Honduras and to opening our eyes to our larger world and to all of the children who are part of it.

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So thank you, Mike, and thank you very much, Karen.

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Thank you, Elizabeth.

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Thank you, Elizabeth.

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