“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
When I was younger growing up in Honduras, I had many plans and dreams for my life. I had the opportunity as a teenager to travel to Hoyt Lakes, Minnesota with my sister, Cristy, to learn English for a year. As I embarked on that adventure I began to dream and plan my future. I decided I would become bilingual, go to college and once I graduated get a job in a large company. I planned to live what I considered a “good life.” How little my 15-year-old self knew of what God had planned.
God used the life of my American host family, who became my adopted grandparents, Jim and Delores Welch, their entire family and all my wonderful friends in Minnesota to help me to become bilingual, but that is where my plan ended and the Lord’s began.
Two weeks after I arrived home in Honduras from my year abroad, Luis Chavarria, now a missionary with Frontline Missions, invited me to be a translator for a mission team that was serving in my hometown of La Ceiba. The following year he invited me to translate for another team in a different area of Honduras and I met Alan and Heidi Winter on my first trip with Frontline Missions in January of 2002. I was 17 years old.
Over the next few years, I got more and more involved with Frontline’s ministry in Honduras and my dreams for the future began to evolve from those I had when I was 15. During college I frequently took time off from classes and spent my vacations traveling with Frontline and serving in different areas of my country. God’s dream for me was so much better than I had for myself!
When I graduated from college I began working to coordinate trips for Frontline in Honduras and now serve as the Director for Frontline Missions in Honduras. I am so grateful for the opportunities the Lord has given me to share with and serve my people of Honduras. He has allowed me to do things and serve in a way I could have never dreamed.
Even as God expanded and shaped my dreams from a young age, I am seeing God work similarly in the lives of the children we minister to among the Tolupan tribe of central Honduras, stirring the hearts of the children through simple Bible stories.
During the month of June this year, we shared Bible stories nearly every night. One evening, the story was about David, who even as a young shepherd boy was chosen by God to be a great leader for his people. God’s dream for David was more than he could have ever thought possible. As we discussed the story with the kids, we were amazed by how they understood the story and answered our questions. At the end of the night, however, my heart filled with joy to hear the kids calling to one another as they headed home, “Good night future mayor!” While said in joking fun, the statement shows that the boys realize they can dream too. God is dreaming for them the way He dreamed for me and the way He is dreaming for you. God is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20).
Please join us in prayer for the Tolupan children as they begin to dream with God for their future. Our desire is to see them turn to God for their future and look for ways to serve and share with others for the glory of Christ.
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