Newsletter - March, 2017
| March, 2017 Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me." Matt. 25:40 Published by the Society of the Good Shepherd, P. O. Box 122, Amberson, PA 17210. (717) 349-7033 |
No, Jesus didn’t use those precise words in Matthew 25, when He spoke about separating the sheep from the goats. However, there is no doubt in my mind that when Christians build a house for the homeless, they are ultimately building it for Jesus. We serve our Lord when we serve the poor. Deborah and I recently returned from Honduras, where a crew of Christian workers built a house for a needy family. The crew consisted of men of all ages—from teenagers to fathers with adult children. Some were members of our church, and some came from other churches. They worked incredibly hard in an outpouring of love, and were able to get the house completed in a week. The house is built of concrete blocks, and it has a metal roof and cement floor. The cost of the materials to build the house was only $5500. Yet, the house will seem like a luxury mansion for the family who will move into it.
One of the hardest parts of building homes for the needy in Honduras is being able to find available land. The land for this new house arose out of an interesting situation. The house has been built on a long strip of land that runs up a hill. Private individuals own the land on either side of this strip. However, through the years, this strip of land was overlooked. So it was never owned by any individual—which meant that the state still held title to it. The state gave this strip of land to the local rural community of Corralitos. There is room on this strip of land for four or five houses. So we plan to return and build more in the future. The rural community of Corralitos is run by a council, and the chairman of the council is Marco Tulio Rodriguez. Tulio is a hardworking, honest man, and he and the council will ultimately make the decision as to which needy family or persons will live in the new house we built. I don’t envy their situation. There are many, many people in this community who are either homeless or who live in crude shelters. Some of these homeless families are living with relatives, in overcrowded situations.
Many of the homeless people in Honduras are elderly or disabled. These are the ones we want to help first. However, perhaps the largest group of homeless families are those headed by single mothers. Many of these are divorced women. But a large percentage are mothers who never married. Immorality is a huge problem in Honduras. Many women have children from several different fathers. The parents are the ones at fault, but the innocent children pay the price. There are many such families in Corralitos, and very likely the new house will go to one of them. In fact, the fellows took time off of their construction work to buy mattresses for Nancy, a single mother, and her children, who live just up the hill from the new house that the fellows built. She and her children had been sleeping on mats instead of mattresses. The men also replaced the dirt floor in her house with a cement floor.
We are presently paying a local Honduran man to build a septic system for the new house and for the future houses that will be built on this strip of land. The cost for the entire multi-house septic system will be a little more than $3000. We thank all of you whose donations made this possible.
In addition to the men, a group of young ladies also went down and were able to tackle a project of their own. We’ll tell you about it in next month’s newsletter.
The Society of the Good Shepherd, P. O. Box 122, Amberson, PA 17210 • (717) 349-7033
Click on the following link if you would care to make a donation to the work in Honduras: Donations
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