Walking down the gravel road to get to the physical structures of H.C.C.P., we were surrounded by 550 head shaven, school uniform clad children playing drums, dancing and singing welcome songs for us. The singing continued until we reached the hospitality building. After the grand welcome we were surrounded by beautiful faces who wanted to stroke our pasty, white, hairy skin.

The next day we got to visit Faith. This woman lived in a mud hut with her twelve children until it melted from the rain. She was able to move into the very first Home of Hope in Africa last January. We sat in her house and she spoke about her life before. Faith was so excited to tell us about the faithfulness of God, that she made sure we had the chance to accept Jesus into our lives!

When we stepped outside of the first Home of Hope in Africa, we were astonished to see hundreds of children from the orphanage standing quietly outside the house. They were so well behaved, we didn’t even know they had arrived! We spent some time talking to them about seeing homes built for the poor in Africa and how it was going to take child-like faith.

Some of the kids started banging on the drums while the rest led praises to Jesus. After a while we made a big circle around the home and we all prayed for more Homes of Hope in Africa.

Not only do we believe that God will grow Homes of Hope in Africa, we believe God will also grow the seeds He has planted inside of the children’s’ hearts. We asked a class of them what they wanted to be when they grow up. Many of them said they wanted to be doctors or lawyers or accountants, but we also believe God will make some of them missionaries to go from Uganda to the ends of the earth!

Homes of Hope is an incredible ministry of Youth With A Mission that builds houses for the poor in the name of Jesus. We believe that God loves families and it is important to Him that they have a place to call Home. Homes of Hope is a gateway to transforming communities! Youth With a Mission has partnered with volunteers from all over the world and every sphere of society to built over 4,200 homes in 16 nations!

But there has never been a Home of Hope in Africa…until this year.

In January, our friends the McClurgs went to Uganda with their church and built the first Home of Hope for a woman named Faith and her 12 kids. You can see the photos from that very first home here. It was an amazing time of changing a family’s life, and it was only the beginning.

A few months later we sat in the McClurgs living room praying for Africa. We didn’t know what the next step was, but if God was going to do something big with Homes of Hope in Africa, we wanted to be a part of it!

It is incredible to look back on the last six months and see how God has moved and provided. Tomorrow we fly to Uganda and Rwanda for three and a half weeks! We won’t be building the second Home of Hope, we are hoping for something greater.

Our goal is to see Homes of Hope run by the people who are committed to working in those countries! We are excited to brainstorm, train and pass off the keys to Homes of Hope. We want to stand beside the YWAMers, so they don’t feel like they are starting something all on their own! These YWAM bases we are working with have asked about doing Homes of Hope. Please pray for YWAM Hopeland, Uganda and YWAM Kigali, Rwanda as we meet with them and seek God’s heart together.

Please also take the time to pray for us for wisdom and health, especially for Lindsay with a baby on the way!

Now hold onto that thought and fast-forward three years. Life is a little crazy, we are just moving from Ensenada to Tijuana and at the moment we are building a house in Panama. It is July, 2011. I start talking with a friend of mine, Andrea Lambert, about a book that I have wanted to do for a few years and she gets all excited! Suddenly I am not the only one dreaming about a Homes of Hope- coffee table type- book, and I have a due date to get it done by (Lesson one, unless you really want to do it, never dream in front of a Lambert).

We arrived in Tijuana in the fall and I started talking to some friends about collaborating to get this thing done. Quickly, we ran into an issue while trying to get this project going. I didn’t have a computer fast enough to run the programs to design this book! Our little department of Homes of Hope International Development wasn’t making any money so it was hard to justify buying a nice computer for us pioneers in the back of the office. However, Kody was walking around the campus in those early Tijuana days and found no less than three unused computers! We sent them to where there was the greatest computer need and one of them landed right on my desk! If you are taking notes, mark a tally under “God’s Provision.”

Now, a great friend of ours named Craig said he would help me with the designing side of the book since I didn’t really even know how to start (for future reference, Craig is kind of a modest Adobe genius. He may dispute that, but that just reiterates that first descriptive word). Big problem though, my version of Adobe Creative Suite was so old and decrepit we couldn’t even share files. When I asked for some funds for an upgrade I was told we did not have the money at the time to make it happen. Bummer.

Another great friend of ours named Christian came by around that time and I mentioned to him about how I was in need of an updated version of Adobe. He said that he had one. A few days later my computer was running every program I could possibly need to make this project happen, plus a few more that I still don’t know how to use. Go ahead and throw down another tally for God.

From around December through March I worked hard along with several other people to turn our experiences into stories, find the matching photos and put them into a readable design.

At last, it was a beautiful file on my computer, but nothing more. I was ready to print, but printing was a big money commitment. Our boss-man Sean called a friend who owns a printing company and asked about discount print prices. We heard back he would print 500 for free and send them away to be hard bound (Make that God tally with a big bold Sharpie)!

A few days ago they arrived. And they are beautiful. And we are just so stoked. It’s really cool to see how an idea can turn into a physical thing. But even more than that it’s crazy and incredible to think about how God dropped that idea into my lap four years ago and then to look at his hand through it all. It makes me think He might just have ulterior purposes for this book.

I have been dreaming about the future of it. There are 500 copies. Maybe one will end up in someone’s hands right when they need it. Maybe when they read the story about the first Home of Hope in Uganda or how receiving a home changed Bigtha’s life, they will be so moved it changes their life. Perhaps God wants to reveal his Father heart, his provision or even his reality to someone when they read this book. I may never know the full effects of the book, but I am glad to be a part of it.

Besides helping with the house and taking care of her children, Milagro also micromanaged the whole community! This lady would make sure that people were where they ought to be (which was usually helping build the house)! Along with herding the community, she also made sure no tools ran off. We were resting easy knowing it would be hard to steal a drill when Milagro was watching.

Her five children were a great joy and would not stop following us around. They also worked as hard on their house as any team member! When it was time to dedicate the house, they dressed up in their finest clothes, ready to receive their new home.

What was the most stunning was Milagro’s faith in God. She openly praised God in the good times and the bad. It won’t matter who is around her, or who agrees or disagrees. She loves Jesus! When she saw the new furniture in her home, it was just one more thing for her to be thankful to God for.

Inside her home it was a hot, sweaty mess. The whole neighborhood showed up to celebrate, trying to all fit inside her house at the same time! Milagro finished the house dedication off by having us all shout together “Gracias Dios” and “Victoria!”

Even though we were offered use of their new beds and the best cooked dinner we could imagine, we couldn’t stay forever! After a great house build with an amazing family, we did have to say goodbye. It is a great thing that we will be back at the end of March, because we will try hard to visit Milagro and her family.

It was a huge blessing to be able to work alongside our friends at YWAM San Pedro. They are doing really great things in their community and the surrounding cities. To see photos from our trip, click here.

In Costa Rica, it rains seven months of the year and for Jose and Carmen’s family, it rained outside as well as inside.

“Everything would get wet,” explained Carmen, “We would have to take everything and store it higher up so it would stay dry and not get ruined by the flooding.”

After saving up from their work, the family was able to fix up their home so it didn’t get as wet on the inside. “I was content with my home,” said Carmen, “It was still hard to live there, but I was content.”

When the YWAMers and volunteer team arrived to build Jose and Carmen’s family a new home, they had eight people living with them. Besides having another baby, a nephew and a neighbor were also staying with their family.

The day before, they were also faced with a hard decision. They knew they were getting a house, but when Carmen told her employers that she had to miss work so she could be at the house build, they told her she needed to choose between her job or a new house.

“They said I would have to choose, work or a house, and I chose a house, because it’s my home and for my family.” Carmen quit that day where she had been working for five years making around 180 dollars a month without one day off.

This new Home of Hope will truly be a mark of new beginnings for Jose and Carmen. While there are always uncertainties in the future, having a home without debt will allow them to put their money toward education and resources.

At the end of the house build Carmen spotted the new dining room table and chairs she was being given along with the new home. “I told my husband earlier this year that I wanted a nice table to have for December for my family,” she exclaimed, “And now it is here! I was content with my little home but now I get to live in this mansion! When we moved here, I cried because I didn’t want to live here, and now I am crying because I do!”

To see the photos click here.

After years of building home after home, some of the YWAM staff started spending extra time with the kids in the neighborhood. Soon an after school program called Circulo Andante, or the Walking Circle, was established in the community. Building off the foundation of Homes of Hope, the staff used that relationship to have a greater impact with the kids and their families.

Circulo Andante has grown and now there are more than one hundred kids coming every week. Along with the kids program there is also a Moms class where the mothers of the kids are taught the bible along with other skills from safety to reading.

“One of the first exciting things that happened in the Moms class was that they learned how to write their name,” said April, one of the YWAM staffers, “They were so excited because now they would be able to sign their kid’s papers for school for the first time.”

The YWAMers put together a library of books to take out to Circulo Andante every week. There are very few books in the public schools for the kids to read and even though this is a mobile library, it still has more books than the library in Tijuana. Without it the kids in Circulo Andante would have almost no way to even hold a book.

“There is a girl in my kinder class who’s mom is in the Moms class learning how to read,” said April, “Her mom checks out a book from the class and practices reading to her kids. So every night the kids get to listen to a bedtime story as their mom reads it to them.”

Years ago the teams building the first houses in Granjas and Antorcha could never have imagined the transformational impact that they would be a part of on the families in that area. They may have been simple house builds, and while the immediate effects were great, it was still only a seed to what God’s plans were to change and bless a whole community.

One of the most encouraging things for us as missionaries is when our friends and family come down and experience what we do. New Life Church sent a team led by our good friends Rob and Jeanine and their two year old daughter Zoe. There were only three other team members with them so we had an awesome time getting to know them and really working hard getting the house up!

It was a really neat experience working with such a little team because everyone felt like family. Not to mention that it was all positioned around Thanksgiving! Even the family worked really hard putting the house up! The parents were the sweetest couple. The dad always had a smile on his face and their kids kept asking what else they could do. It was such a joy working with such a beautiful family.

Thanksgiving morning the ladies all went to Walmart to shop for the family. We had some money put together to buy the family groceries. After we filled the cart we were praying that we had enough money to purchase it all. In the end we had an extra fifty dollars! So we went back in the store and bought them some heavy blankets.

When the house was finished we had some of the guys take the family to a little store close by to get ice-cream. The ladies spent the time they were away organizing the new things in the house. There were groceries, a carpet, a set of coffee mugs, cleaning supplies, toiletries and warm socks. After we were done, we locked the door.

The family returned and we had a very emotional house dedication. My favorite part was when we presented the father with a bible in spanish, he hugged it. I am just going to say it, that this was the best Thanksgiving ever. Not only were we so thankful for what God has done in our own lives, but on that very day what God did in that family’s life! Both the father and mother said that they could never deny that God loved them because of what He did through us.

Two year old Zoe. Anyone can help build a house!

The father receiving keys to their new home.

The family first entering their home and seeing the surprise gifts inside.

Specifically in our office, we have been working on a new 20×20 house instead of the 16×20 and we were able to unpack that. Where the 16×20 had two bedrooms with one wall divider, the new house will have 2 bedrooms, 1 main room, a small bathroom and a little sink/counter area. It is a huge upgrade in the standard of living for the family and we will still be able to build it in only two days!

We also talked about how to be better serving the local church, how to really impact the communities and how to be making the greatest spiritual impact with the families, communities and the teams coming to build. It was a great time of encouragement for everyone as we recommitted to working and serving relationally, because of our love for Jesus.