Esperanza House - SUMMER 2023
The spring gardens were wonderfully fruitful and produced an abundant harvest of vegetables including two varieties of spinach, pumpkins, eggplant, casava, and chili peppers! The fruit trees around the home have also produced crops of mangos, coconuts, jackfruit, and rambutan!
This physical fruit is good, and provides for the needs of the Esperanza House, but even more exciting is the fruit we see in the lives of our girls! Erpi, Ilma, and Yesika Sindi graduated high school with honors. After prayer and seeking the Lord, they have all applied and been accepted to the Bible school program. They will continue to live at the Esperanza House, but will become leaders and mentors for new girls just starting high school who will come this August.
Another graduation that we are excited to celebrate is that of Vio and Yalni. These young ladies have graduated from the local Bible School with an AA degree (the only degree our local Bible School is able to offer presently). They have both been offered a pastoral staff internship on another island, Java, which includes a scholarship to take online classes at Berea where they can finish their BA degree in pastoral ministry! For these girls from a remote mountain village, this is mind blowing. Just five years ago such opportunities did not exist. Praise the Lord for such a time as this! And pray for these girls as they follow the calling the Lord has put on their lives.
Esperanza House - Spring 2023
Rifka’s Niece
It is an exciting time at the Esperanza House! In January the spring semester started with new students! One of those is the niece of our foster daughter (Rifka) who lived with us nearly 10yrs ago! Another is from a remote village that has no church yet, but she somehow heard about the opportunity for education and God made a way for her to come to the Esperanza House where she is excited to not just go to school, but to meet Christians and learn about Jesus!
Nova
Other exciting happenings at the Esperanza House is our new House Mom, Nova! She was one of our first students back in 2013! She was an incredible student and even earned a scholarship at a prominent Bible School on another Island. Once she completed her degree she felt God calling her back to us, to serve at the Esperanza House as well as teach at STAT, our local pastor’s training school. She is a vibrant young lady that is pouring so much into our girls, discipling them with an infectious joy and love for the Lord!
Pizza
During our time at the Esperanza House we treated the girls to pizza! For many of them, it was the first time they have ever eaten this strange food, and it was a hit!
Worship & Prayer
We also had the chance to worship with them in the chapel that we helped build on their school campus back in 2014. I was moved to tears as one of the girls shared the Word and her testimony, the girls praised Jesus with all their hearts, and we prayed together.
Gardening
Lastly it is so exciting to see this group of girls working together to grow and harvest fruits and vegetables in their gardens! This helps cut their costs, gives them a sense of ownership and accomplishment while developing valuable life skills outside of the classroom!
Currently there are 18 girls at the Esperanza House and one house mom. They start out going to the Christian high school on our Bible college campus in Palopo. If they desire to continue their education, they can go to the Bible college on campus or we are open to helping them find a way to another college of their choice.
Bugis church planting
In 2010, God placed on our heart to reach the Never Reached Tribe of the Bugis. They are the largest tribe in South Sulawesi with over 6 million people and less that 0.01% are followers of Jesus.
What is our Bugis Church Planting Initiative? It is our desire to place church planters among the Bugis tribes with Business as Missions being the model. Ultimately that means that we find a church planter that starts to travel into a specific town in the Bugis area to evaluate what is a niche’ they could fill. Ultimately we would start a small business for them and provide them with a salary for the first year and taper off the following year as they should have the business well enough established to start subsidizing their salary. They will not build a “Church” because in these areas being most of the time 100% Muslim, a “church” becomes a hinderance to the gospel and can be a target for violence.
A Bugis Church Plant takes somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 for the two year launch. The need is great in this area.
Tablet Library Project
Tablet Library Project
Currently fully funded, but has been put on hold due to Covid-19, this is a project to buy 90 Digital Tablets that will have a digital library with over 100 books on it. These Tablets will be distributed among the Lead Pastors of the South, the Southeast and West Sulawesi district as well as to the students at the Bible College in Palopo.
This was stirred in me as I was talking to a former student of mine who was ministering in a remote village. I asked him if he liked to read. He shrugged and said, “Yeah, I guess.” I asked him what he reads, and he told me all he had was the Bible. I realized that even if they could afford to buys books, which they can’t, they wouldn’t even have a place to buy them.
So these 100 plus books are mostly theological book as well as a few counseling books and financial resources. This will give them a way to better improve their sermons but also better improve their ministry all together.
At this point the books have been bought, and is in the process of being made digital. As soon as we can, I will go over and purchase the tablets and download the library.