Hey Prayer Partners,
Again, as always, I start out thanking you for your prayers for Destino del Reino. It is so obvious that we are being upheld by your prayers each day and through each trial we go through. Thank you for being faithful in prayer even when you may not hear from me for over a month (it has been 6 weeks this time, and I am so sorry).
Things have been so crazy lately and as one of my friends stated on a Facebook post “it is never boring at Destino.” Sometimes boredom sounds good to me though, ha.
As many of you know, our bus driver was returning from taking our teachers back to Siguatepeque after church on a Wednesday night a few weeks back and he crashed with a motorcyclist, who died by the time they could take him to a clinic. That has been a hard struggle for all of us, especially our precious driver who spent a night in jail and was declared as guilty of the traffic violation. He could have easily gone to prison but God provided the money for us to pay the family and they did not press charges against him. Thank you for your prayers for our safety each and every day with so many children on the road several times a day and buses to and from church — God has blessed us so much with safety all these years and we need to continue to thank Him for that blessing, which we usually just take for granted unless something tragic happens. We praise God for our safety in every other way as well. As you know, Honduras is the most dangerous country, by a very high percentage, in all the world, and yet God has called us here to raise up a new generation for His glory and Kingdom advancement and so He holds us safe in the palm of His hand while we do what He called us to do. Thank you for continuing to pray for us each and every day for safety for all our teachers and students and workers.
As I shared with some of you, we have seen so much more growth spiritually in some of our older teens this year and we praise God for the fruit that is manifesting itself in their lives. Last Sunday there were at least 12 of our students at the altar after the sermon, surrendering more of their lives to Him and wanting to be more of a testimony for Him. There were also 3 of our students who received Jesus Christ as their Savior that morning. It was such a precious precious day for all of us and I thank God for all He is doing in these kids’ lives. Today, I interviewed 10 kids who want to come to us from another school down the road, to enter into our junior high in September. I ask you to pray for these 10 kids. I was so sad as I talked to each student individually to learn that very few of the 10 know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. I am a little uneasy to accept them all into our school. We have been taking in enough students from this other Christian school each year to fill up our rising class into the junior high up to the number of 30 students. This year we have only 20 kids in the 6th grade so we do have room for these 10 but that would been that these new 10 will be one-third of the 7th grade class and with a majority not having the Spirit of God living in them, that seems like a big risk for me to take with our students already in Destino. Please pray for these 10 kids and also for me to be sure that this is what God wants me to do. I thank God for our Pastor Pablo and several other teachers who pray with our students individually. I have prayed with several this week because of attitude problems or tragedies in their homes and realize just how great a need we have to have more individual time with these students — they have such burdens for being so young and need to be loved and prayed over individually.
Along that note, please be praying for God to send us several more American teachers for next year who can be disciplers for these students. We need more Americans to cover the classes so that we can have additional counseling time dedicated for prayer and discipleship for the students. Thanks for praying for these great need.
Thanks to some of you who have sent in some end-of-the-year gifts — we certainly need the extra help right now with bonuses that we need to give the workers during the holidays. Thanks for thinking of us and I know that God will greatly bless you for all your generosity to Destino kids and workers. If you didn’t get a chance to see the video that Shaun Suitt made of our ministry, please go to http://www.vimeo.com/113425836 It really is such a great job in showing in just about 4 minutes what Destino is all about. Thanks again, Shaun, it has been such a great tool to get the word out about these kids.
If anyone knows of someone with a gift in technology who would be willing to help us with our website, please let me know. We would love to have an active website where we kept our followers aware of what is going on here, updates on students, pictures of events, features of different teachers, etc. I have no idea (nor time) of how to do this and we could really use some help in that area.
I hope y’all had a great Thanksgiving. We certainly did. We had all my kids, our neighbors, Pastor’s family, my nephew (Matthew) and the American teachers with us for the day and it was such a sweet celebration time of all that God is doing and has done for us this year. After we ate, we went into the church and had a time of praise and worship and my older kids all played musical instruments — two songs — it was so great. We continue to look for more musical instruments for the school band so if anyone knows of any used instruments, please send them on the next container in May. Music is such a blessing to be given to these students and we thank Pablo for his talented instruction.
The church is growing every week and we are praying continually for a gym so that we can fit all the people in — please pray for us for this huge need for the school and for the church. We just finished covering our outside basketball court so that the kids can go there for some of their PE classes when it is raining but when you consider there are 300 students and 11 grades all trying to go somewhere for recesses and PE classes, it just is not enough space for us. We are praying God will provide the finances to build that this next year.
In the meantime, this next week we will start building our new kindergarten class. We don’t have extra money right now but the workers will just work as it comes in and put blocks up as we can buy them. Thanks for praying for this need as well. God is so faithful and knows all our needs and will provide in His perfect timing.
Thanks for your prayers for my kids in the children’s home. Eidy was my hardest child for years and she has let the Holy Spirit completely transform her life from within and is not the same girl. I praise Him for that. Josue has been a trial as well for years (he is a very big 11 year old) and just this past 3 months, we have seen a great change in him as well. Emily accepted Christ two weeks ago and she turned 9 years old today — she is growing into a precious young woman as well. We have seen changes in Carlos too — he has become such a confident young man and his teachers say he is a leader in his 7th grade class now. All of them are so precious and I praise God for each and every one of them. We would love for God to send us a baby boy but for now we are just at 18 kids and the youngest will be 3 years old soon. We are not used to being without a baby but we take care of Sammy and Emily’s baby brother each day while his parents are working in Destino. Pray for me to have more compassion and love for the parents as they visit their children at Destino. Sometimes I get so disgusted at their selfishness and immorality that I forget how much they need a Savior as well and that I may be their only light to lead them to HIM.
There are some other delicate matters of prayer that I cannot share in this email but please continue to pray for us in all the situations we face and for wisdom and great faith to keep walking in His plan for Destino no matter what battles rage against us — Satan hates this ministry and these kids and will do whatever he can to thwart the purposes of God for these future leaders and missionaries to the world. Thanks be to God who ALWAYS leads us into victory.
Remember that you cannot hit “reply” to this email but I would love to hear from you at my yahoo email rhondadestino@yahoo.com. Blessings to each one of you and may you have an incredible Christmas time, celebrating the birth of our Savior and our HOPE in this world.
In His abundant, unfailing grace,
Rhonda
