Monday, May 24, 2010

Alex’s House

I can’t say enough wonderful things about our Sr. Pastor. Not only is he a wonderful pastor, but he is our good friend who gives great advice, and seeks the will of God in everything. He has successfully transitioned our church from a very traditional Southern Baptist church over the past 20 years to a contemporary format. Now that doesn’t sound like such a feat now days-there are tons of contemporary churches, but transiting is a whole different story. We’ve gone though a name and location change, etc. It was the first church to actually ‘make it’ through a transition. A few years ago, when Bill was building a new home there was a Hispanic work crew that was working on the construction project and he was really burdened with not being able to communicate with them and who was sharing the gospel with them. Out of that we started a Hispanic ministry at our church-we have a service on Sunday afternoon’s with around 50-75 people who are ministered to by our Hispanic pastor and his family, Pastor Juan.

This December, Bill had another tug in his heart about our church being involved somewhere internationally. He went to the DR and Haiti and meet with 3 young pastor’s in training and really fell in love with them and their hearts. He came back excited about the opportunities he saw there and wanted us to pray about getting involved. Then the earthquake hit Haiti on January 12th and we all knew that this was the place that God had for us. Alex, one of the young pastors, was killed during the earthquake. His dream was to start an orphanage to get kids off of the streets. Out of all of the destruction-his dream was born. The two other pastors, along with the financial support of our church, construction crews, teams that will continue to go, and training from Bill have taken in 12 children. Some of these kids have been given their first set of clothes and shoes. They have food to eat, a place to sleep, and will go to school, and most importantly they will learn the love of Christ.

We (Bill) have been looking for land out of the city (and chaos) where we can build a permanent structure for the orphanage. A place they can spread out and grow. They have found a beautiful piece of land (about 20 acres) that is in the mountains, it’s cooler than the city. They would have room to farm and teach the children how to farm. It’s really a dream piece of property. The land and taxes, etc. would be about $90,000 and the facility would be about $200,000. Our church is currently supporting the orphanage, but this amount of money is not in our budget. I would love it if you’d watch this video they just filmed. I think this will touch your heart, and maybe you can help. Feel free to share the video also. I think Bill said it best when he said, “I know it’s a big dream, but God is a big God.”

1 comment:

Brooke said...

Pastor Bill is awesome! Very touching video!