Beyond Sunday with Pastor Nic
Join me for a more personal look into the weekend sermons, as well as some thoughts on theology, marriage, parenting, and leadership. I will also explore some of your most asked questions throughout the year.
www.nic-williams.com
Beyond Sunday with Pastor Nic
Honduras Through His Eyes: A Conversation with Felipe
Felipe and his wife left their American dream behind to serve in Honduras through His Eyes Ministry, a holistic mission providing medical care, child sponsorship, church planting, and coffee farming that transforms communities and lives. Their journey showcases how unexpected callings can lead to profound impact when we view the world through Jesus' perspective.
• His Eyes began as a small medical outreach and evolved into a comprehensive ministry
• Felipe never planned to be a missionary but followed God's unexpected calling
• The ministry includes optometry, general medicine, pediatrics, dental, and laboratory services
• Medical services cost around $8 including medicine, making care accessible to those living on $2/day
• Eight churches have been planted in communities throughout Honduras
• The Milk Project provides nutrition, education and spiritual teaching to nearly 200 children
• Coffee farming creates sustainable income and employment opportunities
• Children often walk over an hour each way to participate in the Milk Project programs
• The ministry operates with local leadership and focuses on empowering communities
• Future plans include developing a surgical center for procedures like cataract surgeries
Visit HisEyesHonduras.com to learn more about sponsoring a child for $38/month, purchasing Hill Climber Coffee, or supporting this ministry financially. Currently, 17 children need sponsors—consider changing a life today.
Hey, welcome back to Beyond Sunday podcasters. Today's episode is a little different because I'm actually recording this one on the ground in Honduras. I've been here serving alongside some people in my church and alongside a ministry that I love and believe in, called His Eyes. His Eyes is all about helping people, both physically and spiritually, see Jesus clearly, from medical clinics to child sponsorship, from church planning to coffee farming. Yes, you heard that right, they are doing holistic, gospel-centered ministry that's making a real difference.
Speaker 1:And I'm joined today by a great friend of mine and one of the leaders of this ministry, felipe, who, along with his wife Valerie and their team, have been faithfully serving here for years. So whether you're listening today and you're looking to support Global Mission, sponsor a child, or you just want to hear a powerful story of what God is doing around the world, I think this conversation is going to stir something in you. So let's dive in and see what's happening when we start looking at the world through his eyes. Felipe, thank you so much for joining me today. It's a pleasure to be. So. I've known you for man. Maybe I've been at this position for a lead pastor for about 10 years, so I've known you maybe eight years, something like that. Yep, I think my first interaction with you was you coming to the States, and so you do. You get stateside a lot.
Speaker 2:Didn't used to. We had young kids, so we were pretty much here 50 weeks out of the year. Now our kids are we're empty nesters. 50 weeks out of the year, now our kids are, we're empty nesters, so we can go back and do more fundraising and help spread the word about what the mission is doing. So we're back several months out of the year now.
Speaker 1:Now, is that all at once, or do you split that up?
Speaker 2:No, we split it up, sometimes in the spring, a couple of months, and sometimes in the fall, a couple months.
Speaker 1:This podcast is, as I was telling you earlier, is in 30 countries, which blows my mind and just to think about that. But there are a lot of people listening today that have never heard of his eyes, and so let's take it kind of back to the beginning. How did his eyes get started and how did God call you into this mission?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this actually started as like a little arm of a big medical organization in the States, just a temporary RV, sort of medical outreach.
Speaker 2:And there were some missionaries that were part-time missionaries at the time he was a pilot for United and they would come back and forth and they were wanting to start something permanent.
Speaker 2:But they didn't want to do that until they could add as long as as well as medical also do optometry, and my wife was going to school for to be an optometrist. So when she graduated we decided to come down. We had done a couple trips by that point with the same mission, helping people here in the capital city in Tegucigalpa, and then we just came down for four months to help intern and kind of set everything up for them to be able to kind of take that ball and run with it. And then we went back, got real jobs, came back several months later just to help out, bring another team, and then that's when God was like you need to move here. So we did that in 2000 just to do optometry, because that's all we were, that's all the plan we were given at that time and then pretty soon we just start hosting teams and then we're helping kids in the neighborhood and then and you just all kind of snowballed slowly over the years to now doing everything that you mentioned earlier. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:Now, when you first got here, had you guys planted any churches outside of this property? No, okay, so we'll talk about that in a minute. So let's back up for a moment. Did you always feel called to be a missionary?
Speaker 2:No, no, we never really knew any missionaries when I was a kid and I'd seen my grandparents live out their faith, but I wasn't really being challenged with that until my first mission trip of like you go somewhere to serve, but what are you doing? How are you doing that in your kind of your daily life? But still, I thought that was for like professional people that went to school for that and knew what they were doing, and so I never thought till we got the call I was like kind of take that step in faith, but kind of at the same time going this is my choice but we did it Because you guys went to college to live the American dream.
Speaker 2:I mean essentially right yeah, to make bank and buy the nice car, the nice house and all that stuff, and that was, you know, we were just kind of aimless, I guess, in that sense. Um, before before mission trips and then just really kind of being hit with that Like what are you living for, what are you really living for, and where are you, where are you putting your time and your money? And so, yeah, no, before that not on our radar at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's fascinating for most people, myself included, because there are some people grow up and you know like they're called admissions. That's all they ever think about it. But then there are other people like you guys that are professionals in your fields, living out life just starting outside of college, not really dreaming about moving to a foreign country and making no money and having different things than you would have in America. They just don't look at that as like, yeah, I want to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't, logically, or you know, the math ain't math and it doesn't make sense, but that's how God works.
Speaker 1:So the ministry is called His Eyes. So let's talk about that for a moment. Why the name His Eyes and what's kind of the story or vision behind that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so since we got started under that other umbrella organization, it was a couple of years before the leadership was thrust on me and then we had to start a 501c3. And so we really just kind of like what do we call this? Like Honduras Christian Mission or you know something pretty plain. And then by that time we already kind of we'd been doing church planning and we'd been doing all this other stuff. And so then it was just kind of like well, what are we doing? We're doing all these different things. How do you put that into one name?
Speaker 2:And literally we're just trying to see the world the way Jesus did, just trying to help people spiritually but also physically. They were like, well, I was just trying to use his eyes and I was like, well, that's a good name. And then we kind of, and then it just kind of stuck. Of course everybody thinks it's because my wife's an optometrist. Oh, we didn't think of that at the time. But I'm like, hey, whatever works, as long as it helps us kind of focus ourselves on living every day for Jesus. Whatever gets you there.
Speaker 1:That's funny because I would have assumed, like most people, that it's kind of a double entendre just to play off that I wish I was that smart or I guess I should just start telling people that's what we did.
Speaker 2:It would make me look even smarter. But no, that wasn't.
Speaker 1:I think that too, because you play on words so much now it's embarrassing, that's funny, so all right. So you guys are involved in so many areas. You've got the medical, the spiritual, the educational. This is a little bit of a hard question, but walk us through a day in the life of ministry for you, yeah there's, there's, there's, no.
Speaker 2:Two days are alike, and so I now. I used to have my hands in everything, literally like touching things and doing all this stuff, and as we've grown and we need someone to handle the administrative side, now I spend when I'm not with teams or helping. I spend a lot of my time on the computer trying to make everybody else's job possible or just help facilitate what they're already doing. So in a way, we kind of worked ourselves out of needing to be here because now we have locals that can do all that. But yeah, with every team you could be coffee farming one day, working with kids, the next helping in the clinic or doing medical teams. We have different kinds of teams that come down helping in the clinic or doing medical teams. We have different kinds of teams that come down. So there's, and even in that day, you could be touching three or four of those different areas, doing the same thing but different. So it's. It can be a little chaotic for those not used to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like, for example, my team today is here at the the mission. In what city? Tegucigalpa. Yeah, I make you say that because I can't. And this morning we worked with kids. We'll work with about 80 kids today. This morning I played soccer for about an hour and a half. I need an ice bath. I'm not going to move much for the rest of the day and I've got another game coming up at 1 o'clock and they are serious about their football soccer and they were intense. There was even a fight on the pitch today. It was pretty intense. Sometimes it happened, yeah, and then we had a second team upstairs doing Bible lessons and sharing that. Then I went and got an eye exam. Yeah, found out I need reading glasses, but I'm fighting that right now. So I asked you this question the other day out of it's kind of like your favorite child kind of question out of all the ministries you're involved in, what's one that kind of especially captures your heart right now?
Speaker 2:I guess what I really love is like a couple of our coffee farms, our farms that are connected with churches, that are helping kids, that our clinic can go up and help in, and so that's what I really love is how can we be in a community and pour more into that community, be a more part of that community, Like if we left tomorrow, would anybody care outside the church? And so seeing those areas where it's like we do this, we do that and we can do all of that in the same place is pretty cool. We can't coffee farm in every community here. They're not all at the right altitude or have the right conditions, so you know some of those. We can't do everything we do there, but those are just really cool to me to be able to see how God has worked that over 20 some years to get there where all these different things are happening and almost none of which were on our radar 25 years ago Pretty cool.
Speaker 1:So how many churches have you guys planted? Eight officially, eight officially.
Speaker 2:The new city is Well, the last one is in Avias Okay, which we kind of spun off. It's independent, now it's in a smaller community and they just had their third anniversary. Some of them we've had pastors in longer term. We've got another one that's independent month to month, and then some others where, you know, there's some places it's harder, some places it's easier. Every one of them is different, just like a kid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's unpack this for somebody that's not experienced it yet. Let's take Las Botillas, for example. So how far is that from here?
Speaker 2:Driving about an hour and a half as the crow flies, probably 20 some miles, 20 miles so up in the mountains.
Speaker 1:And so you drive up there and Pastor Ronnie's there. He's both the pastor and the farmer. Yes, and then his family farms as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they live on the property as well.
Speaker 1:So you get up there. You've got the church building. You've got Ronnie's house. You've got the milk project, which is where the kids come and we'll talk about milk project in a moment, but that's where they get food and spiritual nourishment. You've got the soccer pitch. You've got what else is up there that I'm missing? Oh, the clinic. So you've got a couple of rooms set up that you can send doctors from here, and that's once a month. Once a month, yeah, and they go up there and can see patients. You've got Ronnie working constantly. What all is he farming up there?
Speaker 2:So most of what we farm is coffee, but we also want to always try and look for ways to look weird for Jesus. So years ago we were like we don't want the business side of trying to farm coffee, you know, kind of wag the dog, so to speak. So we're also doing avocados, lemons, limes, other things that we can be generous with and mostly give away. Again in the communities with the kids. We're trying to reach people in the church. Just, you know, things that aren't normal in the diets there. Some things we get for free. We grow a lot of bananas and plantains because they kind of just self-propagate. We have a bunch of those. But then a lot of things that especially avocados that people don't normally get in their diet or would be more expensive.
Speaker 1:Now if somebody is listening into the States, that coffee that you guys farm is sold stateside right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's called Hill Climber Coffee. We sell it on our website when we go around, and then we sell obviously a bunch of it here in country as well, which you don't make hardly any money on. But we just use that as a fundraiser and just pump all that right back into helping employ people and doing more development and planting more trees and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1:So let's talk a little bit about the milk project, and I'm kind of partial towards that. You know my heart there. I've got a kid that I sponsor in Las Botijas, and so what is the heart behind the milk project? What, what, what is that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it really just started from the clinic work and seeing all the mothers coming in with babies that had been weaned, not getting any milk, malnourished, undernourished, and they're like how can we help? And so it literally started with just handing out some powdered milk to moms when they'd come in and then like how can we be a little more intentional? And then, with no budget, so 20 bucks would come in, we'd buy some milk and cookies and instead we'd invite a bunch of those kids to come and basically maul us for a couple hours, feed them and then try and get Jesus into them once a week, and that literally just people just kept donating money, like I thought we were doing this once, I guess we're doing it again. Oh, here's 50 bucks. Oh, I guess we'll make spaghetti. Wow, this is even better.
Speaker 2:And then, through a lot of help, different people over the years, we got to this kind of model where we can have sponsors in the States help, and then it just kind of blew us away from there to where we have almost 200 kids now in six different locations, a lot of whom are there because of your church specifically. But we got a lot of people from all over the States helping with that and so we can give them physical nutrition. A lot of them are very low on the percentile list if you go to pediatrician. So they get fed. Some of them, a good number of them, that's their only real meal that day. And then they also get Bible education, tutoring, homework. They have to be going to school. We help them out. We give them a backpack, we give them basic shoes to be able to go to school, and then we help, try and keep them in school as long as we can, because we're trying to, as much as we can, break the cycle of economic poverty that they were born into. So if they can get through school, maybe they have a better chance of getting a job, or if they can learn to read Maybe their parents weren't able to read and it goes beyond that.
Speaker 2:There's a ton of other things that our staff does. You know computer classes and English classes and a ton of other stuff. I help creative side and they counsel them and they help them, and it's incredible. And then through the milk project, a lot of them aren't churched and then a lot of them end up in church, which I'd love to say. That was the plan from the beginning, we didn't really I don't think had that big of a vision of that, just like 10% of the kids are in a church. And then, a couple of years later, I'm talking to the director and she's like well, you know when, when, when he was at church on Sunday, oh yeah, most of the kids go to church. Now, what, how's that happen? Oh, isn't that the idea? Yeah, yeah, that's what we were supposed to do, like, you know, when you're just pouring into them, I mean, it works.
Speaker 1:Rocket finance. So $38 a day provides all that. For list kids, $38 a month $38 a month, $38 a day.
Speaker 2:we could do a lot more kids.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. Now again, just so people can wrap their mind around this again, las Botijas, these kids aren't bussed into the milk project and they're on a mountain. Yeah, so I know the first kid that I sponsored. His family walked over an hour to meet me when we were there and that meant that every day for him to come to the Mill Project he walked over an hour in the mountains there and back. Is that common In rural?
Speaker 2:areas, yeah, yeah, in the cities. A couple of them we have are in cities. We try and have it so the kids are closer. But then we also have some kids that we've met that maybe move and they're kind of far away but they really need the help. So they walk, even in the city, 45 minutes to get here, yeah, but yeah, especially in the rural areas, just everybody's so spread out, it makes it hard, but I mean, it makes it harder just on life, let alone going to school or or coming to the movement, but yeah, that's it. And going to church, you know, oh, it's raining, I don't want to walk, I don't want to drive five minutes, you know, walking an hour and a half, you know, uphill, downhill, everywhere, just to get to church. I mean, it's humbling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really is Like it. It blew my mind the first time I was here and was talking to one of the kids through a translator. My Spanish is no good, and so it's nice to have a translator, but it blew my mind to realize, man, this kid doesn't live down the street, Nor does his family have a car driving him to the milk project, but in order to have a meal because he may not eat another meal he's got to walk an hour. I just it still blows my mind. Yeah, it still blows my mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's crazy, but that life for a lot of people here.
Speaker 1:All right. So we've got the milk project. You've got doctors going out to these villages once a month. You've got the clinic here at the main mission house that is seeing people every day. So we'll talk about that in a moment. But tell us about a time when you saw God do something that only he could do.
Speaker 2:There's a couple, there's some people we've met over the years that have come to Christ that I would have said you know, maybe we skipped this house. You know, there's the spiritual side of that. That is also just like. You know, you, you don't get to choose, god chooses, which is cool to see. There's a kind of a funny physical time, though, where we were on a mountain and we're dirt roads at the time and we were trying to bring containers of supplies up from the States, you got a semi and this big container in the back, you know, 50,000, 60,000 pounds, and occasionally the trailers get stuck on the road. And the first time that happened, all we had was a Ford pickup and they said let's put the Ford to the front of the semi and we'll, we'll help it up, we'll pull it up or up the mountain. So you know, put it in four wheel, drive low. And I, I said a prayer, I was at least smart enough at that point to say a prayer and they said go.
Speaker 2:And I went and you know, and we, we, it worked and we got it up and I was like well maybe maybe the truck's stronger than I thought it was, and the semi driver jumped out and he was shaking his head. I was like, oh, what did I do wrong? Did I break the chain or something? And he was like I don't know how you did that, because I didn't give them the thumbs up to go until my air brakes. They were still locked. Oh, wow, we drug him so right about the time that I had said the prayer and then I was like trucks, hey, dummy, you know I did this. I was like, yeah, okay, got it. Yeah, that was like all of us, you know. I pretty much said, well, that was god, because, you know, to everybody standing there, but they were all kind of like, yeah, how did that? That doesn't, that doesn't work. Yeah, yeah, I've never forgot that.
Speaker 1:It's pretty crazy too. I didn't mention this, but we talk about driving up into the mountains, like you're literally driving up where there aren't roads in some places, or what I would consider roads.
Speaker 2:Or sometimes, where there wasn't a road, we had to kind of put one in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's, it's pretty incredible to see. And then when the rainy season hits, those roads get washed out and have to get repaired and it's. It is pretty intense to see the daily life that you guys live, to get to these villages, to to minister, to people, and it's honestly very humbling on our side and it's also humbling.
Speaker 2:Like you know, we go up sometimes. If we're in Tegucigalpa, we're going up once or twice a month. But you know, people live on those roads, they need those roads to do stuff, and so when we can, you know like, oh, I don't know if it's going to be rainy today, I don't know if I can go up, well, they don't have a choice. So, like helping try, and those isn't just for us, I mean, I look as another, just community service. How can we, you know, help others?
Speaker 1:help themselves, sort of thing. So share with me a story about a kid. So we've got these milk projects going on. How is that changing the lives of a kid? What have you seen in that?
Speaker 2:I mean, I can think of two right off the top of my head, one of which is the daughter of our director, who didn't used to be our director. She was just a mom bringing her kid because she didn't have any food at home. She is now a college graduate and has a really good job. Looking back at where they were, I don't think the mom or her would have thought that was possible. The mom or her would have thought that was possible. And then she's grown up in the church and grown up strong and for several years actually taught other kids in the milk project. That has been just kind of crazy to see.
Speaker 2:And the other is another girl who we got through high school and sometimes you talk about fights on the pitch. I mean she was the hardest playing, hardest kicking soccer player I've ever met. She tried to get her frustrations out on the pitch. I mean she was the hardest playing, hardest kicking soccer player I've ever met. She, she tried to get her frustrations out on the pitch, sometimes a little too well tried to dial that back and as she got older you know she's not this is she's. I'm glad she's here and she needs Jesus, just like all of us.
Speaker 2:But I don't think she's going to be able to teach the younger kids because she's just a little too aggressive and even as she got older she got through high school.
Speaker 2:We tried to encourage her to go to college and she's like I think I think with what you've given me, I'm going to be able to get a job and help my mom and I want to do that rather than go to college. She did and then she has come back since, just like I just want to come back and come in and teach the kid, come in and help for the day. So to see that little little kid that I thought was either going to kill me or, you know, freak out on us, to see her growth in Christ and and mature as a young woman and be able to get that job. And then nobody asked her to come back, but just for her to see the value in that, you know, once you get older, and to try and pour into the younger kids and we've seen that with several of the kids as they get older that we don't have to tell them you know, they know they lived it, so they're the best ones that teach the younger kids. That that's been really cool to see.
Speaker 1:So it's funny. I was telling our team this morning that there was a girl two years ago that was probably 16, something like that Small little girl, but she was ferocious on the soccer pitch and you could tell like she didn't care, like she didn't care who you were, what you thought she was going to work you, and she treated everybody equally. Yeah, it was insane. So let's for a moment, let's talk about the clinic here. What all do you guys do at the clinic that is on this facility and I kind of equate it to a small hospital or urgent care, if you will in my mind but what do you guys do and why is that important for this community?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean it grew from just general medicine and optometry. Now we have pediatrics, gynecologists, full lab dental minor wound care, so it is a kind of a just full lab dental minor wound care. So it is a kind of a. The government classifies us as a hospital but we don't do like yet surgeries, full-blown surgeries or anything. Really, there's very little good healthcare out there here, especially if you don't have money. So we try and charge the least amount we can and then we're essentially out there trying to help people take care of themselves. So a lot of systems here are in place that you go to the doctor, my arm hurts, take this medicine, which I'll also sell you, and that's about all the information you get. Well, maybe if you avoided doing this, or maybe if you did this, or here's some other options. So we're just out there again just trying to look weird for Jesus, like, oh, you want me to buy? No, you don't have to buy this, you can go get this somewhere else, or we have this here, but just trying to love on people, a lot of whom are here for physical reasons. But there's also a lot of ritual stuff going on there as well, a lot of stress, a lot of you know just living life, and psychologists here are available. They're in country but they're kind of like the states 56 years ago. People would look at you funny if you went to those. But you can sometimes share with your optometrist or your dentist stuff that you can't share with anybody else.
Speaker 2:And we have a full-time evangelist on staff as well. He shares devos and just goes around, talks to people While everybody else is more focused on the physical side of it. He can be having his eyes open for other things and then our staff, when they find those people as well, can definitely be like hey, why don't you talk to Jose Luis? So he's doing a couple of cell groups already once a week in different parts of the city. And then we also see people that come from because we're loving and caring. We see people sometimes from hours away. So some of those people we can send them home with tracts or send them home with a Bible. We can't typically be there to disciple all of them, but just trying to help in a situation where there's unfortunately not a lot of help available.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about this for a moment. What's the poverty level here? High.
Speaker 2:One of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, roughly 50% of the population living on $2 a day, and that's the normal. Well, if over 50% are doing it, I guess that's normal.
Speaker 1:And living on $2 a day. How much would it cost to come to the clinic?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for a normal patient, general medicine is about $8. That covers includes your medicine, though, yep, which is usually more than $8. And then in the other areas of the clinic we try to be you know, we can't be free or it would end real quick but as cheap as possible. And then we have a person on staff that if somebody comes in and I need to be seen but I don't have money, why not? What's going on? How can we help? Okay, and we just, we just see them. We don't make a big deal out of it, but it's also an ownership thing too, that if they're paying, they deserve to be seen and they deserve good treatment. So and there's other ways around that like in the optometry side of the thing we have, we have free glasses or almost free. And then, if you want to oh, you want the nicest glasses out there those will cost maybe as much as $600 in the States, maybe up to $100 a year, but that way they can subsidize some of the people that can't afford the nicer stuff.
Speaker 1:So I wasn't going to ask you this, but I just thought about it. So we had something weird happen the other day. We're here on property, there's an accident that happens right outside the property and I mean like we're walking by the gate and we can see it.
Speaker 2:It was a moto taxi and a motorcycle had a collision and there was blood and there was a guy injured, but he did not come here. He didn't come in, but the little girl and the mom, there were some other people on and they ran them into the clinic straight away, which I didn't know about till later. So they don't. You know, those are emergency situations and we've had this come up before. The police sometimes have brought people here rather than go back, go down to one of their places. They could take people, and so I mean that's just what you do. So in certain parts of the city it would be like, okay, so do you have a credit card or something?
Speaker 2:before we take you in, but we just, you know, you just take care of it.
Speaker 1:So the mom and girl came in here. Why wouldn't the guy laying on the sidewalk bleeding come in here?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Because he called for an ambulance.
Speaker 2:They called for an ambulance and the ambulance came and got him and they may have looked at it. Some people that were there may have looked at him and said, yeah, he needs more than what the clinic can do. So we same thing. We've had babies born in the clinic, but generally speaking we're not set up for that. So unless it's an emergency, we send them on to the hospital, where that where there's better care in case something were to go wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what's your big vision? What's your five-year, 10-year plan?
Speaker 2:What are you wanting? Kind of the big dream God's put on your heart. Next existing thing, but that's a thing. So that'll be the next, you know, five, 10, 15 years. We'll start out with some easy cataract surgeries, pterygium surgeries for optometry that we can do here on site, but then we've acquired property, off property to go bigger and do an actual surgical center. So I don't know how that's going to happen. Yeah, but that's that's God's problem, not mine. I just follow the plan he's laid out and go all right. Well, this, this is going to be interesting, but cause it will be bigger than anything we've ever done, in terms of just the building of it and then how we're going to staff it now, and we have a plan, but you know there's a lot of pieces in there. I don't know how that's going to happen yet, but everything we've done so far has been the same way and God made it happen.
Speaker 1:So what are some of the biggest challenges that you're facing in this work right now, whether spiritually, financially or logistically?
Speaker 2:One of us is trying to come up with that, that transition plan. We're not super old, but you know a lot of missions are focused on the guy or the person and then when that person dies or can't do it anymore, then everything slowly kind of falls apart. So what's going to be the plan for after? We're not here for that to continue so continually trying to work us out of a job. There's still, you know, director responsibilities, but how does that work going forward, because there's not a lot of people out there going into missions or wanting to be a long-term missionary.
Speaker 2:And then just you know, fundraising is always a you know, nobody I don't think anybody, if they're honest really has a handle on how to do that. I mean, you have to trust in God. But then how do you, how do you live that out and how do you do that, especially when we're looking at all this possible growth, is is a challenge. So yeah.
Speaker 1:So for someone listening right now who wants to help but doesn't know how, what's the best way for them to get involved?
Speaker 2:Pray Number one. Um, I literally we could not do what we do without prayer, because people will say, well, I don't know how you do it, like I don't, I don't know. Oh yeah, it's God, it's prayer. There's also we have a website, his eyes, hondurascom. You can get on there if you want to like financially support cause you gotta have goers, but you have to have senders. Um, that's where people had some people that are like I don't think I'm called to go, but I'll, I'll help with finances. That's fine too. It takes you know it's cliche.
Speaker 2:I mean it takes the teamwork make the dream work, but I mean it takes everybody to do that Like, just if we were here by ourselves and we had no support system, it'd be over quick. So yeah, those would be the two biggest ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and only because I found this out this week You've got supporting the mission and then supporting the missionaries, so you guys don't actually take a salary from this ministry.
Speaker 2:That is unusual. Yes, most missionaries have like a plan and then they raise funds before they know. We chose not to do that and unfortunately I've seen a lot of missionaries or people that wanted to go into missions like, well, but we have to raise all this money and when we can hit 80% then we can move. And then they go years and then they lose focus and then they don't end up going and we were just like God said go, so we're going. What do you? Got Like a part-time job and 400 bucks a month? That doesn't we're going. So we kind of just started out with not taking a salary and so we've always just kind of lived in faith on that. That if it comes in and somebody says we want this to go to the Colby's, great, but if it doesn't, it's going to the mission, and so that means we're not bleeding or taking anything away from the mission and that just helps us really have a peace as well, peace even though month to month you don't know what's coming in.
Speaker 1:Know month to month you don't know what's coming in. That's okay, that's got us.
Speaker 2:So one last question what's, what's something that has surprised you about life and missions? I guess about, like, getting out of your own way, like you grow up in a culture and you have a way of seeing the world, and then how much you need to get rid of that to interact with people that have different cultures and different viewpoints. And so especially our kids. You know there's this concept of being a third culture kid. So they born here, they grew up here and so, like we're blue, honduras is yellow and they came out green because they see things both ways and to some extent we do that as well. So now when we go back to the States, you know we shake our heads or go what's going on here? But then the same thing here.
Speaker 2:There were a lot of painful lessons in that of judging or just seeing things a certain way, and then very gentle Hondurans mostly come in and saying the way you're seeing this isn't the way it is, and being able to kind of look at things from a different perspective really help and I think that's also key to why a lot of missionaries burn out is they have this we're going to come down, we're going to fix it or we're going to do something and then like, well, you're not going to do squat, you know it's going to be God and there's going to be, and God didn't tell you to fix everything, so there's still going to be stuff around.
Speaker 2:And then how do you wrestle with that of keeping your heart soft but then also hard at the same time to just to be able to function? Go through life is, um, it's not always easy, but um, it's been powerful to see how god uses that and continues. So I mean, it's not like we're oh, I got it. You know it's a continual process. But then now at least I'm a little more aware of like, okay, stop, you know, don't think so much about this Like, what's the other side of this that you're not seeing, which, when I was young and now I'm slowly learning In another 50 or 60 years, I'll have this down.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because my wife's first mission trip was here in Honduras with you guys and that was a hard lesson for her because she's a dental hygienist. She was seeing certain things here that's like if you could just teach them this, yeah it would fix this right. And I think you kind of spoke into her like we can't fix it all, like you have to take it one step at a time and and help where you can help. But like she just it was overwhelming for her to see the things in the States that we take for granted and know like this hygiene changes everything and stop drinking sugar only or hydrate and things that just are normal for us. But here it's just a different culture.
Speaker 2:And we have seen that, like when you, you know, know, we do those lessons and stuff in in rural areas, yeah, and you're like you get a big toothbrush out, you're doing, yeah, it feels a little silly, but you're like, and then you tell me but 20 years later, when we've compared, yeah, like, hey, people's teeth are better. They're still not great, right, they're still not us level. But then you're like, oh, yeah, it works. I mean, it's the same thing, just sharing it does make a difference. But but you, but you can't fix everybody.
Speaker 1:Well, buddy, hey, I appreciate the time, I appreciate you sharing your heart and I love what you guys do here. I think the world of you guys and love the impact that you guys have had for the gospel around the world. It's all God.
Speaker 2:We're just. We're just the flunkies in charge temporarily.
Speaker 1:Well, what an incredible conversation, If you're listening. Still, I hope you were inspired, as I was, by the work God is doing through His eyes. It's a reminder that the gospel isn't just something we believe. It's something we live out with open hands and open hearts. If you want to learn more, if you want to sponsor a child, if you want to support the ministry, just head to HisEyesHondurascom.
Speaker 1:In fact, I'm looking today specifically for 17 kids to get sponsored. They are constantly reaching new villages and kids and so right now, there are 17 kids that do not have sponsors. That means Felipe and his team are covering it while they're praying for God to supply people that'll do $38 a month to love on these kids, and I can speak to it personally because I've seen what they do with those $38 a month. I've seen the impact with the kids, and I can speak to it personally because I've seen what they do with those $38 a month. I've seen the impact with the kids. I've seen the faces and the smiles and the love that's being poured out into their life. So I would love to finish that goal today, if you will help me with that. Every gift, every prayer, every partnership makes a difference and, honestly, don't miss next week's episode.
Speaker 1:I'll be sitting down with one of Felipe's kids to get a totally different perspective. Felipe's just finding that out. I'm going to talk to him a little bit about what it's like to grow up on the mission field, to be a part of a family that's all in for the gospel, and how God is shaping his own life and his calling in the middle of it. He's in college now looking for a career as a senior right Yep Senior this year, and so he's got a lot of prayer and God is tugging at his heart in a lot of different ways, and so I think it's gonna be an exciting conversation. So don't miss that conversation next week. Thanks for listening and, as always, keep following Jesus, not just on Sundays, but beyond Sunday as well.