We Don't Come in the Name of Religion

Where there are churches, some have been more controlling than loving. So many of our neighbors carry hurt not only from their upbringing but from religion as well, and they are leery of anyone who comes along in the name of religion.
Which is why we come simply as followers of Jesus to show His love. We are not trying to start a church. By the power of His Spirit, we are working to break down the walls that poverty, broken families, a broken system, and broken religion have built in their hearts.
It takes time to earn that trust, and to show the way of Christ instead of the way of man-made religion.

The Walls Are Coming Down

Moises was hiding years of pain from abandonment and abuse going back to his childhood. We fed his children and sent them to school for years. Then he finally opened up and allowed the love of Jesus to penetrate and heal his heart.

Martha is a single mother of four. She came from a hard upbringing and did not know how to receive love because of all the hurt. The walls have been coming down, and she is now at a place where she can receive the love of her heavenly Father and from the Body of Christ.

Carlos is a fatherless boy who struggled with the pain and void of not having a loving father. Through our work in his school and with his family, he now has a relationship with Christ and has found his identity in Him.

We have changed their names to protect their privacy. Everything else is exactly as it happened.

Full Bellies = Open Hearts

A Working Model We Can Replicate

The feeding program opens doors. We feed the children, and that is how we come to know their mothers, their fathers, and their teachers. Everything else comes through it, and all of it is built to be handed off and repeated.

Children
Discipleship at the school where meals are served, VBS, and kids conferences and outreaches in the surrounding villages.

Women
Conferences for the mothers, grandmothers, and daughters holding these communities together.

Churches and Leaders
Teaching in local churches and at conferences, so what we carry into one village does not stay there.

Five Years Was the Training Ground

The rural village outside Siguatepeque is where we built the model. Feed the children. Help them stay in school. Teach the Word. Train the mothers and the teachers to carry all of it. Five years of meals earned us a welcome no outsider gets.

It works, and here is how we know. It is still running, and we do not live there anymore. The mothers cook and serve. We stay in close contact and keep them supplied with what they need. That was always the plan. Every feeding program we start is built to belong to the people who run it.

Now we are doing it in Intibucá, and for the first time on ground of our own. We will keep going out to the villages. But now there is somewhere to go out from, and somewhere to train the people who come.

Why We Call It The Garden Mission

The first Adam turned the garden into a graveyard. The last Adam was put in a graveyard and turned it into a garden.
That sentence is why this ministry grows food and preaches Christ in the same breath. Scripture opens in a garden and closes in one, and everything between is God restoring what was lost.

Food Opens the Door