highlight // Casa Hogar Vida

Yesterday marked our 2 month mark of living in Honduras... time is definitely flying by! Before too much time gets away from us, we wanted to give a highlight with more details about one of the projects that the GCLA church here in Choluteca has, Casa Hogar Vida.

Casa Hogar Vida was started in 2009, and there still continues to be a vision for future construction of this project. In Spanish, Casa Hogar Vida means "House, Home, Life." The main purpose of this project is to help provide homes for people that normally would not be able to afford their own home. Currently, there are a total of 49 houses on a piece of land that the church owns about 10 minutes outside of the city of Choluteca. The church hopes to eventually have over 100 homes on this property. People who live in these homes pay a small monthly amount and eventually will own the home, in which the church will then title over their plot of land to them. They are about to begin the next phase of construction with additional homes in the coming months.  Praise the Lord that over 90% of the people who live in Casa Hogar Vida attend the GCLA church here in Choluteca!!

On the same site, there is also an orphanage (where Lesley currently works) that right now consists of 3 houses. There are currently 6 children living in one of the homes, and the construction of the third house is almost finished. Praise God that they are currently ready to and in the process of bringing new children into the second house. The orphanage is meant for children who are either affected or infected by HIV. The set up of each home consists of one "Tia", or aunt, that gets paid by the church to work in the home. She is responsible for caring for and loving on the kids, including feeding them, helping them with school work, and basically raising them. This orphanage structure is starting to be used widely across the world in new orphanages. Each of the children have monthly sponsors to provide for their basic needs.  It takes $75 a month per kid for everything they need.

Left to right: Jorge, Heidi, and Bryan. 

Right now, Lesley is serving at the orphanage on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Some of the kids go to school in the morning, where as some go in the afternoon, so currently she works with three of the six kids -- Bryan, Jorge, and Heidi. She spends time with them, plays with them, loves on them, and helps teach them English.

On site there is a block factory in which the church employs people to make concrete blocks for church projects, as well as other projects they receive orders from. There is also a couple of ladies who live in the community that work at "Manualidades" on site, where they make and sell handbags and jewelry that the church helps to promote throughout Honduras. Casa Hogar Vida also has a coffee roaster on site where they roast coffee and sell it throughout Honduras to make money to help fund projects as well as provide for the kids in the orphanage. They have also partnered with Revive Coffee in the United States to be able to sell coffee in the States to which some of the profits come directly to GCLA for project funding.  For more on Revive Coffee, check them out at www.reviveyourcoffee.com .

Part of the block factory.

Currently at Casa Hogar Vida, I (Jamey) am helping with a water project in which they will be treating the water that goes to the community homes as well as the orphanage. Currently, there is no treatment of water that comes from the well in the community. Part of the project will be to dig a new well on site as the current well is at it's maximum capacity and only provides water to the homes every 3 days. The orphanage receives water 24/7. Living Water International will be joining the team here in Choluteca in late January to help with this project. This project is serving as a "pilot" project for GCLA and their hope is to connect with Living Water International continuously over the coming years for projects in all of GCLA's major churches in Honduras including in Danli. I am VERY excited about this opportunity!! I have also been tasked with designing a treatment system for the "aguas negras" (wastewater) that comes from Casa Hogar, as there is currently no treatment for it at this point.

We hope this gives some more background on Casa Hogar Vida and it's vision, since it's where we both are spending a lot of our time working while we are in Choluteca. We hope to post a video in the future giving you a tour of the project site, so that you can see it first hand!  For more information on Casa Hogar Vida as well as GCLA, go to http://www.greatcommissionla.com/tag/casa-hogar-vida/

Love,

Jamey