Missions

Collaboration is  The act of

working together in

united labor to expand the

Kingdom of God.

In Honduras with Touch a Life

Feeding Center!

 For over past several years, I have been working with several Christian organizations and non-profits in order to network and to develop relationships.  I currently have been working with the Finial Frontiers Foundation at link http://www.finalfrontiers.org/ .

Final Frontiers Foundation, whose effective purpose is to take the Gospel to the more than 3 billion souls who have never before heard the message of the Good News.  Currently they are ministering in more than seventy-three countries on five continents.  These are countries and peoples primarily closed to traditional missionary outreach, but open to them because of their unique method of missions.

They believe that the training and subsidizing of national preachers is the most efficient and effective method of global evangelism.  Thus, they seek to raise prayer and financial support from believers in America, for God’s servants abroad, who are actively involved in church plantingand discipleship.  All those subsidized thru this foundation are involved in church planting.  Their various outreach ministries include Bible translation, radio broadcasting, camps, Bible schools, outdoor and film evangelism, educational and health programs, blind and leper ministries, orphan centers and refugee ministries.  

I traveled with the founder of Final Frontiers Foundation, Jon Nelms and his son Daniel to the Dominican Republic.  We planned to visit Haiti, but because of instability were not able to make that trip to visit churches in that region.  We did however visit several churches in the Dominican Republic and sponsored a very successful outreach event.  We had  hundreds of first time visitors to this local church by giving hotdogs to first time visitors.  We cooked and served them in about two hours and preached the Gospel message to them.

They live in bateyes, which describes as a community which population works mainly in duties, at the sugar cane field as well as in factories, linked to the sugar cane and sugar manufacturing.

Batey is born with the sugar mill.  The mill owners, in the mill ground, to lodge their workers build their housing and infrastructure.  Traditionally, these workers and their families had depended on the plantation almost totally.  The mill provided precarious health services, education, drinking water, electricity, supplies sales, etc.  This dependence still exists in a big measure, even though in many bateyes the sugar mill workers do not integrate the majority of the population anymore.

One of the characteristics of the agricultural bateyes majority is the ethnic composition of its inhabitants, because high proportions of those is origin or have Haitian ascendancy.  It is important to point out that a high percentage of the families in indigent conditions in the country are located in zones where the sugar cane is produce.  Typically, the human settlements known by the name of bateyes are places where the poverty reaches extreme levels.

This below is taken from the Final Frontier’s Progress report:

By Jon Nelms

I despise poverty. I loathe it. To me, poverty is nothing more than a physical manifestation of the spiritual condition of man. And just as we believe some choose to live in poverty for whatever reason, many choose to live without God for reasons known only to them and God Himself. However, just as most would gladly move from poverty to affluence given the chance, so most will gladly forsake life without God to achieve His salvation, if given the chance.

Last January Daniel and I and a friend, Teddy Awad, were in the Dominican Republic. While there visiting a missionary, we went to a village where he had started a church among the Haitian refugees. These people were poor. Many of the children had no clothing to wear and would try to cover their nakedness by smearing dirt and mud over themselves. I noticed one group of curious boys standing by and realized that only one of them even had a shirt to wear.

Their houses, those who had one, were made from latticed sticks covered with mud. The roofs were fashioned from old palm branches and dried sugar cane stalks that had somehow been missed by the harvesters. Each one seemed to lean precariously to one side as if it would collapse at any moment. Some had fence posts outside on which they would hang their clothes to dry after washing them in dirty water with no soap.

We spent hours there walking through the village, playing with the children, talking with the adults and drinking the water from coconuts they had climbed trees to  harvest for us. Everyone was curious and friendly; amazed that “rich” people would spend time with them.

Later that evening, Teddy had arranged to have a meal of hot dogs for all the children at the church. Now you need to understand that this little church ran about 100 or less on Sunday. That night, nearly 700 children and parents came to eat and heard the Gospel. For most of them, it was the first time they had ever come to the church. I cannot begin to imagine the impact that service made for the Gospel in that community. The missionary was delighted. The reality is, when you show grace and mercy to those in need, you open their hearts to receive your message of salvation. Most truly poor people will never receive a hand up or a hand out. They will scratch through life on crumbs and be beaten, cursed, ignored, shunned and raped. No one is going to help them, respect them and certainly not love them.

Jon Nelms

Final Frontiers