Letter to Our Leaders
LETTER TO OUR LEADERS:
In August of 2017, we will take our annual trip to Jaco. Our mission is to continue relationship building and create an eternal impact with the vulnerable by using sports ministry camps, capital improvement projects, community outreach and empowerment as a means to share God's love. During our time there and through discussions with the locals, we have learned that young men and women are choosing work and prostitution in place of education in order to help their families make ends meet. Wages are less than $2.50 an hour and the locals are hired and fired in high and low seasons making it difficult for their families to have financial stability. They are left to build homes with the resources they find around them in river banks, where at times they are met with the challenges of flooding due to the tropical ecosystem of Costa Rica.
Due to the resources they utilize, their homes are in need of some updates. Our capital improvement program addresses roofing, patching of holes, replacing rotten wood, using cinder block to build walls, and pouring cement for flooring or steps into their home. We want to continue to utilize our resources to make their homes a safer place to live while the locals continue to provide us working hands and help us build, patch, and pour alongside us (because none of us know what we're doing)!! Returning home to the States, I realized this is not enough to help change their circumstance and get to the root of their problems.
The past six months, I have been working on starting a micro-entrepreneurship program for the people of Jaco, to help tackle the issues of unethical wages; young men choosing to work over an education, and young ladies choosing prostitution to help make ends meet. Starting this program would not only empower the unemployable but it would provide them a sense of worth and value they have never experienced with the ability to barter for fabric, have money to make the purchase, and provide for their family. In recent exchanges with Sarah, the pastor's wife at Horizon (the church we partner with in Jaco), we were met with tremendous excitement as they communicated that they too had been praying over a micro-business, micro-finance program to help meet the economic needs of the locals.
Horizon has committed to starting a ministry named Oceans Edge's, under the covering of their church. Their ministry will partner with us as our boots on the ground in Jaco, helping train the locals on learning specific trades and making certain goods. Additionally, they will partner with us in giving the locals business skills to empower them to start their own businesses and maybe even expand into a micro-business loans program in the future.
Red will be Horizon's stateside partner, helping support their training endeavors and leveraging the purchasing power of the U.S. to sell these goods on behalf of the people of Jaco. This will allow those we train a steady stream of income, at ethical wages, in a fair trade environment to provide their families economic stability. Not only will we become distributors of their goods stateside but we hope to build a cooperative (co-op) locally in Jaco, where the locals can sell their goods there as well.
Additionally and most importantly, the partnership with Horizon Church over this project will allowthose we are investing in to be discipled by the body of Horizon and for the gospel to be shared beyond our time there. This is a crucial aspect to this partnership, as we know that we are leaving the locals in the hands of committed gospel sharers and disciple makers.
This is an amazing opportunity that has been given to us. "To whom much is given, much is required" Luke 12:48. I believe firmly that we have been given this opportunity to further the kingdom.
