First Quarter Report, 2019

Hi Oakcrest family! Thank you so much for your continued support of my work and of Breaking Chains. We really appreciate your consistent generosity. I was able to visit Honduras in March with the little man, and it was awesome to be able to introduce him to the people I love so much there.  The people the ministry serves really are like extended family, and it was a blessing to bring those two worlds together. The ministry in Honduras is continuing to grow. Currently, we have 10 young adults living at the building. The majority of them have aged out of children’s homes but don’t have anywhere else to go until they become independent. They are all studying at a local high school, and one of our young adults (Jimmy) just began his first semester at college. We also have four new house parents on staff who are really pouring into the teens spiritually and helping them make strides in their everyday lives. Please keep all of our young adults in your prayers as they try to maintain good attitudes and overcome past hurts as they seek better lives. We will begin welcoming our summer groups at the end of May, and we are excited to have the Oakcrest youth joining us again this year. Please keep the ministry in your prayers over the group season.

Hi Oakcrest! Thank you so much for your continued support of Wualter, myself, and Breaking Chains as a whole. I apologize that it has taken me so long to get this update to you. We are in the middle of group season right now, and it has been busy busy to say the least.

Alexander:

In our last report, I introduced you to our new preacher Alexander. We are sad to say that after five months of working with Breaking Chains, Alexander has chosen to take another position working at a new children’s home outside of the city. We believe that Alexander and his family will do well in this new position and we wish them luck. His departure, however, means that we are again in the position of searching for a new full-time minister. Unfortunately, Alexander’s departure comes at the beginning of our busiest season (summer), so we are postponing our search for a new preacher until we have more time to dedicate. In the meantime, a few men from area churches are helping us out by rotating in and taking on the task of Sunday preaching. Please pray that we can find a good candidate who can find a home with us and believes in the ministry’s mission and God’s plan for it.

Mission groups:

Mid-May through early August is our busiest season of the year as we welcome and host various mission groups from around the country. This year, we will have twelve groups visit over the course of the summer. The groups will support Breaking Chains by doing work at our ministry building, participating in our worship services and street outreach, building houses for BC church families and community members in need, and pouring love into the people we serve. We greatly enjoy the encouragement and the spirit of service that the groups bring; however, coordinating all of the moving parts is quite the task for our small team. So while I ask that you pray for safe, fruitful and empowering trips for our visiting mission teams, I also ask that you pray for strength, wisdom and energy for our BC staff.

Education:

We are blessed to have 19 students sponsored for school as part of our education initiative. Eight of those students attend bilingual school while the others attend a regular private school. The bilingual school year is on an American schedule, so it runs August through June. The rest of the students are on a Honduran schedule which runs February to November. Our bilingual students are now on summer break and are very excited about their time off! Bilingual school is a more demanding academic environment, however, so some of our kids will still need to attend summer school in July or receive a couple of days of tutoring each week to make sure they stay on track. We have been blessed this year to make contact with a wonderful tutor who has been pouring into our students who need extra help. We are so thankful for Lesly and for the impact she is having on the kids and their confidence.

The Honduran school year will continue to run for the next several months. Please continue to be in prayer for these students, especially the older ones, as they seek the motivation to commit to their studies daily and stay on the right track.

Thank you:

On behalf of Wualter and I, we are so grateful to have the continued support of Oakcrest. We can’t tell you what it means to know that we have people praying and encouraging us daily. We pray God’s richest blessings on the church family at Oakcrest, and we ask that God continue to pour out his love, mercy and wisdom on you as you seek to serve others. We are so grateful for your love, support, and belief in the work in Honduras. Thank you. 

You can view more photos on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/bchonduras

Dear Oakcrest,

Thank you so so much for continuing to support Wualter and me! I can’t tell you what a blessing it is to know such generous, loving hearts. We are grateful to know you, and we think of and pray for you often as you seek to serve God and love others in Oklahoma City.

2016 has already provided much growth and change within our small ministry. At the beginning of the year, we hired our new minster, Alexander. Alexander is a graduate of the Baxter Institute, a four year seminary school in Tegucigalpa. Upon graduation from Baxter, Alexander and his family moved back to work in their home country of Nicaragua. He has experience working in churches as well as with addicts and street ministry.

We have also added a few new students to our education sponsorship program this year, bringing our total up to 19 students. Some of the new additions include Leonardo (the son of our house parents Oscar and Alba) and Aldo and Alexa (Alexander’s children).

Aside from about $900 worth of upfront costs that the ministry paid out of pocket, these 19 students are all fully sponsored! That is such an incredible blessing! When we mapped out on paper how many students would be enrolled this year and the costs associated with that, it was a little overwhelming. But God has been extremely faithful in moving in the hearts of so many people to give and invest in these young souls. We could not be more thankful for everyone’s prayers and support!

The goal with sponsoring students has always been to give them the best shot at a quality education in order to help them grow academically and in the confidence they need to succeed. Public school in Honduras is typically riddled with obstacles that prevent students from learning in the best way (understaffing, lack of resources, etc.). So having the opportunity for a private education is HUGE. It is our hope that through education, these students will be able to break the cycle of poverty for their families and open themselves up to a brighter future.

Please continue to pray for these students throughout the year! And pray for their parents as well. During the course of their educations, many students will exceed (or already have succeeded) the level of schooling of their parents. So we also pray for the parents that they can continue to motivate their children to have the best future possible.

 Our young adults are also starting off the New Year in their schools, internships and jobs. Each of the young adults who live at our Breaking Chains building have overcome or are struggling through difficult backgrounds and life circumstances (drugs, past abuse, abandonment, etc.). So it gives us such joy and we praise God when we see them succeed even in the littlest of ways.

Each young adult who comes to live for a period of time at Breaking Chains has a different story and a different path. They require different motivations, disciplines and levels of support in order to feel affirmed and succeed. Several of the young adults with whom we are working are nearing the point where they will move on from our ministry to hopefully be independent (though they will always have the love and support of our BC staff). Please be in prayer as the BC team works hard to develop a rhythm, goals and a transition strategy for these young people.

One thing that each of the young people who visits us have in common is that they all have past hurts and are looking for hope and a family. We pray every day that God continues to penetrate their hearts and that they allow for His healing. Please join us in praying that the young adults who come to Breaking Chains are able to become a part of a physical and spiritual family with us and with God as their father. 

Thank you again for the love, prayers and support that the Oakcrest family continues to shower on our ministry staff and ministry as a whole. We are so blessed to call you family, and we pray that God continues to shower Oakcrest with his love and faithfulness this year.

First Quarter Report 2016 from Wualter

Dear brothers, I am very grateful in my heart for your prayers and support in my ministry with our Breaking Chains teens. I thank God that he has used you all in order to allow me to help others.

After a big change in my life, going from being single to married (a BIG change!), I can say that being married is an awesome experience – very difficult, a lot to learn, and a lot of changes – but God in His wisdom has given me a great wife. Together we are learning, and overcoming challenges, but what is great and resides in us is love for God and our desire to serve. That unites us and enables us to love one another with the pure and holy love of God.

Entering 2016 has brought challenges, changes and blessings. We have started the school process with our teens – getting them enrolled, purchasing school supplies and uniforms, and preparing all the necessary documentation.  Knowing their complicated histories and figuring out where to go to find and file a document from their previous schools is a big challenge. But the blessing of God that we have received is that all of our teens now have everything in order to advance their studies. We are also well pleased because of the wonderful progress and improvement in their attitudes. Their behavior has improved, and they have learned to value, know and believe that it is never too late to continue, or to get up after falling. Their lives are being blessed.

 We have two new teens with us this year: Bryan and Escarleth. … We’re showing love to our teens. That is the first ingredient that everyone should feel in life, and yet, so many of our teens have felt so little of it. So that is our number one challenge – to give them love, make them feel a part of a family, and help them know that they matter to God and that His power can change their lives. We know that all this is possible with God. 

Well, lastly I want to apologize. There are many things that, with all my heart, I wanted to send you – photos and videos of my house, pictures and videos of my wedding, but I could not because of lack of resources. I am working on a video to send to you with Courtney next time so that you can see my house, and part of what happened at my wedding, my honeymoon, and many other good things that I have enjoyed in recent months.

 Thanks brothers. I love you very much. Last year it was fantastic to meet and work with some of you and I miss you a lot. Thank you. I want to send hugs to everyone – Jamie, Vicki, Samantha, Parker, Phil, Levi, Cassidy, and everyone else.

Blessings.  May God dwell in our hearts forever.

Beach Christmas this year was, yet again, a wonderful experience. This year we had a lot of families attending with us (a couple of them for the first time) so that made things really neat. Most of those parents and the children had not ever been to a beach before. Seeing the parents interact with their kids was really precious thing to witness. So often, our parents are in survival mode and they are stressed out from trying to provide for their children under tough circumstances. We don’t always get to see them be carefree and loving with their kids.  Being away from the city and distractions allowed those parents to do just that, and I think it was a bonding experience for those families all around. The parents of the families commented over and over how grateful they were for the experience and how much they had needed it.

Once again, we played on the beach, opened presents from generous sponsors, ate good food, and had a wonderful time of fellowship. I love being able to end the year in this way because it gives everyone an opportunity to reflect and renew before the New Year starts.

Thank you for your sponsorship of Wualter and Nuria. We had a wonderful time with them on the beach. I also had assigned you to one of our young fathers, Juan. Unfortunately, he had a family member who was ill and was unable to make the trip. We did still give him the presents we purchased, and he was very grateful. I just don’t have pictures, unfortunately.

Our board has made the decision to hire Alexander, whom I mentioned in my last newsletter, as our new BC preacher. However, due to circumstances regarding Alexander’s family being from Nicaragua, the process of getting everything established is taking longer than anticipated. We are still trying to determine a proper salary based on their need to travel to meet visa requirements, rent a house in Tegucigalpa, etc. We are hopeful to have all of that determined in the next couple of weeks so that Alexander and his family can begin working with us. We are prayerful that Alexander’s arrival can add some stability and energy to our worship services, which have lagged a bit in the interim.

These next couple of months will be very busy from an U.S. side of things for me. I am wrapping up our goals and budget for this coming year (a little late, but we had several additions to the budget), preparing and sending out donation acknowledgements from the last year, fundraising for a couple of new education students, working on summer planning and getting materials ready for Winterfest in Arlington and Gatlinburg. I love my job, but sometimes it is so broad that I end up taking on too much to do it well. The team in Honduras has been great about wanting to step in to take some things off my plate, which has been nice – I just have to be organized enough that I can pass things off easily.

        

 1111 SW 89th St  Oklahoma City  OK   405.631.5534