It’s Been Three Months Since You Looked at Me

Times of Refreshing

Well I thank you Lord that you are my Saviour

You’re my strength and you’re the rock on which I stand

You give me life and a grace that’s greater

When I humble myself beneath your mighty hand

You bring times of refreshing you bring times of refreshing

You bring times of refreshing to my soul

When I’m weary from the fight and trying to do what’s right

You bring times of refreshing to my soul

 

For the day will come when we’ll all be gathered

And the sun will rise with healing in its wings

And all the years of pain won’t seem to matter

When our eyes behold our Teacher and our King

©1994 Mercy/Vineyard Publishing

 

We have officially finished our first stretch of three months at the City of Refuge in Honduras and we are still just so in awe that we get to be here serving. God has had his hand in every aspect of our lives here and it is great to see Him working. 

 

Part of the rules for being in Honduras, unless you are a resident or citizen, you have to leave the country every 90 days and travel at least two borders away and stay for a minimum of 72 hours. Pretty much from the beginning our plan was to travel to Belize for our first trip away because it seemed to be the closest and most cost effective option for us. When you try to plan a trip from the States there are a whole lot of options available to you to be able to plan your trip yourself. We enlisted the help of local friends but understanding English and understanding context are two different things. We tried for two months to plan the trip but were not getting a lot of information. With only two days before we had to leave we ended up changing our plans from Belize to Costa Rica because there is a bus line that is safe and travels directly there with no side stops. We were supposed to have a friend travel with us to translate but that fell through due to him getting a job teaching English so we went on the adventure on our own. It started off with a gut clenching moment as the day we were supposed to leave to Nicaragua, Dustin realized he had left his passport in our friends backpack. Luckily the friend was able to come back that night and we caught the bus the next day. We found out once we were on the bus headed towards Nicaragua about entry and exit fees. We had very limited cash on us but what we had was just enough to cover the fees on the way to Costa Rica. Due to a late arriving bus we weren’t able to get dinner in Nicaragua but Megan had made sure we packed peanut butter and crackers to take with us so we were still able to eat something that night that left us feeling at least satisfied if not full. 

Costa Rica is an amazing and beautiful country. Megan has an uncle who lives there that we were able to spend time with every day. He showed us around the town of Quepos where we were staying and showed us his beautiful farm that he owns there. We were able to get in some quality time at the ocean playing in the waves and even getting to interact with some local monkeys. God really used that time to restore our spirits and make us long more for being back in Honduras. We were enjoying our vacation immensely but was actually anxious to get back to Honduras to be with the people have fallen in love with here. 

We are fairly fully loaded up with long term missionaries here now and have two more coming later this week. God is bringing together an amazing group of people that are all here to be servants and allow us to be used how the locals need us rather than trying to take charge and “Fixing it the American way.” We are truly humbled by the love we are shown and the relationships we are building with the people here.

How can you pray for us? We hate to keep mentioning it but money is still a huge need. We really want to be fully funded from our supporters rather than having to be paid by IMI. That way more of their money can go towards the projects and ministries here. You can also pray for Dustin and Megan’s relationship. They don’t get a lot of alone time here and going on dates is pretty much impossible. Pray that they will continue to grow in God together and that they will manage to find the alone time they need as a husband and wife. For Dustin please pray that he will know best how to instruct the kids in music and worship. Pray that he will continue to develop relationships with the community children as well. For Megan please pray for focus. There are many different areas that she can be serving and at times it gets overwhelming and none of them get accomplished. Pray that she will be able to prioritize her time and still be able to meet the role of mother for her own family. For Olivia and Maggie, pray for focus in school and for learning Spanish as well as to make more friends with the kids. For DJ please pray for resilience for his body, health in general and some good friends that he can attach to. He is having a real hard time with that right now and needs a couple friends that can just be his buddy. DJ is also having some attitude problems that stem from the lack of friends and the way things have changed and he is having respect problems. We know God has a plan for him here and just needs to be able to get through this phase.

We love you all and miss seeing your faces tremendously. We hope to see some of you this next year on a missions trip. Also be on the lookout for a video update soon. 

 

God bless you all,

The Miller Family

Desperate Financial Need

When you are called by the Lord you go.  If you don't you could end up like Jonah and no one we knows wants to sit in the belly of a fish for a few days.  The Lord has continuously provided for all the needs that we have had up to this point by allowing the courts to see that Dustin was really unable to work for two years. 

As you can imagine the funds that we had have been a blessing but as all good things come to an end things are looking rather bleak in the bank account.  We know that God uses times like this to stretch us and stretching it has been.

We have put together a rough monthly budget of what we need knowing that 90% of all moneys given come directly to us 7% goes to administration costs and 3% goes to fundraising.  As it stands currently we have to leave the country every 90 days and with a family of 5 it can become rather expensive.

  • Food  - $400usd
  • Phone Service - $100usd
  • Property Insurance - $40usd
  • Health & Wellness- $300usd
  • Water - $60usd
  • US Bills - $100usd
  • Travel - $1000usd

We have worked very hard to keep our budget doable and at $2000usd is what we currently need on a monthly basis. If you break that down thats;

  • 10 people at $200usd a month
  • 20 people at $100usd a month
  • 50 people at $40usd a month
  • 100 people at $20usd a month
  • 500 people at $4usd a month
  • 1000 people at $2usd a month
  • 2000 people at $1usd a month

As you can see any amount is a huge blessing.  We pray that you will partner with us in prayer over our finances and if you feel lead to make a monthly pledge or a one time pledge all will be gladly accepted and appreciated.  

How To Be Alone

Something you don't have to deal with in the States is being alone. Some people may feel alone and that isn't something I am trying to get into today. Actually being alone and unable to communicate is just something that we don't have to deal with. This is something we as a family have had to deal with the past several weeks. Everyone who speaks English that lives here had been gone since Easter. Since that time we have really gotten the opportunity to practice our Spanish and work on communicating with people through any means necessary and do you know something? It has been awesome! Everything from getting water up to our house to being able to go into town to get groceries involves communicating with others and letting them know our needs. This has been a great time in ministry though and God has blessed it. We have more time to be with the orphans that live here and communicate with them because we weren't spending all our spare time with the other gringos. This time has not been without its share of hardship though as my mom decided to head back to the States three weeks early due to some miscommunications and misunderstanding about the way things were going to work when we first moved here. It has been hard to have her be gone. 

 

This phase of being alone only lasted for about 2 weeks as we were surprised by a new missionary who came in on May 1st to stay for at least 3 months after meeting Tom for the first time in March. Then Brian and Cathy Gray arrived on the 4th. If you don't know who they are, check out any video at www.tstamman.com and you will hear Brian narrating. 

 

We are about to do a total about face. We are getting ready to go from being alone, to being inundated with people who speak English. This coming weekend we will have two young ladies coming to stay for two months. We will be heading to Belize for a few days because our first 90 day window is ending at the end of this month. When we get back Josh will be returning as well as another American lady who is coming to live here for at least 3 months. We are very excited for her arrival because she plays piano. Dustin is doing everything he can to teach piano but he realizes he just doesn't know enough himself to be teaching it to children, and the language barrier makes it even harder. Piano is something she will be able to take over for at least a while and maybe give Dustin some more lessons so if she leaves after her three months, he might be able to pick the lessons back up. 

 

We are starting to see some real progress in several of the children who are learning to play instruments and we think we might have the first worship team identified. Once they are identified it will be a matter of giving them time to practice together and getting more proficient and used to playing with each other. We are looking forward to having them start playing during worship at church and hopefully eventually writing their own songs and starting to record in the future. 

 

We are so blessed to be here. We thank you all for your prayers and support for what we are doing here. We miss you all tremendously but couldn't be happier than being where God wants us to be. We hope to see some of you out here in the future to come minister with us, even if it is only for a short time. See what the Lord is doing in our lives and in the lives of those we minister to. 

 

God bless you all!

A Season of Stretching

When I looked at the calendar today I realized it has been almost a month since our last update and for that I apologize. Time moves a lot differently down here than it does in the states it seems. We will work to be more intentional on our communication. This should be a lot easier once we get WiFi in our house which should hopefully be in the next week.

What has God been doing in Honduras? Have you ever found yourself saying “yes, I can do that” to things you have no idea how to do? That has been happening repeatedly here. We get asked to do something and we say yes even when our minds want to say no. God has been putting a lot of opportunities in our path that are taking us out of our comfort zone and making us more reliant on Him. Megan has been working with the Psychologist and Principal of the school to work on behavioral plans for not just the younger kids like we had thought, but for the entire orphanage and school. This is something that Megan has done a lot of with younger kids but never something on this scale. It is something she can do but it is way outside of her comfort zone because she is not as accustomed to working with older kids’ behaviors and she is not one who likes being in front of people talking. This is something that Dustin can help her with because he has worked almost exclusively with older kids and has a history of working with their behavior issues from his time working at the therapeutic home. He also loves to be in front of people so he can sometimes help her in meetings with some of her presentations.

Dustin has taken on more of a teacher’s role here. We talked to the Principal of the school about the possibility of doing choir or something with the kids in the school. This question turned into a much bigger role than we had anticipated. The way they do music here is it is part of art class. Art is broken up into four (though technically only three) segments. There is art, which is painting and drawing and the like, there is music, which is where the choir part comes in, and there is Theatre/Drama. For us to do choir, we have ended up collaborating with the school to do all three. So far the plan is to have the regular teacher work on the first half of the segment where they will teach the students the theory behind the form and then we will come in and do the application portion of the segment. Dustin will mainly be doing the choir part, Megan will mainly do the art portion and we will teach the drama portion together most likely. This is all subject to change as time goes on and our Spanish improves. This time allows their teachers a chance to do some lesson planning or grade papers while we are teaching so it is a huge help to them to have us in the class room.

During the week we have 16 classes from grades 1-9. Every grade has class at least 2 times during the week but some grades are combined just because of low numbers. It is such an experience walking into a class and not knowing anyone and not knowing the language. It has been so fun to see the students open up more and more to us in the past two weeks that we have had classes. It turns out everyone loves Lion King or Dustin singing in falsetto because every time we walk through the hallways we hear kids either singing “la, la, la, la, la” or the opening lines from Lion King. Dustin is also teaching music lessons one on one with the kids from the orphanage Monday through Friday evening as well as helping the Missions Director with the different groups that come when needed. We will also soon start teaching English classes once a week to any adult that is wanting to learn English. We will probably open this up to the community as well in the future for a small fee to earn some additional income. Along with this we will be taking Spanish classes once a week as well to help us pick up the language.

How can you pray for us? We always can use prayer for health. We have mostly stayed healthy so far in our time here thus far. We have had a couple days of feeling a bit under the weather but that is to be expected as our bodies adapt to the changes here in both food and environment. We could use prayer that we will absorb the language faster as this is currently our biggest barrier. We also ask for prayer for wisdom in prioritizing the different areas that we are working and to be able to say “no” when needed to not burn ourselves out. We also need to be able to figure out our schedule better to make sure family time is not suffering. The kids can use prayer as they adjust to school. It is hard to be placed in the middle of a class when you don’t know the language and are trying to learn the language and the subject being taught. Thankfully the kids are not being graded this year as they are learning but it still stresses them out sometimes, especially DJ. We would ask for prayer for protection from insects as well. We have killed 3 baby scorpions in our house so far and Dustin had a scorpion crawling on his neck and arms just the other morning. Finally we would ask that you pray for our finances. With this kind of work there are always expenses and our biggest is still the cost of travelling, as we have to leave the country every 90 days and travel at least two countries away. For a family of 5 that is not cheap. If you are considering supporting us or have been planning on doing it we ask that you go ahead and do that now. You can even future date it from the site.

We love you all and are so amazed that you partner with us in this journey. We will work on being a little more regular in our communication as time allows. Yesterday was the first day we had off since we got started working here so it isn’t just all play. However the pool is calling our name right now so we must go. God bless you all.

First week come and gone...

Hey everyone just wanted to do a quick update to let you know what is going on down here in Honduras. 

We don't currently have a consistent access to WiFi or Internet so we will be doing our best to get updates out to you as we can until we do. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter. 

Our first week in Honduras has come and gone and there has been quite a bit to report. One big "Praise the Lord" is we are finally in our house. We are still waiting for hot water to be hooked up but since we will mostly want cold showers anyway we moved in yesterday. After over a month of not having a place to call home or a bed to crawl into at the end of the day that is your own, this is a major point of joy for us. 

We are getting to spend a lot of time with the orphans already. For the past several days while waiting for our house to be ready we were eating all our meals with them. Turns out we usually sat at the girls table. 

The work we will be doing here is starting to take shape. Megan will be cooking some but her main role currently is going to be working with the nannies for the smaller kids to help them learn skills that might make them more effective in their "House Parent" position. She will be observing how they interact with the children so she can help guide them as well as helping them better figure out how to set up the younger children's home to allow for maximum growth and development for the kids living there. She will also be teaching flute and possibly some art classes. Dustin will be teaching multiple instruments as well as singing and recording to the kids living here. A new opportunity that has opened up that will that will take a lot of his time as well. He will be assisting the missions director by learning everything involved with hosting the missions groups that come visit. That way when the missions director is out of town or there is a large group or groups on site they will all get the support they need and the orphanage won't have to turn away groups during those times. Dustin is very excited about this because it will allow him to utilize the gifts God has given him in both of these positions. 

Olivia and Maggie will likely end up teaching art and makeup classes respectively or at the very least just have a bunch of kids hang around them while they do them. DJ is looking forward to teaching baseball as soon as the field is done. All the kids are looking forward to starting school as it will give them some structure to their day. 

We have made some great relationships with the kids already. One girl, named Doris, has taken to calling us Mommy and Poppy and is telling us she is our other daughter. She's very smart and wants to be a pastor's missionary's wife when she gets older so she can be a pastor/missionary too. 

It's incredible to see the heart that these children have for Jesus. When sitting down for meals these kids not only pray on their own without prompting, but their prayers are longer than one would expect for a standard meal prayer. These children are actually spending time talking to and thanking God for their blessings at each meal. We got to attend a church service Saturday night with the kids and we got to watch them dance before the Lord in joy. It's truly amazing. 

This isn't to say everything is all roses. There are needs for prayer that we would put out to you. The biggest shock when we got here was basically a big bunch of miscommunication. We told them we were bringing our dog. They told us that would be no problem. However to them dogs are outside animals not inside animals. This was not what we expected and while they are graciously making outdoor accommodations for Lucy, she's never been an outdoor dog and will need favor in this transition. Grandma will also need to make decisions regarding this as well. For now they've let her stay in a house where her dog and Lucy can be inside, this isn't a permanent option because that home is intended for another missionary couple who's arrival has been delayed by a couple months. God's timing is perfect and he isn't caught by surprise by these changes so we just ask for prayer that the animals will adjust quickly or that other doors will open for grandma since her dog is her companion. 

We love you all so much and are so grateful for your love, prayers and support of us on this journey. We will definitely try to keep you updated as regularly as we can. We will try to blog hopefully once a week and do a monthly newsletter as well. This is all new to us so hopefully we do it all right! Again we love and miss you all. 

God bless you. 

The Miller's

Communication...

We will be getting local Honduran numbers shortly. You may get a text message from us letting you know of our new numbers but the best way for you to communicate with us will be by Facebook messenger or you can download a free app called WhatsApp. You would be able to text or call us from that app. We will have free texting and calls to the US as well so if you needed to speak to us you could just ask us to call you.