A Very Good and Blessed Summer!
 First of all I would like to tell you that I have the best big brother a girl could ever have. 1- He is always very kind and encouraging to me. 2-He is always is ready to lighten my load.
About a month ago I was getting ready to buy my ticket in a few days and we were discussing dates and trying to figure out what day would be best for me to go.
 That evening I was in my busy trying to get something something done before bedtime. Moses knocked on my door and handed me my itinerary. Talk about an excited girl :D He bought it for me because he is just that kind to me and supports me in what God has called me to do.
 I will be leaving on the 21st of September and coming home on the 14th of December.


Time is quickly counting down, A little less then a month till I leave. Life is continues to be busy and filled with good times. I want to keep my last summer at home filled with fun memories and something that I can look back on and smile.
Going swimming almost every evening, or sitting on the front porch eating watermelon and discussing the days events and watching the sun go down, or maybe playing a fast paced Dutch Blitz game are some of the many activities that constantly keep us occupied in the evenings.
 One weekend all 10 of us kids along with another couple went canoeing on the Big Piney. We spent the day flaoting down river, swimming, jumping of rope swings and all the other fun stuff you can do on a river. On the way home we stopped at Pizza Hut and got pizza for dinner. Needless to say we all slept good that evening.




Life is going to keep moving on, but I will always look back on this summer and smile, because God blessed us with so much. May I never become ungrateful an indifferent to his many blessings. 

This is the orphanage that I will be working with.
It will give ya'll and idea of what I will be doing
and all the needs of New Hope.


Please watch:
New Hope Children's Foundation DVD

God is calling me to Nicaragua

As many of you know I visited Nicaragua in July.
My plan had been to be in Argentina with the youth group from our church at that time. That didn’t work out and I was like Lord I thought you told me to go, but obviously it is not working.


 A week later Brady Weldon was at our church speaking about the orphanage in Nicaragua that he goes to. He had been at our church many times before and talked about this orphanage and I had never felt the call to go. That Sunday morning when he was talking about it, the Lord spoke to me and said this is where I want you to go.


I went home and prayed about and talked it over with my parents. We talked it over with Brady and Pastor Dave and Brady put me in contact me in with the people that run it. They were in the States at the time, so we went to Tennessee meet them a few weeks later.

The Lord put everything into place and Dad, Moses and I flew out of Saint Louis on May 30^th

 The first part of our trip was spent in El Crucero about 30-35 minuets from the capital Managua. We stayed at New Hope Children’s Foundation. At this time there are 17 children living in the home of Leo and Charity Marroquin.

All the kids at the orphanage are Miskito Indians from the north eastern part of Nicaragua. Most of them were abused and malnourished before coming to New Hope. Now they have a happy home. They are loved and cared for. I have hardly seen such a happy bunch of children, always ready to give you a hug. I spent my time there playing with taking care of and feeding kids.
Dad and Moses helped with repairs and such, putting in screens and drawing up plans for the girls home, plus played with the kids.

New Hope also has a Christian school on the property that is free to all 300+ students that attend. They go all the way thru high school.


During our visit we also went with a small plane to the rainforest in the north eastern part of Nicaragua where the Miskito Indians live.
These tribes live along the east coast and along the Coco River on north side of the country.


There is a small village called Waspam where New Hope Ministries has another Children’s Home that houses 8 children. The orphanage consists of a large empty warehouse. There are a few beds in one corner and some shelves along two of the walls. Toys are something that is pretty much unseen except maybe a ball or two. Other then that it is pretty much empty. Not something that feels homey. They have a native Miskito lady there to watch the kids. She does it as a job, not as a mom would.


 The first day when we got there the kids all just kinda looked at us and didn’t know what to think of these strange Americans. By the end of the week every time we drove up on the truck all the kids came running out the gate there arms wide wanting us to hug and kiss them. We played with them a lot or just sat there and held them. Most of these kids had never been shown any affection, never been told that they are loved. It was amazing to be there and just be able to love them, and they gave it so willingly once they trusted us to not hurt them.


 While in Waspam the village of Kisalaya contacted us about giving the ministry some land so we can build an orphanage close to their village. New Hope had tried several times to buy something in Waspam but it never seemed to work out.
Now a village was offering to give them some land. Isn’t God amazing!

 We had several meetings with the elders of Kisalaya in the little shanty church / community building. Every time we met with them people came and stood on the outside and peered thru the cracks in the wall. Everyone in the village was so receptive of us and seemed genuinely happy to see us.
All the negotiating had to be done with translators from Miskito to Spanish to English or vice a versa. It was my pleasure listen and watch it all unfold.


 Dad, Moses and a few other guys from the team helped the natives survey it and in the end the amount of land given was somewhere between 125-150 acres. I never did hear the final acreage. God has opened the door wide so that New Hope Children’s Foundation can come in there and teach the natives how to grow vegetables.
Every family in the village of Kisalaya will have a plot of ground and New Hope will be able to work along side the people.


 We also started a feeding center in Kisalaya. The first day we were able to feed 500+ kids.
While they were preparing the food we taught them how to play duck duck goose, all in the Miskito language. I have no idea how we managed it with 500 kids but they all seemed to have a good time.

 One of the most amazing things to me is to see a small child come up with a small bowl and (some of them had no more then a plastic bag)I put one scoop of rice in it an they look as though you gave them the world. This might be the only decent thing they get to eat that day. After the big pots were empty except the burnt rice that was stuck to the bottom the kids went at it like it was candy, climbing over each other to get to it like there life depended on it.
 One of the young men was also able to tell them about Jesus and quite a few gave there hearts to Jesus!


 One day we took a canoe or hollowed out log loaded with 1300 lbs of rice and 20 people, 5 ½ hours up the Rio Coco. We stopped at a little village called Esperanza. There we picked up two sisters. The mom had seven other kids and couldn’t take care of all of them. It looked like at least12-15 people lived in their little thatch hut. The smallest girl of the two had a medical condition. Her throat is really small an offset from her mouth. She will be getting medical attention in the future.

 On the way back down river we handed rice out in the villages along the river banks and told them of Jesus. At one village the people came out into knee deep water to get their 5 lb. bag of rice. We picked up a few more kids to bring to the orphanage. One of them was a 10 year old girl. Her Mom was 13 or 14 when she had her and hasn’t been able to take care of her.


 One thing we didn’t anticipate was running out of gas at dark 2 hours from Waspam. The Lord allowed us enough gas to make it to a small village on the river. The village we were stranded at is a drug crossing spot from Honduras to Nicaragua. A native lady went 16 miles on a small motor scooter to get phone service to contact someone back in Waspam while the rest of us gathered under a small pavilion, or thatch roof to wait. We all started singing and after a while some locals came to listen.


 A couple of our young men began to witness to a couple a guys that were standing around. One of them that looked to be a drug lord accepted Christ that night. What an amazing God, we ran out of gas so that one more person could know Him!
To make a long story short we finally all made it back to Waspam at 11:30pm.


 This is only a small portion of what happened. I don’t want ya’ll to get bored so I’ll quit for now even though hundreds of details were left out that will stay in my heart for the rest of my life.

 Needless to say God really spoke to my heart while I was there in Nicaragua.
Since I was 14 I felt God calling me to the mission field. God had laid it on my heart about two years ago that I need to go work at an orphanage somewhere, I didn’t have any idea where it would be whether in Africa, India, China or in South America have been praying for about it ever since.

 While I was down there the Lord showed me this is where he wants me to be.

I plan on going back to El Crucero in September. I will probably stay till Christmas then come home and spend a few weeks. I want to go back in January and stay there as long as the Lord has me there. Right now I don’t know if I will be there a year or two or the rest of my life. I don’t know where He is s going to lead me in the future but for now he has called me to the Miskito Indians. I am following the Lord and where he leads me I’ll go.


 If anyone has questions feel free to email me at smiling4jesus91@yahoo.com. Thank you for all the prayers and support over the last couple month, I hope ya‘ll will continue to pray that I will follow the Lord steadfastly. “Mary Lee”