A visitor

The next three weeks we feel very privileged to travel with our dear friend and co-worker Fredy Martinez.  He is Heart to Honduras's Community Development Coordinator and so much more.  If it we not for Fredy we are not sure we would still be in Honduras, he's one of the best people we've ever met.  We've known him and spent A LOT of time with the past year and 1/2 that we've been in Honduras.  We asked him to share with all of you a bit of his story.  

Fredy’s Story:

My name is Fredy Martinez my wife is Alexandra.  We have two children, Daniel (15) and Raquel (13).  We are a missionary family, I met my wife working in missions and my kids were born into that life.  Even though we now live in Honduras (my birth country), we are still missionaries because we believe as Christians we are foreigners here on earth our residence is in heaven.

Fredy with his wife and children.

My Testimony:

I was born in Honduras. At age 19, after completing my 2 year military service, I decided to go to Europe to work.  I was very young and had tons of plans of my own, I was not interested in God.  After being in Switzerland for 2 months, God began to show himself to me through some Christians that I had met.  They were visiting someone, and I happened to be at the same house. They invited us to church.  The most impactful thing that touched my life in this church was something I had never felt in my life and that was to feel the love of God in this group.  To realize they had never met me but they still showed me a great love and respect.  They invited me to their houses and I was very surprised wondering, why would these people love me so much?  But I slowly began understanding that this was God’s love. 

The call:

After a little while, I began to feel a called to missions and started volunteering in a Spanish ministry (from Spain) in Switzerland that worked with alcoholics and drug addicts.  From there I was invited to go to Spain to prepare myself in missions, so I went and spent 6 months preparing myself.  From there I spent more time in Switzerland and later Central America.  I started in Guatemala working a lot in orphanages, later in El Salvador with gangs, drug addicts, and alcoholics it’s also where I met my wife and my son was born. Then in Belize with more adults, fund raising, public relations, and it’s where my daughter was born. Through all of this my desire became stronger to serve in my country. After 10 years in missions I asked God for permission to come back to my country, start a church, and work with a great need, the children.

Fredy sledding in the Alps while he was a missionary in Switzerland.

Fredy and his young bride working with teenagers in Guatemala.

Pastoring Today:

We now pastor in an “Open Arms” church in a town called “La Concepcion;” we founded this church 10 years ago we also have a children’s program in association with Compassion International.  As a church we’re involved in various aspects of the community, applying our church motto which is “We are a church to serve the community.”  Behind the church we have a large garden and have recently started with a hydroponics garden.  We have sports programs for the youth, a leadership school where we are training leaders, house churches, and have planted two daughter churches (Las Lomitas and Yojoa).  In these daughter churches we want to replicate programs like what we have in our church.  Recently we have started a shop where kids can learn carpentry and make souvenirs to sell to the visitor as a micro business.  The newest thing is a “School for Spouses” that we started this year.

Compassion International kids in Fredy's church.

My role with Heart to Honduras:

We are also committed to the cause of Community Development, which is a department of Heart to Honduras in which I work in a team with missionaries Kaleb and Stacey.  We believe that this department is a tool of God to churches and pastors to transform and develop communities.  We work alongside of not only the church but community leaders and local government like mayors.  Our vision as Community Developent is to empower the most poor villages and carry them to a better quality of life.  We want to continue the desire that was in the heart of Heart to Honduras’s founder, Charlie Smith, which is to empower the most poor villages and their pastors and carry them to a better quality of life is all aspects in a holistic way to reach spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and material needs.  We want to teach all of our pastors to love people not just like souls but also like people.  We know that it’s a big challenge, but we believe that through this unity, love, and faith we have in our team we are going to find the impossible, possible.  Each one of you is a strong instrument in the hands of God so that in Honduras all of the impossible could be possible.  For example a remote community in Honduras that has been ignored by the government, without dreams, but a group of North American brothers came to lift up this community.  To get then out of anonymity bring them into the light and now it’s a community with purified running water, school, better road conditions, greater faith, more self-esteem, and they are now dreaming for a better community.

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If you'd like to hear more Fredy will be sharing in Bidwell, Dayton, and York before headed to a conference in FL where we are speaking as a community development team.