About Us

Stacey is originally from Virginia/Pennsylvania, USA and Kaleb from West Virginia/Ohio, USA. We met at Cedarville University in August 2007 and soon recognized a mutual desire to engage the world in a meaningful way for Christ. This shared passion led us to marriage in June of 2009. Those first two years of marriage were spent knocking down college loans and seeking an opportunity to follow-through on our passion to reach the impoverished with the empowering hope of Jesus. In 2010, our opportunity to step into a full-time International Community Development role with Heart to Honduras arose. In 2011 we moved to Honduras and in 2012, we finished building our little home in Las Lomitas and have been there ever since.

Why?

Our faith leads us to the understanding that we cannot just view people as only souls or only bodies, but as whole people. We are all in poverty - mentally, physically, environmentally, emotionally, financially, spiritually – not one of us escapes the grasp of oppression and suffering. We believe that only through hope in Christ can we ever fully escape this vicious cycle. So as whole people, our response to poverty must also be holistic. We can no longer just engage the world in only church, only poverty alleviation efforts, only counseling, only microbusiness, only medical work, or only environmental advocacy, but work to bring all these elements into one holistic model that ministers to unique needs in each individual or community. This understanding leads us to live intentional lives that focus around relationship with God and others. We personally believe that poverty is based in broken relationships: with self, God, environment, or others. In order to effectively reduce poverty, we must work to help restore these relationships.

So, what does that look like practically?

Click photo to see more photos of the homestead.

In Las Lomitas, we live in a 500 square foot concrete block home that we use as a demonstration area for cheap, sustainable, technologies that could be executed by neighbors and friends in town. These technologies include:

• Rainwater Catchment
• Organic Vegetable Gardening
• Chickens
• Erosion Prevention
• High-nutrition Plants
• Rocket Stove

Our goal is to live much like the people of Las Lomitas with just a few easily attainable differences. We want to develop with the people as the community develops. When electricity arrives, we’ll move forward appropriately; when water arrives, we’ll adjust accordingly. Until then, we will work with the church and community to reach their development goals whether they be education, electricity, water, or Biblical teaching. Our emphasis in this process is always to involve the local church as much as possible and come along-side the community in their own development priorities. We work very hard to prevent dependency and participate only in true organic development, not our development schedule or desires.

Us with cohorts Fredy and Milena.

Three days a week, we also work with the Heart to Honduras Community Development Team in communities all over rural Honduras. As a team, we work with Honduran Community Development Coordinator, Fredy Martinez, and volunteer Milena Pisani in a unique Asset-Based Community Development process designed to emphasize the community’s role and resources in a project. Again, we work hard to help the local church be the catalyst of the community’s development so that Christ’s hope is shown and that all project leadership stays based in the community. True development is not the completion of a project, it is the transformation of mind, heart and soul that takes place when we realize our potential as agents of redemption in this world.