Can you believe the end of another year is upon us?!!

It’s seems unbelievable that 2009 is almost over, where did the year go?

In 2009, we sent a 40 foot container to Bridge Ministries in Honduras and found the cost to be up to $4500.00 for us, not including the cost for our mission people in Honduras. We’ve decided, as a board, that cost is too expensive and have opted to do the Denton shipments exclusively to Honduras.

HHM completed the paperwork for a Denton shipment, delivered the shipment to Pope AFB and it was delivered to Soto Cano, AFB in Honduras in June. The people that handle the paperwork stateside is USAID in Washington, DC, their representative in Honduras contacts the missionary to let them know it has arrived and to help them with arrangements to have it removed from the base. The shipment is then transferred to the Bridge Ministries warehouse and readied for distribution.

Bridge Ministries has been in Honduras for about 14 years. They operate a bi-lingual school that will increase to almost 350 students this year. The new school year will begin in Feb. ’10. They have started a church, support two other churches, have a youth center that has an attendance of about 600 children and adults per day, furnishes much needed items to other schools, orphanages, clinics, rest homes and a local hospital. HHM has been supporting Bridge Ministries with shipments for about 10 years.

HHM usually makes at least one trip a year to Honduras to hold a medical brigade. The brigade this year was postponed due to the unrest. We will reschedule that trip for the Spring of 2010.

We have also been contacted by a missionary moving he and his family to Guatemala. He will be working with several orphanages in the country and has asked if we could ship some items to him. I have checked with the Denton people and found we can do that once the paperwork is completed. That missionary is in Guatemala as I am writing this newsletter and hopes to bring the needed paperwork back.

In September, my wife Donna, and three other board members joined a local church on a mission trip to West Virginia. They took clothing, toys and food to a church in Bradshaw, WV. They were to investigate for HHM and see if there was anything we could do to help. When they returned, they reported to the Board all that they had seen. They found that the Pastor of the church actually lived in NC near Boone and drove to Bradshaw every weekend. They also found that the Pastor, Dean Crane and his wife Betty, have two other churches, one in Rhodell and one in New Richmond. So, Pastor Dean drives to Bradshaw on Friday. He has a small home next to the church and sleeps there. On Saturday morning he leaves about 8 AM to make the 1 ½ hour drive to Rhodell for a 10:30 AM service. After the service he drives back to Bradshaw for a 3:00 PM service. On Sunday morning he leaves about 9 AM for an 11:00 service at New Richmond and then leaves from there to drive home to NC about 3 hours away. He makes this trip every weekend weather permitting. The church in Bradshaw has a lot of shelving in the back storage room where they had tried to maintain a food bank. The majority of the food had been picked up from the WV food bank but the food there had dwindled and there was not much to get when they went to pick it up. I, Tony Haywood, contacted Dean and spoke to him about the needs and what we might could do to help. He said food and cleaning supplies were in high demand. A lot of the people in all three churches had lost their coal mining jobs and had no work and very little income. Some of the HHM Board spoke to Grace Church and asked them to help. The church purchased paper bags and passed them out to the congregation with a list of the needed items. They also bought plastic shoe boxes and included directions of what was needed in the boxes for boys and girls and three different age groups.

HHM and Grace Church volunteers helped gather up all these supplies and loaded the HHM 16 foot enclosed trailer and the back of our truck and loaded the remainder in several of other vehicles and on Friday, December 11th at about 9 AM, 25 people pulled out bound for Bradshaw, WV with coats, sweaters, gifts and toys for the children, and food for the Bradshaw food bank. The Grace Church team and the HHM team arrived in Bradshaw at about 4:30 PM and proceeded to unload the goods. On Saturday part of the team stayed in Bradshaw to set up the food bank and make up the food boxes that would be passed out to each family, the rest of the teams traveled to the churches. When the whole team arrived back in Bradshaw Sat. afternoon we were in awe of the work that had been done. The food bank shelves were organized and full. Pastor Dean told his churches that the Wal-Mart had come to Bradshaw. The shoe boxes were passed out to the children in the churches. They were very excited to get these gifts. We insisted that they open their gifts before leaving the church. It was such a joy to see their faces. Pastor Dean said if we had not insisted, the parents would have made them wait till Christmas day. In most cases, that is the only gift they will receive for Christmas.

HHM and Grace church plan to make several trips to WV in 2010. Pastor Dean is praying about planting another church in Welsh, WV. We stopped and looked at the site and the building and had prayer with him asking for God’s guidance. If this new church works out, he’ll hold that service on Saturday night.

HHM has a shipment to Honduras we hope will move in January.

Guatemala is in God’s hands!

If you are not a supporter of HHM, would you consider joining us in God’s work.

We also need your prayer support, Helping Hands recognizes that we can’t do it all. But, we can do all God calls us to do, and that is our desire!

Sincerely,
Tony and Donna Haywood