If you’ve taken the first step of sponsoring a child, consider making their day by sending a them a note to let them know you’re thinking about and praying for them. Several sponsors have sent letters or pictures or gifts to their child and it has made such an impact. It’s quick and easy! Just type up a little note and scan in any pictures you want to send and email them to us at info@poihn.org.

Did you sleep in a bed last night? Was it crowded, dirty and old? Jon and Kiara shared a bed with their grandmother last night. It’s the only bed in their one-room house on the mountain in San Juan. It’s a twin size with one ratty blanket and a few deflated pillows. Their grandma makes donuts in the morning and they help her sell them in the market in the afternoon. She makes about $3 a day. You can see from the pictures their living environment is small, dark and filthy. Their father is a chief of one of the biggest gangs in town. He ordered someone to kill his children’s mother. They have suffered much in their short lives already, but these precious children still have smiles on their faces. Imagine how grateful they would be for a nice, big, new bed. For $450, you can provide that bed and be a blessing to Jon, Kiara and their grandmother. If you are interested in helping with this situation, email us at info@poihn.org.

She tells of Andrea, a 9-year-old girl who was sexually abused by her stepfather. Instead of helping Andrea, her drug-addicted mother just lay there and watched. She tells of Anderson, an 8-year-old boy who spent his days roaming a cemetery instead of going to school. He tried to perform odd jobs to earn money to buy food. One day a homosexual man took advantage of his desperate hunger and the innocent boy was sexually abused, all for a plate of food. She shares 12 more stories similar to these.

Students’ reactions to the stories vary, but one face stands out among the group. One man quietly sits listening, with little expression on his face. A closer glance reveals a small stream of tears trickling down his cheeks. This man is no stranger to Honduras, nor is he unfamiliar with the stories shared. This is a man who has devoted his time, energy and finances to impact lives like the ones in these stories. In fact, because of him, Andrea, Anderson and 12 other children now have a safe place to call home, away from abuse, starvation and loneliness.

David Hamilton is the founder and CEO of Impact Logistics, a company located in Memphis, Tenn. He lives in a big home in the suburbs of Memphis. He drives a nice car, owns the latest version of the iPad, occasionally visits his lake house, complete with a speedboat and Jet Ski, and sends his daughters to private colleges. However, Hamilton leads a starkly different life than the average American CEO.

David, along with his wife, Ruth, and two daughters, Leah and Hannah, founded a ministry in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, called Point of Impact. More than 70 percent of people in Honduras live in a state of poverty. Stories like the ones about Andrea and Anderson exist all across the country. David’s purpose in founding POI was to provide essential physical needs like food, clean water, medical attention and education in order to open a door to share the gospel.

POI consists of four churches in neighborhoods across the city that seek to meet the physical and spiritual needs of the people. The ministry also supports three programs through the churches that offer after-school tutoring, medical attention and daily nutrition to more than 350 children. In the summer of 2008, POI opened an orphanage to accommodate the children who were wandering the streets with no hope of a bed, a meal or the love of a family.

That night on the rooftop, as David again heard about the darkness from which these children had come, he looked as though someone had physically harmed his own kids. And in a sense, that’s exactly how he felt. David and Ruth have legal custody of all 14 children, and though the kids do not live with them, they view them as their own.

Unlike many ministries that operate primarily from foundational gifts or individual donations, the Hamiltons fund more than 80 percent of the ministry with the business David runs. Brett Veach, executive vice president and chief operations officer for Impact Logistics, said David never intended to start a company.

“He just had some buddies unloading trailers in a warehouse,” Veach said. “David wasn’t one of these guys that had a master plan. He was just faithful in God’s leading.”

What began as a job right out of high school turned into a nationwide company with more than 800 employees. David established guiding principles in his business, one of which is to return to the community a share of the company’s success.

Wayne Vandersteeg, executive vice president and chief financial officer for Impact Logistics, has worked with David since 1998.

“As we work for and with David, we all feel that we are working for the Lord,” Vandersteeg said. “The ministries that we’re in are supported by the finances of the company. The leadership that is in place here at Impact understands David’s heart and the mission. We work with the recognition that what we’re doing, we’re doing for the Lord.”

David said it all started on a mission trip to Brazil in 1990 with his home church. “Ruth and I came home from that trip and just went, ‘OK, there’s gotta be more to life than this,’” he said.

Ruth chimed in that, “the ‘this’ he’s referring to is just the average American life. Work, make money, buy things…”

“Boats, trains, planes, bigger businesses, all that kind of stuff,” David finished her thought.

At one point they considered selling the company and becoming missionaries, but after the trip, he realized there was a purpose for God giving him the business. While their hearts were burdened for the poverty and despair they saw outside the United States, they could not act yet.

“Ruth and I got pregnant so we didn’t really go anywhere or do anything for several years,” David joked.

In 1999, when the girls were a little older, the Hamiltons traveled to Honduras for the first time. Through that trip, they met Armando Meza, who self-funded a ministry to reach out to gangs through soccer leagues.

“One day, I said, ‘Let’s help Pastor Armando financially,’” David said. “We just felt led to do it. … I made out a check to (him) and put a note on it that said ‘For the next 12 months, we’re going to give you $200 a month.’”

From that point on, they continued getting more involved until they were visiting every six months. In 2004 the Hamiltons bought an apartment in Tegucigalpa so they could visit whenever they wanted. Two years later, Pastor Armando took a government-appointed job with a prison ministry and the Hamiltons started their own ministry called Christian Youth Movement, under Armando’s model of rehabilitating gang members. They soon changed the model from intervention to prevention and called it Point of Impact.

“We realized that more and more kids were getting involved with gangs at an early age and so we focused more on the prevention aspect,” Ruth said.

Their plan was to make everything an outreach of the church so they launched the first church in a gang-infested, violent neighborhood in 2006. The pastor held services on Wednesday and Saturday nights and an after-school tutoring program was offered to the children every day. The following year, another church was established using the same model. A third one opened in 2008, followed by the orphanage in 2009, and a fourth church location in 2010.

“Mine and Ruth’s goal was to have a POI ministry on every continent,” David said.

They took a step toward accomplishing this goal in 2010 when they began funding two feeding stations in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya.

“God had already told me to do it,” David recalled. “I just needed confirmation. I got there and it was just like, ‘Duh, POI No. 2.’”

An average of 225 children receive schooling and food at each of the sites.

Mike Curry, president and founder of Light Ministries, works closely with many feeding stations across Africa. He introduced David to the stations POI now supports, and the two men have been friends for years. Curry listened to Hamilton tell the story of how POI started. When he finished, Curry had a few words of his own to add.

“You’ve gotta tell the ugly too,” Curry said. “In my ministry experience, for every one ministry like POI that succeeds, there’s a thousand that don’t make it six months. You’ll find the shells of buildings, you’ll find a sign, but that’s all you’ll find.”

He explained that many people have an emotional response to the poverty and needs they see but provide no follow-through.

“The difference with people like David and Ruth is, yeah they gave, but they’re investing,” Curry said.

Not only does Hamilton invest in the people of Honduras, and now Kenya, but he invests in the homeless in Memphis, and in his own employees, said Keny Hatley, vice president of business development at Impact.

“There are a lot of people that say, ‘Hey, I’m going to give,’ but there are very few people that say, ‘Come with me as I give and see how you can give too,’” Hatley said. “I haven’t felt pressured to give because David thinks I should be a giver, but I’ve been inspired to give because I’ve seen a guy live totally different than the culture, completely different than what the world says.”

The first ever kindergarten class at San Juan is more than halfway through their school year by now. The kids are having a blast and learning so much from their teacher, Mrs. Nelly. Thanks to the ten couples who are making this education possible for the children of San Juan!

The tournament is a 5-man scramble. Each team of five will pay a $1,100 entry fee (single person entry is $250). To sign up, click here.

The fee will cover:

• Lunch
• 18 holes at Colonial Country Club’s South Course
• Hors d’ oeuvres at conclusion of tournament
• Courtesy golf pack and prizes

Most importantly, each team’s entry fee will sponsor a child’s participation in the POI Global Mission’s program for one full year. This means the child will receive medical attention, daily nutritional meals, education and knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. All by playing one round of golf!

You can also choose to sponsor a hole for $360. This sponsorship will receive signage on that particular hole and it underwrites the cost of a child’s year-long participation in the program.

For more details on how to get involved, or to sign up for the tournament,  click here for the brochure.By playing an afternoon of golf, you can change a child’s life for an entire year.

In a country where more than 70 percent of the people live below the poverty line, prostitution, sexual exploitation and sex trafficking are all too common. Casa Alianza, an international, non-governmental organization dedicated to aid street children of Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico and Guatemala, found in a 2003 survey that more than 10,000 children are being prostituted across the 20 largest cities in Honduras. In another Casa Alianza study, the organization found that many “homeless girls in Honduras, who engage in ‘survival sex’ in exchange for basic necessities, were initially victims of sexual abuse in their homes.”

In the capital city of Tegucigalpa, where Erick’s mom works, an estimated 2,280 children were sexually exploited in 2003. Three years later, Honduran government authorities estimated 15,000 children were trafficked across the border in a year for purposes related to sexual exploitation. Esteban Elvir, executive director of Point of Impact, said these numbers have only gotten worse with time. I wish I had known these facts before I visited Honduras in the summer of 2009. In my mind, prostitution was a sinful lifestyle chosen by women desperate for money and willing to perform whatever to get it.

I had heard stories such as Jenifer Gabriela, a 9-year-old girl, living in a gang-infested neighborhood in the heart of Tegucigalpa. She stayed with her grandmother and four cousins in a one-room house with dirt for floors, cracked wood for walls and an outhouse for a bathroom. They all survived on about $2 a day. Jenifer Gabriela’s mother died of AIDS and her father left her to live with another family. Oh, he came back to check up on her occasionally. But only when he felt the sick desire to sexually abuse the daughter he so willingly abandoned.

I knew those stories – the ones about innocent children. But I never realized that oftentimes it was these same girls, abused from an early age, who grew up to walk the streets at night, dressed in tight mini-skirts, stilettos, low-cut blouses and fish-net hose. The same ones who stepped into sleek, black cars to voluntarily sell their bodies night after night were the very ones who were involuntarily abused by the one man who was supposed to take care of them – their father.

On a warm June night in 2009, I had not thought of any of this. All I knew was my church group was about to serve dinner to 12‑15 prostitutes and homosexual cross-dressers who usually solicited business on a nearby street corner. As a 20-year-old who has been in church all her life, I knew what my response should be when told I was about to hang out with prostitutes for a couple hours: “Jesus hung out with the tax collectors and sinners when he was on the earth. I should follow his example and not be scared or freaked out by this.”

But I live in the 21st century in the U.S. “Bible belt.” My church does not typically take service groups to have a chat with the local prostitutes walking the strip. We usually just go to a public school and plant flowers. Needless to say, I was outside my comfort zone when I hopped in a white, 16-passenger van to go pick up our dinner guests. It’s not that I did not want to serve them dinner; I just didn’t know how. My nervous heartbeat whispered, “What will I say? How should I act?”

Suddenly, I find myself sitting at the dinner table next to a woman wearing a Honduran soccer jersey. Her long, dark hair is pulled halfway back in a ponytail and when she smiles (which is often), she reveals several golden-capped teeth. Her simple beauty shines through her thorough application of blush, lipstick and eyeliner. As I begin to speak to her through broken Spanish, I think to myself, “This is not at all what I expected.” Rosalina’s kind eyes look right into mine as she listens to me try to tell her about my family. She says she has a son at home and she likes to watch the World Cup. She’s 22 years old. From the lines on her face caused by the cares of the world, I would have guessed she was at least 30. Her raspy voice betrays her smoking habit, but it is caring and interested.

“How did she end up like this?” I wonder. Everything in me wants to tell her there is a better life. She has a choice, a way out. As all these thoughts rush through my head, I look up to see another young mother sitting across from me. Her body tremors constantly and at times violently jolts. She’s having strong withdrawal symptoms from the drugs she’s been abusing. She’s holding a baby. Everyone at the table wants to take turns holding the precious little boy – partly because of his cuteness, but partly to rescue him from his spastic mother. I found out later his name is Erick.

As the dinner concludes, I assume the women and homosexual men will leave as soon as they get the chance. Instead, they linger. I watch as some begin a game of pickup basketball with a handful of team members, while others gather around a guitar to sing songs about Jesus. The majority of the mission group is younger than me and has had little exposure to “these sorts” of people. By these sorts I mean the outcasts of society, the “unlovables,” the rejects, the “sinners.” But instead of shying away from them or hurrying them out the door, the team members are hugging them, taking pictures, exchanging stories and laughing together without hesitation. The men and women realize through these actions we did not invite them to dinner to take advantage of them or to judge. They feel safe with us and do not want to leave. After spending two and a half hours with us, they walk away with Bibles and more food in hand. Sadly, they are walking back into the darkness.

As I sat at the table and watched our team in action, I realized I was seeing a clear picture of how Jesus would act had he been with us in-person. I did not need the right words to say. I just needed to love them without condemnation. As Elvir said, “We hate their sin, but we love them.” When Christ left his disciples behind on earth, he did so with the purpose that they act as his hands and feet. We, as the body of Christ, are called to love the unlovable and accept the unaccepted. I never fully understood what that meant until that night.

Two years later, the dinner has had lasting effects on not just me, but a little boy named Erick – the same one from the beginning of the story. His mother, Doris, grew up in San Pedro Sula, a Honduran city with the worst prostitution population. Her father sexually abused her while she was growing up. She fled to the capital city in response to a job offer. The employer had lied to her, though. When she arrived in Tegucigalpa, he told her she would have to sell her body for money. Once she got pregnant with Erick, she was already infected with HIV/AIDS. Doris neglected to feed, wash or take care of him and continued prostituting herself with baby Erick in the room. When she came to the dinner we served, he was 7 months old, malnourished and infected with escabiosis – a parasite commonly found in dirty beds. Doris brought him back two weeks later and asked POI to take him into their “HouseHome.”

Erick became the newest addition to the orphanage. At first, he cried whenever anyone tried to hold him and the house mom said he had a sad look in his eye. Two years later, he is a healthy, happy, walking toddler with a bright future ahead of him. When POI took him in, the staff’s biggest concern was that Erick was infected with HIV/AIDS like his mother. After several thorough tests, they praised God for a miracle: Erick was negative! A husband and wife on POI’s staff who cannot have children of their own are now in the process of legally adopting him.

Because the body of Christ was willing to extend the love and acceptance Jesus showed while he was on the earth, Erick will grow up in a home away from abuse. He will hear the gospel of Christ and be taken care of by those who love him. Because I, by the grace of God, was able to overcome my hesitations and fears, Rosalina left that night knowing someone loved her. She hugged me goodnight through tears and told me she wanted to come back to the ministry and see me again. I was able to share with Rosalina that Jesus loved her. We left her with a Bible marked with $10 in the book of John. I will never forget her face or her smile. And I will never forget how I – a part of the body of Christ – am called to act to “the least of these.”