Spiritual Development

AFE is a ministry of the Amor y Vida church in the Linda Miller community.

Pastor Jeony Ordonez planted this church when he moved from his middle-class home in the city out to a community near the garbage dump. The Linda Miller community is so named because Michael Miller (of Micah Project) helped build this community for families displaced by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and named the community after his mother, Linda. Since Jeony worked for Micah Project at that time, he was also involved in the building of the community and when he moved out there, found himself in a natural position of leadership. Not only did he help the community to get organized, but he began pastoring the people. Everyone knew that the Ordonez door was always open if someone needed help.

In 2006 Pastor Jeony officially planted the Amor y Vida (Love and Life) church in the Linda Miller community, with the support of his home church, Amor y Vida in the Bosque neighborhood. This turned out by a strategic move for AFE as well. Because AFE’s ranks were growing…in 2006 there were nearly seventy students in attendance and Jeony and his wife were running out of friends and family to draft as volunteer teachers.  Soon men and women in the community were being reached for Christ and Pastor Jeony was passing on his missionary heart to them. Suyapa, Arturo, Milagros, Claudia, and Vanessa are all from the Miller community and have committed their lives to serving children from the garage dump.

Not only does the church supply leaders to AFE, it somehow fuses too communities together (Linda Miller and the garbage dump) to meet their spiritual needs. It is a requirement that all AFE children attend church, and they do, joyfully, every Sunday. They jump on the school bus that picks them up right in front of the garbage dump and come with their families to Sunday worship and Saturday youth programs.  Other leaders from AFE’s church help in outreach events to people of the garbage dump (such as our Mother’s Day program), and a small-group has been planted in a former garbage-workers home. It is exciting to see how God is working through a local church to reach the children He dearly loves in the Tegucigalpa Garbage dump.