Smart Kids Who Need a Family

Working Among the Street Children of Tegucigalpa

Steve Dennie

December 1997

Every morning, happy, playful kids meet Dan Wust when he arrives at the entrance to the World Gospel Outreach boys' home in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. They follow along as he drives his Ford 4x4 pickup through the metal gate and into the Centro De Vida, the Center of Life.

"Good morning," they greet him with big smiles.

They all want to give Dan a hug. That wouldn't be unusual for most kids. But before coming to the WGO home, most of these kids didn't know the meaning of a hug. They were street kids, fending for themselves at age five or seven, alone except for the camaraderie of gangs. Many suffered physical and sexual abuse, they stole to survive, and they sniffed glue to obtain one of the few pleasures available to them.

"It's beautiful to see the transformation that takes place in their little hearts, and it's really rewarding," Dan says. "It makes us want to make a larger impact."

Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, has thousands of street kids with no parents to care for them. Some are orphans. Others were abandoned, or their parents are so overwhelmed by poverty that they can't take care of them.

Many Honduran children, at a young age--five, six, seven years old--are sent out on the street to earn money for the family by begging. But they at least have parents. Street kids don't. They just wander the city, sleeping wherever they find shelter and depending on each other for security and belonging.

Dan says most street kids are boys. "The boys are raised to be very independent. They are expected at a young age to get along on their own. They are expected to care for each other, to do work that you just wouldn't see a young child do. So the boys seem to have survival skills and are just kind of expected to survive."

But, he says, there are also little girls out on the street, and their plight is much worse. They suffer more sexual abuse than the boys, and their scars tend to run deeper. "The abuse is hideous," Dan says. "It's just unthinkable what they go through."

Kids naturally gravitate toward each other for security and companionship, and gangs form. They take care of each other--the only family they have. As the kids grow older, Dan says, they become more violent, with a hatred and disrespect for authority. And they battle other gangs. Gang warfare is rampant in Honduran cities.

Street kids commit thievery in the busy open-air markets, which can be dangerous even for Hondurans. They steal food or rummage through the garbage when the market closes, knowing they'll find fruit that was rotten or fell on the ground and couldn't be sold.

And they beg. "Anywhere you find rich people, you'll also find a lot of begging," Dan says. Airports, hotels, the U. S. embassy. They beg around Burger King, Pizza Hut, and other restaurants, asking people to give them some food, even if nothing more than their scraps.

"The kids come into the restaurant and ask for your chicken bones so they can chew the extra meat. You're confronted with that daily. It breaks your heart," Dan says.

He doesn't want to give them money. They may use it to buy glue; sniffing glue is a huge problem among Honduran youngsters. So Dan gives them little packs of Ritz crackers. Kids on the street now recognize his tan pickup, and will stop what they're doing to call out to him or run to meet the truck when it stops.

WGO tries to reach street kids when they are still young, impressionable, salvageable. When a hug might still make a difference.

Dan Wust came to Honduras in the spring of 1993 with a 15-person work team from Emmanuel Community Church in Fort Wayne, Ind. His wife, Petie, was part of that team, as was oldest son Andrew, who was about the age Dan was in the late 1960s when he lived in Honduras as the son of missionary parents.

The Emmanuel team went to Honduras to build a church for a United Brethren congregation in the northern part of the country. But Dan had a second agenda, this one more personal.

Dan felt restless about his carpentry and remodeling business. It was going well, but he didn't know if that's how he should spend his life. Dan knew that God might use this short-term trip to Honduras to give him direction.

And He did. On the plane back to the States, Petie told Dan, "Okay, when are we packing?"

They knew God wanted them in Honduras. But where? Doing what? And with whom?

The United Brethren missions program didn't have a place for them in Honduras, so they looked elsewhere. And World Gospel Outreach was a natural place to look.

Three months earlier, Dan's sister and brother-in-law, Lynn and Steve Razor, had become deeply involved with World Gospel Outreach stateside. Through them, Dan learned about WGO's need for a carpenter in Tegucigalpa; they had plans to start a carpentry business which would teach a trade to Honduran men. Dan and Petie flew to Honduras to see the WGO work, and returned knowing that's where they belonged. Dan's skills perfectly fit WGO's needs and plans.

It took just two months to raise their own support--$1,500 a month, plus moving expenses. They sold the house without a hitch, and Dan shut down his business. They even had a baby; Isaac was born in July 1994, just three months before they headed south.

In six months time, we were down there," Dan says. "Everything went so smoothly that we knew the Lord was plowing the way so we could get there without a problem."

World Gospel Outreach has always focused much attention on the children of Honduras. Allen and Donna Danforth, who founded WGO, adopted three Honduran children, all siblings. One is now a cadet at the U. S. Air Force Academy, and another attends Wheaton College in the Chicago area.

The needs of Honduran children overwhelm local resources. "The churches are poor, extremely poor, and pulling the kids off the street in a large program demands finances," Dan says.

A well-known Christian businessman made available to WGO a 10,000-square-foot facility. WGO transformed it into a home for boys--not an institution-type orphanage that warehouses kids without exposure to parent figures, but a dormitory with a minimal amount of beds and high interaction with Christian adults. WGO also set up a big-brother program with a Honduran church, teaming each boy with an adult male who takes a high interest in him.

Recently, they were able to buy a nearby house, which they are remodeling into a girls' home. They also bought two vacant lots between the two homes so they could combine the properties into one large complex. The area between the two houses is being landscaped and turned into a playground. Girls will be able to walk across the playground to the boys area, where the school, kitchen, and dining hall are located.

Right now, fourteen boys and seven girls live in those homes.

"We constantly have Christian adults there mingling, ministering to the kids, giving them Bible lessons, playing with them, taking them out on weekend outings to parks and different places. There's a lot of interaction with Christian adults, which is really important, because these kids have been burned time and time again by adults and authority figures. We feel it's really important for them to get overdosed with positive experiences with Christian adult figures. Children need that. And it's really interesting to see how they respond."

When kids first arrive, Dan says, they are very introverted. "You don't see any emotions. They look like they have been wounded. They've been through some really hard times."

They bathe the kids, give them new clothes and shoes, and feed them well. The kids find themselves in a family-type environment with Salvador and Lorena, a Christian couple. Salvador, who spent nine years working in the government juvenile system, directs the home, and Lorena teaches in the school. Three other women work fulltime in the kitchen; Dan enjoys watching them mother the children.

The kids attend school on the grounds, using the PACE curriculum and learning English, which will be an enormous asset to them. A dentist visits regularly. And the kids receive medical attention from the doctor and three others working in the WGO health clinic located on the grounds. The clinic, launched in July, is open to the public and sees 20-30 patients a day.

"These kids are being bombarded with Christian examples. It's transforming."

Good food alone makes a big difference. A farmer in Mitchell, Ind., grows and donates a special high-protein corn which they use to make tortillas and other foods. They'll receive a shipping container holding 650 sacks of corn, each with a Spanish New Testament inside, each sack imprinted with, "This corn donated in the name of Jesus Christ." WGO also distributes some of the corn to churches and pastors involved with their ministry.

Dan figures that half of the boys in their dorm had been addicted to glue-sniffing. Glue is cheap, easy to get, and provides a euphoric high which gives them a brief escape from the distresses they face.

When they let the boys decide what to name a new puppy, the boys named it after Resistol, a popular brand of glue--Resistolero, "little glue sniffer," they christened the pup. "We had them rename it," Dan says (though he admits the new name is less than perfect--Nero).

But, he adds, "We don't have a problem with them wanting to continue their glue-sniffing. We are providing the real answer to their needs, and they're not wanting to go back to it."

WGO maintains excellent relationships with government officials, and the court system would like them to make more beds available. "They are impressed with what we are doing with the children and see that we are making a better impact on this problem than they are."

Dan is now finishing the remodeling of the girls' home. It will then have room for 30 girls. And the addition of a second floor to the boys' dorm will make room for 30 boys.

Thirty boys and 30 girls reclaimed from the streets.

"We'll have no trouble filling our beds," Dan says. "I'll bet two to three people a week try to drop kids off. Word is out on the street about our center. We had a grandmother show up with six children from one family; their mother took off and the grandma was left trying to find a place for the kids."

They're looking for land to further expand the ministry to street kids. Ideally, "We want to have couples living with 8-10 kids in a family setting, not an institution, living and behaving like a family."

Adoption is difficult in Honduras, and WGO was advised not to open a home with the intent of doing adoption. So they're focusing on foster care. They'll keep kids for a short period--get them off the street and into a disciplined environment, into a routine with responsibilities, and then move them into Christian homes in foster care. That will free up beds for new kids fresh from the street.

This work is dear to Dan's heart. But, he points out, it is also dear to God's heart. He cites James 1:27--"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress."

Dan says, "When we as a church reach out and respond to these needs, we win the Lord's favor. It's through these efforts that the Church becomes a light to the world. Here is a real dark area in Honduran society. I really think we have an opportunity to make a nationwide impact on this problem."