The Call of the Lord

After a family retreat in January of 2025, we felt a clear invitation from Our Lord to join Him in Comayagua, Honduras. The mission was specific: join up with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal (CFRs) and build Project Hope.

Project Hope is an apartment complex we are opening for young adults from the boys’ and girls’ orphanages run by the Association Hogar Nazareth and supported by the CFRs. When the children turn 18, they must move out of the orphanage, although they are not legally adults until age 21. Many do not have families to support them or anyone to help them transition to life as an adult. These young adults are vulnerable and at times end up in dangerous or unhealthy situations.

Over the past eight years, the orphanages and the CFRs have been praying about a solution for this. We agree Project Hope is a great answer for the young adults who choose to enter. While living together, our family will witness to them a life led by the sacraments and prayer, and we will support these young men and women to continue their education at the university or to train in a trade.

The call of the Lord always finds a way to amaze me. Shortly after that family retreat, we learned Veronica was pregnant with our tenth child! This amazing news led us to postpone our move to Honduras by six months.

During our time preparing, I gave the Lord every opportunity to “close the door” for our family to move here. We loved our home, community, and ministry at St. Mary Magdalen Parish in Abbeville. But every time I went to pray and read scripture, I left with great peace that this is what the Lord wanted for us.

One time stands out from the rest. I was reading scripture and praying during a visit to Honduras before we moved. I asked the Lord to please show me if I was making the wrong decision before moving my entire family of 12. I felt a massive grace from God! I felt Him revealing to me that He is not sending us to Honduras, but calling us to come and meet Him here in what He is already doing. This was a beautiful reality and gift for me.

After arriving in June and surviving the chaos of moving our family, the Lord revealed something He has been preparing for at least six years.

In 2020, my family and I returned to the USA from serving as missionaries in Mexico and Asia. We were culture-shocked by the intense attack here in the States on family, marriage, and reality itself within human sexuality. This led me to study St. John Paul II’s ‘Love and Responsibility’ and ‘Theology of the Body.’ We were able to teach Theology of the Body and lead evangelization training out of our home. Over the next few years, we led Bible studies at our parish on Theology of the Body and traveled to speak at retreats and conferences. St. John Paul II’s teachings break open God’s Word to reveal who we are as humans in relationship to God and all of creation. This truth creates a worldview that ought to direct the actions of our daily lives. I have a passion for every person to know the truth of their dignity, the dignity of being the bridge between the spiritual and material worlds created in

the image and likeness of the Trinity, individually and uniquely known and loved by God; the fact that the Creator has willed and continues to will humans, male and female, for their own sake. God loves us, pursues us, and showers us with His supernatural grace.

We have been meeting and getting to know another Catholic mission group here in Comayagua called the Missioners of Christ. After visiting their formation house, we were talking with some of the missioners. A woman named Belkys, from Nicaragua, shared that she has been serving here for three years, offering various Theology of the Body teachings and retreats.

Only about 10% of adult women here are married. Unfortunately, it’s not abnormal for a man to have children by multiple women. Belkys knows the need for the truth of the Theology of the Body and has been praying about a program that she wants to start to form parents in local parishes and then organize ways to evangelize the young adults and youth. She dreams of eventually having a Center of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body here in Comayagua for people to attend classes and formation. Her plan was approved by her mission group, and she asked Veronica and me to come to their first meeting.

After the first meeting, Belkys asked me to lead the formation for their team. After talking to Veronica and praying about it, I accepted, and we began formation nights at our house on Wednesday evenings to form the team of local Honduran missionaries that will be speaking in the parishes. It is incredible to see the call of the Lord unfold.

“I am not sending you out on your own away from Me, but calling you to join Me in what I am doing here.”

Not only are there seven young men and women who would like to move in here with us at Project Hope, but with the Theology of the Body, the Lord immediately has shown me the answer to my prayer back in March when I came to visit. “I am not sending you out on your own away from Me, but calling you in to join Me in what I am doing here.”

Praise the Lord for His perfect plan, divinely woven into our time and space, made possible by us freely giving over our will to Him.