November's Story of the Week

As Thanksgiving approaches, many of us take the time to be thankful for all the blessings God has given us.  For many of us, those blessings often include a gratefulness for our families and how their love has helped us become who we are today.  For many, the thought of a family’s support is a foreign concept. Can you imagine what your life would look like if you had no one to support your dreams?

Through the Jeremiah House, we can be that support system for young men who need to see God’s love and the blessings He has for each one of us! Each young man has a story to tell, and we would like to take the next few weeks to share a few of their stories.

This week we bring you the story of Lazro: Opportunity Will Come.

Here at the Jeremiah House we try and stress the importance of being prepared.  Whether it’s school, work, or play, to be successful, you must be prepared.  Our goal (lofty as it may be) is to improve our lives in some way each day so that when opportunity knocks we will be ready to own it.

This week we share the story of Lazaro.  Many of you are familiar with Lazaro due to the awesome short film produced by Rice Bowls. It will give you an overview of his background. If you haven’t seen that short, watch it now.

Every few months we sit down with each of the boys to review their progress in meeting their goals, hear updates to their plans, and just make sure they are still on track.  In some of these meetings it’s like pulling teeth to get anything out of the boys.  Some just don’t know what they want out of their lives, they aren’t used to thinking about their future.  Laz isn’t one of these.  Every time we have a meeting, and sometimes in between, Laz comes prepared with exactly what he wants to do for the next few months and years.  However, thankfully, he understands the importance of flexibility in planning.

You see, Laz’s plans for the future have always included working on a farm and one day owning a farm.  He prefers animals to people and he figures being a vet or agricultural engineer is the best option for being able to work with the animals he loves.  However, this past year a major wrench was thrown into Laz’s plans. 

As you saw in the video, Laz was almost adopted at a young age by the wife of the then president of Honduras.  Unfortunately, before she could get the adoption finalized she had to suddenly leave the country, leaving Laz behind to go into the care of child services.  In the past year, this same lady has offered for Laz to come live with her in Argentina where she will help him get through College.  Laz is out of this world excited for this opportunity, the only problem, Vet school in Argentina isn’t available to Laz right now; so, he will have to change his plans.

He came to us for advice on this major decision and we all agreed that having a family support system in place was really important and Laz needed to go and spend some time with this lady he considers a mom.  You can see a difference in his eyes when he talks about Aguas, she means the world to him and gives him something we will never be able to.  So, Lord willing, next year Lazaro will be traveling to Argentina to study physical therapy, working with people and not animals.  But the ability to have a family was so much more important than anything else to Laz and we will support him fully.  We pray this time goes well but we’ve made sure he knows we will be here if he should want to come back.

Laz recently stated how grateful to God he is for the blessings and opportunity he has been given, especially in the Jeremiah House.  Through the love he has received he has been able to move forward in his life and these blessings have changed him for the better.  From his education to Bible studies and counseling to friendships, he is grateful for learning what it means to follow God’s plan to be successful.  He still hopes to find a path that will lead him to own a farm and possibly study veterinary medicine, but he knows that God’s plan will lead to even greater things than he can possibly imagine.

As we enter this season of Thanksgiving, let us remember that November is also the month we recognize Orphan Sunday to bring awareness to those in the foster care system around the world and Giving Tuesday as a way of giving back in our time of recognizing our blessings.  We ask that you take time this month to pray for the young men of the Jeremiah House as we continue to pour into their lives.

If you missed last week's story, read about Erick: What are you Grateful for? here!  Also you can vote for Erick's story to help us win a grant of up $10,000 from the #GivingTuesday organization by voting each day at Here http://mygivingstory.givingtuesday.org/fbcontests/profiletab/MyGivingStory/2724334.