Serving Orphans in Honduras Drives Mississippi College Graduates

The Holcomb family

Building a modest home serving orphaned children in Honduras remains the dream of a family of Mississippi College graduates.

Their ministry cannot come close to addressing the plight of 153 million orphaned children worldwide. But it’s clearly a start in one of the poorest countries in the region.

Sammy Holcomb leaves for Honduras September 8^th to meet with contractors to start the building project.

A Brookhaven couple, Sammy and his wife, Misty, will return to Honduras in February with a team from their Heritage Hills Orphan Ministry. The MC grads will lead the delegation to continue the construction, distribute clothing to poor families and spread Christ’s love.

It’s a project designed to put a roof over their head of eight orphaned children and their house parents. Long-term plans are to build a second home for orphans on their property in Honduras.

What prompted the Holcombs to get involved with orphans globally?

“Through complications conceiving our first two children – Carter and Adi Grace, we felt like God placed a burden on our hearts to adopt,” Sammy Holcomb says. But the couple’s efforts to adopt a child from Columbia, South America in 2010 fell through a couple of years later. It led them to adopt domestically in 2013. The Holcombs added Parker Isaac to their Mississippi family.

“It was through this experience that God opened our eyes to the needs of orphaned children,” says Sammy Holcomb, 34, a 2002 Mississippi College graduate. “At this point, we began to pray and seek God’s guidance on how we could do more for orphaned children around the world.”

They launched their non-profit Heritage Hills Orphan Ministry in 2014.

God led the Mississippi couple to Honduras in February 2015 to assess the needs in the mountainous country of 7.2 million. They discovered widespread poverty and were distressed to see so many children abandoned and walking the streets.

“We met one young woman who left her home and lived on the streets at the age of six along with her siblings. It’s hard for us to imagine our children, Carter, 10, or Adi Grace, 6 living on the streets to survive.”

During their visit, Sammy and Misty discovered two orphan homes were squeezed with a total of 70 children. It prompted them to make it their goal to build a new home near Pena Blanca, Honduras.

It’s not a cause they are pursuing alone. Sammy, who works as an administrator with the Mississippi Department of Transportation, and Misty, medical staff coordinator at Southwest Regional Medical Center, turned to friends in their community for donations.

A June golf tournament at the Brookhaven Country Club raised more than $4,000 for their ministry. The Brookhaven Lions Club recently donated $500 for an adoption assistance grant. Others are stepping forward to help.

Statistics regarding the lives of many of the world’s children are grim.

* HIV/AIDS has orphaned more than 18 million children.

* About one of every five children living in developing countries are underweight, the United Nations reports. Over 67 million children of primary school age do not attend school.

* Asia is home to the largest number of orphaned children or 60 million at last count, UNICEF reports. There are over 120,000 orphans in America and more than 10.2 million orphaned children in Latin America.

Despite those alarming reports, the Holcombs refuse to get discouraged. They believe the Bible teaches followers of Jesus Christ to reach out to orphans in distress. At the same time, they seek prayers for their ministry.

At the moment, ten people are signed up for the February 18-25 mission trip, but more Mississippians are expected to join the outreach to Honduran orphans.

For more information, follow the Holcombs on Facebook at www.facebook.com/heritage.hills.orphancare or email them at heritage.hills2014@yahoo.com