First Ever Open House!

After many weeks of planning and on-site preparation, we opened our doors to welcome special guests to our very first open house at Casa de Gracia!

Our goals for this event were very specific - to showcase our 'work in progress' campus and to invite our visitors to pray about partnering with us in a variety of ways.

Our team worked tirelessly on all kinds of details and logistics, all the way to making coffee for 50 people over an open fire since we still do not have electricity!

We had a full day of presentations and tours with two separate sessions in the morning and afternoon for two specific groups.

For the morning session, we invited pastors and staff from local churches that we hope our young people will choose to get involved with. We also invited directors and leaders from local ministries that work in the context of orphan care, trauma informed care, mentorship for young people, and serving vulnerable and at-risk populations.

Our goals for these groups included:

Goals with churches:

1. Create strong relationships and alliances with local churches. One of our program's primary objectives is to connect young people with the local church. The local church is God’s plan for reaching and impacting lives with the Gospel. Therefore, it is mission critical for us to make sure each young person finds healthy community within a church with solid doctrine.

2. Clearly communicate Casa de Gracia's mission and vision with pastors and church leaders. We want to begin encouraging them to be watching for our young people in their congregations and to welcome them with lots of love.

3. Ask churches to prayerfully consider people within their congregations that would be good mentors to walk alongside our young people during their time in our program and hopefully long after they graduate from Casa de Gracia. We want to launch each young person with as much strong biblical community surrounding them as possible!

Goals with the Ministries:

1. Create strong relationships with others serving in this same context. As our leader, Rich Smith, says, ‘This problem is bigger than all of us, we all need to work together for these young people!’

2. Clearly communicate our mission and vision so that these ministries can refer potential participants to our program as we work together for the kingdom and the Gospel.

For the afternoon session, we invited personnel from the system of protection for children from around the country.

Our goals for this group included:

Goals with orphanages and refuges:

1. Communicate in-depth who we are, why we exist, and what we plan to accomplish with our residential and day programs.

2. Create connections and relationships to begin creating a streamlined process for receiving young people from homes as they turn 18 and age out.

3. Begin praying and planning for young people in the system who are currently 16 years old and up who will need a safe and gospel-centered place to transition to after leaving the orphanage.

It was a great day full of so much joy and excitement as we welcomed each guest!

It was truly a celebration set up inside the first transition home and see it filled with both new and familiar faces!

Please pray for much fruit to come from this and future events as we gear up to open our doors to our first residents.