Our Story
It started with a group of teenagers back in 1997. A Youth Group from the States visited an orphanage on the outskirts of Managua, Nicaragua, and something happened. It was not planned, but they fell in love. They fell in love with the kids at the orphanage, in love with the staff, in love with the community...and more in love with God.
They returned home dirty, tired and bursting with stories about how the trip had changed their lives. Parents did not pay too much attention at first, but then their kids wanted to go back, again and again. Teenagers were earning their own money, giving away their clothes and going every chance they could to hug and laugh with these orphans that the rest of the world had forgotten.
Their parents started paying attention; their church started paying attention. When Michael Simone, Senior Pastor of Spring Branch Community Church, finally decided to go on a trip and investigate - he understood. He understood what God was doing in the lives of his church's teenagers. And he understood what God wanted Spring Branch to do - Help Bob.
Bob Trolese, National Director of Verbo Ministries in Nicaragua, is an American missionary who moved his family to Managua thirty years ago - thirty years of living out the gospel in one of the poorest places on earth. Verbo Ministries started the Casa Bernabe orphanage on a farm in Veracruz, a small town with too many people and too little money. The orphanage originally had dirt floors and paper-thin walls, but the kids started coming... and coming...and coming, and Verbo would not turn them away. When Simone saw what Bob and his church members were doing he knew that his church needed to be part of it.
Spring Branch started giving. More students - and now their parents - started going. Realizing the potential to help Verbo and the Casa Bernabe staff save these orphans from an impoverished future, Simone wanted to share the gift Spring Branch was experiencing with other churches. And ORPHANetwork was born.
ORPHANetwork is a 501(c)(3) with a mission of seeing orphaned and vulnerable children fully realizing their God-given purpose. Today, ORPHANetwork is partnering with two of Verbo's orphanages as well as four community outreach and feeding center projects. We have also developed relationships with other Nicaraguan organizations who demonstrate their heart for vulnerable children through running Christian-based orphanages. We are watching dreams become reality as we create transition programs to help the older kids move out from under the wings of the orphanages and back into the real world as successful adults, adults who are confident of God's love and design for their lives, adults who have the training, education and resources to fulfill their potential in their communities and beyond.
Who knows what great plans God holds for their tomorrows, but we are privileged to be eyewitnesses to his handiwork in their lives, as well as in our own. And to think, it all started with a bunch of teenagers...