More Than Meets the Eye
Long before your coffee ever reaches your cup, two fingers gently picked a ripe coffee cherry from a tree on a mountainside in southern Honduras. Later, another pair of fingers carefully examined the beans, removing imperfections one by one. Those fingers belong to women whose skill and care produce exceptional coffee.
Building a Better Future, One Farm at a Time
For years, small coffee farmers in the La Botija Mountains of southern Honduras have faced the same problem. They could grow good coffee and work hard to care for their land, but when harvest came, they had very few options for selling it. The farms are small and scattered throughout the mountains, the roads are difficult, and many buyers simply didn’t find it worthwhile to make the trip.
9.11.2001
Twenty-five years ago, in the late summer of 2001, Honduras was suffering through a devastating drought. Thousands of campesino farming families scattered throughout the remote mountains had lost their first harvest of the rainy season. They had planted their corn and beans with hope, only to watch the rains never come. They had no harvest, no food to eat, and no seed to plant again. I had only been living in Honduras for about seven months. I had never experienced anything like it.
We Reached Her Just In Time
In the remote community of Las Pitas, 88-year-old Doña Rafaela Cadenas was running out of options. By the time the Mission Lazarus mobile medical clinic reached her home, she was bedridden and weakened by illness. For people living in isolated communities in southern Honduras, the distance to medical care can mean an illness progresses long before help arrives.
Growing Coffee - Cultivating Relationship
When a family has the tools to make the most of what they’ve worked all year to produce, it can change the trajectory of that family for generations. Our commitment goes beyond improving a coffee harvest. We are committed to walking alongside families, building relationships and creating opportunities to share Jesus. This is what Mission Lazarus has always been about.
320 Students. One Simple Gift.
Outside the gates of Lazarus Academy, life in Haiti remains incredibly difficult. Families continue to face deep poverty, food insecurity, and ongoing political instability. Yet every morning, parents make tremendous sacrifices to send their children to school because they believe education offers their children the opportunity for a different future.
Beyond the Harvest
Every coffee harvest brings new faces to San Lazaro Coffee.
While our farm provides year-round employment for our permanent team, harvest season creates a need for additional hands. During those busy months, women and men from neighboring communities join us to help bring in the crop. It's one of the ways our farm creates opportunity that extends well beyond our own workforce.
The Future of Haiti Has a Name
This fall, Ludwil Joseph will begin her sophomore year at Abilene Christian University, where she is studying engineering. We are inviting the Mission Lazarus family to help provide the remaining $20,000 needed for her sophomore year.
Lazarus Academy Haiti
Six-year-old Bervens Exavier is the youngest child in a single parent family living in extreme poverty in Haiti. Since enrolling at Lazarus Academy Haiti in 2023, he has found something every child deserves, a safe place where he is loved, welcomed, and given the opportunity to learn. For Bervens, Lazarus Academy Haiti provides more than a classroom. It is a refuge. It is family. It is hope.
A Smile Worth Saving
In a remote village in southern Honduras where access to healthcare is limited, there lives a 7-year-old girl named Britany Sofía Méndez. Her smile, though full of innocence, hid a reality faced by many children in her community. She had never learned how to brush her teeth, how to care for them, or even held a toothbrush or toothpaste in her hands.
2025 Stakeholder Report
Thank you for being part of the Mission Lazarus story over the past 25 years. Because of your faithful partnership, lives are being transformed through Christ-centered education, healthcare, orphan care, economic development, and spiritual outreach across Honduras and Haiti. As we celebrate all God has done, we are also looking ahead toward the next 25 years of ministry and transformation. We invite you to take a few moments to review our 2025 Stakeholder Report and see the impact your generosity and prayers continue to make possible.
A Reflection of Hope
Andrea stood in front of the mirror, hardly recognizing the little girl looking back at her.
Just months earlier, the reflection would have told a very different story.
When Andrea arrived at The Refuge children’s home at Mission Lazarus, she was six years old but carried burdens no child should. She came with her two-year-old brother, both of them weak from severe malnutrition and their bodies showing the effects of long neglect. Andrea had never set foot in a classroom and had never been given the simple, steady care every child needs to grow.
When God Calls You Into Service
For nine years, Candida Rosa Benítez walked the paths of Finca San Lázaro with quiet faithfulness. What may have looked like ordinary work was, in reality, the steady unfolding of something much greater. When Rosa first arrived, seven members of her family depended on her. She carried the weight of providing each day—showing up with perseverance, sacrifice, and deep love. There were challenges, but she remained determined to build a different future for her family.
Where Grace Walks: Faith and Dignity in Fort-Liberté
Grace is easiest to admire from a distance. It is harder—and holier—to recognize when it wears dust on its feet and hunger in its stomach.
In Fort-Liberté, Haiti, I saw despair and dignity standing side by side. Poverty that constricts opportunity. Hunger that lingers longer than it should. Uncertainty that presses on families daily. And yet, in the middle of it all, I witnessed something the world often misses: not mere endurance, but life being lived with intention and faith.
Building Bridges - Building Trust
For months each year in southern Honduras, the river rises. What is often a bone-dry riverbed can become impassable during the rainy season, cutting off entire communities from school, medical care, and even basic supplies. Life, quite literally, is put on hold.
This was the reality for one remote community we serve in Honduras until a group from Churchill Mortgage decided to step in. They didn’t just send support, they showed up!
Restoring Dignity - Building for Eternity
For nearly 18 years, Henry has been waking up before dawn, traveling a long distance each day to serve at Mission Lazarus in Honduras. He doesn’t do it for recognition. He does it because, as he says, he loves his work, and because he knows he is serving God. Henry works with service teams from North America, leading projects that may seem simple at first glance: building latrines in rural communities.
2026 Mission Lazarus Leadership Conference
Mission Lazarus remains committed to investing in national leadership. At this year’s Leadership Conference, one powerful theme echoed through every session, testimony, and moment of prayer: Investing in the One.
More Than Coffee
At San Lázaro Coffee, coffee is a tool for transformation. While we are committed to quality, sustainability, and responsible farming, our deeper purpose is in people.
First Day of School - Lazarus Academy
This week marks the first day of school at Lazarus Academy. With the new school year comes fresh notebooks, new pencils, nervous smiles, and the kind of hope that only comes with a new beginning.
This Valentine’s Day in Haiti
When people talk about Haiti, the headlines are heavy - violence, instability, uncertainty. But on the ground, another story is unfolding. One that is quiet, courageous, and deeply hopeful. In just a few weeks, something extraordinary will happen.