The story of Cocal Gracias is a story of faith, patience, and dependence on God. Cocal Gracias is an organization committed to sharing the Gospel in Honduras while providing education and meeting community needs. The founders of Cocal Gracias, Joel McGinty (05) and Brian Ruark, are quick to point out that it has been God’s work that has allowed their ministry to be successful.
In 2004, McGinty and Ruark went on a work and witness trip to Honduras with San Diego First Church of the Nazarene. While serving in Puerto Cortes, they learned of the local church’s ministry to the city dump, which was called Cocal Gracias (they later adopted this name for their organization).
“Around 30 families, each with multiple children, were living at the dump and trying to scratch out a living by selling garbage,” Ruark shared.
The church sought to help the people living in Cocal Gracias by teaching them about Jesus, providing hygiene and reading education, and meeting health needs.
They decided they wanted to make a documentary to help the church and the people they were serving.
McGinty and Ruark had both studied media and film production in college – McGinty at PLNU and Ruark at Fullerton. They decided they wanted to make a documentary to help the church and the people they were serving. After raising the necessary funds, they bought plane tickets for themselves and a sound technician. They didn’t speak Spanish, but they decided to trust that God could use their project to support the church’s ministry in Puerto Cortes.
“I think one of the key things that I would say really launched Cocal Gracias was that before we stepped on the plane, we prayed together, and we gave the project to God,” Ruark said. “We said, ‘We want you to do whatever you want to do with this’ not really realizing what we were asking. He literally ran with it. We had just miracle after miracle. God was really moving with us and opening doors.”
“I think one of the key things that I would say really launched Cocal Gracias was that before we stepped on the plane, we prayed together, and we gave the project to God,” Ruark said.
For example, at first, they were told they couldn’t bring their sound equipment on the plane because it wasn’t packaged correctly. However, when they opened their bags and the airline security members saw their Bibles, they decided to help them get their things onboard. Then, when they arrived in Puerto Cortes, there was a translator available for the same two weeks they were shooting the documentary.
While they were filming, they learned of developments in Puerto Cortes that gave their documentary a new direction and purpose. The city had decided to close the Cocal Gracias dump. The church then worked with the city to help move the people living there to a new community in the jungle. Meanwhile, the church leaders shared with McGinty and Ruark their desire to build a trade school. The city had given the Church of the Nazarene a plot of land for that purpose; now they needed funding to start construction.
McGinty and Ruark hoped their documentary could help raise the funds to build the trade school.
“We needed something like $65,000 to build it,” McGinty said. They screened their film at PLNU and the San Diego Film Festival, but only received a few hundred dollars of donations. There was a time frame required for building on the donated land, and they weren’t sure what to do.
Ruark decided to start reading his Bible at Matthew and to keep going until God spoke to him. “I got to Matthew 18:19, which says if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my father in heaven. It spoke to me because at the time we were the only ones still carrying the vision,” he said. He called McGinty and told him that they needed to agree in prayer to ask God for the $12,000 they needed for the first building. McGinty reminded Ruark that they had already been praying, but he agreed to pray in unity for this specific amount. Soon after, they received three checks in their P.O. Box that totaled $12,000.
Those gifts funded the first building of classrooms. Additional fundraising made it possible for the trade school to be fully built in three phases.
During this initial process, Ruark stayed in Honduras and helped coordinate work and witness teams while McGinty finished the documentary in the U.S. Then McGinty moved down for six months to help with the building. They had three classrooms, bathrooms, a storage facility, and a large property. The entire process took about two-and-a-half years, McGinty said.
But God wasn’t done using McGinty and Ruark in Honduras. The district superintendent asked Ruark to stay and be the director of the trade school. At first, he didn’t want to accept because he believed the school should be run by a Honduran. But he said, “If this is you, God, please send me teachers.”
Soon after, teachers for welding and auto mechanics were on board. Ruark had met and married his wife, Rina, in Honduras, and her uncle became a teacher and a driver for the school.
Unfortunately, after only two months, the project seemed at an end. The land the city gave them was far from where people lived and there were no bus routes to it at the time. Ruark sometimes had to walk. Students and teachers, including Rina’s uncle, didn’t like having to make the long journey, and the city school took three of their classrooms. They had to shutter their doors for nine months while they tried to figure out what to do. However, God still had plans for Cocal Gracias.
“God told me, ‘I don’t need a trade school, I need a ministry where I can teach and people can connect with me,’” Ruark said. Cocal Gracias restarted its trade school, called Ministerio La Voz (MLV), in 2009 with Bible study and worship in every class, and the leaders living out their faith in Jesus in front of staff and students. Around that time, there were some bus routes available although they were still not completely reliable.
“Students would come from an hour and a half to two hours to come,” McGinty said. “We subsidized tuition through donations. They paid very little for it. We knew we were giving them quality education and also discipleship. It was something that made it stand out. We started getting results, too.”
Today, Cocal Gracias is a nonprofit and Nazarene Compassionate Ministry. MLV offers courses in computers, English, welding, sewing, circuitry, and auto mechanics. Graduates have started their own businesses or gone on to careers at the port, Dole Fruit Company, City Hall, call centers, cruise ships, mechanic shops, welding shops, construction, and more.
Cocal Gracias also runs a children’s ministry, the Timothy Center, which serves youth ages 5-14, in partnership with the local Nazarene church. The Timothy Center is in nearby Agua Caliente. Children learn about Jesus, receive free tutoring and educational support, and engage in fun social opportunities.
It has always been important to Ruark and McGinty that Cocal Gracias also engage in community service. When they see local needs, the board helps approve special projects like medical brigades, home building and repair, and food distributions.
Cocal Gracias has persevered through challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic during which Ruark was in the United States for two years. He had gone home for his brother’s wedding when the borders were closed. During this time, the trade classes were prohibited, but the MLV staff still worked, providing food for over a 1000 families in the pandemic. They then housed 70 people in their facility after the hurricanes that soon followed.
“We had 160-180 students before COVID,” he said. “We opened again with 35 students, and our advanced students were gone. Now, four years on, our culture is back and better than ever. Our numbers are up to 85 this semester.”
As they celebrate 15 years of ministry, Cocal Gracias is committed to making an even bigger impact in the future. They have bought a “vision property” that is five times as large as their current location in the jungle. It is more centrally located and is at an elevated location out of the flood zone. It will offer easier access and a safer neighborhood for students and their families.
“We would like to combine the ministries into one campus,” Ruark said. “We want to bring families together. There are not many family fun or family-oriented spaces in Honduras like parks and playgrounds [besides] soccer fields.”
The Cocal Gracias team asks its students to work hard, but they also value fun and fellowship. They take opportunities to laugh and celebrate together, especially at each year’s graduation. This year, for the 15th anniversary, they traveled three hours south to a water park. They celebrated God’s provision and leadership in their ministry and his work in the lives of students, staff, and board members alike.
“We had an amazing time!” Ruark said. “We had seven graduates, four with mechanic jobs already, 25 certificates of achievement, many lives touched in the worship time, and four baptisms!”
They know that what comes next is in God’s hands, and they are happy about that.
“That’s our whole story: we are two guys that know nothing except we said yes one time and then that led to another yes and that led to another yes,” Ruark laughed. “We just kept saying yes to Jesus, and He’s taken us for a ride. What I want people to know is that you can make your story. You have a Jesus story. He wants to write it. All you gotta do is say ‘Yes!’”
You can learn more about Cocal Gracias at cocalgracias.org.
