Matt and Marianne Spangler and their 5 children are Christian missionaries to Honduras. They are members of Freedom Life Christian Center in Christiana, PA and the founders of Legacy of Hope Foundation.
Matt and Marianne first felt the call to Honduras after a family mission trip there in 2008. In 2011, they founded Legacy of Hope, and sold their belongings and moved to La Ceiba, Honduras in December of that year. During that first year they partnered with Ministerios Vision Cristiana, a small church-planting network based near the capital of Tegucigalpa, to start a church and accompanying feeding program in the small village of Cacao.
The church plant and feeding program began in September of 2012 with only 35 children. Today the church serves about 150 people each week through various services and discipleship programs for all ages. The ongoing feeding program serves close to 100 children twice per week and is promoting positive change in Cacao. In the past year, they have also incorporated micro-enterprise opportunities for women in the church.
In March of 2013, the Spangler family moved to Santa Rosa de Copan and began the framework to begin ministering to children in crisis. Today, Legacy of Hope Foundation provides foster and emergency care to abandoned and at-risk children in the ti-state Occidental region of Honduras. House of Hope, their children’s foster home and transition home for abandoned and at-risk infants and young children, is directed by Matt and Marianne and operated with the aid of their 7 Honduran employees. It is the only resource of its kind in Western Honduras.
Their mission is to help children heal and eventually achieve permanency in a safe and healthy family setting. They firmly believe that these goals can only be accomplished by establishing education and foster programs, rooted in the local church. They are continually working at the local and national level to develop standards and resources to educate and train prospective foster families and others working in the area of foster care. Their vision for the future is to continue to grow as an organic network of foster families, raised up through local churches.
