Our Story

We are Paul and Elaine Grater.  Our journey to this point is a clear picture of Romans 8:28, ”We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  Our first mission trip began in 2015 to Honduras.  We had been married for 26 years with adult children and wanted to use our skills in construction to serve in the mission field.  From that point we were drawn back to the Honduran mission field every year, helping to build churches and impact a local orphanage we had built a relationship with.  We developed a love for the people and the culture, and with that developed a call from the Lord to do more.  

The first tug of our heart came from a little girl in the orphanage whose face we saw repeatedly during mission trips and visits to Home of Refuge orphanage.  We began an adoption process to make her part of our family in 2018, and 3 ½ years later we were able to bring her home, our daughter at last.  By the time the adoption was complete, our daughter was 15 years old.  Ereminia was a happy, comical, eager, normal teen girl.  She loved to talk on the phone, watch movies, interact with other kids and from the outside looking in, one would never know the struggles she had.  It did not take long to realize she had many challenges ahead of her and we would need to help her overcome these challenges.

At fifteen, Ereminia weighed 95 pounds, was unable to read, even in her native language, unable to write, and math was limited to what she could count on her fingers even though she had been in public school till Covid closed them in 2020.  Ereminia’s knowledge of world geography was limited to only three countries, Honduras, United States and China.  She did not know any other countries existed.  She did not know of the Solar System, her own physical internal body parts, she could not count money and had no understanding of careers or opportunities this world had to offer.  Ereminia’s desire to learn and read was strong, yet she would cry because she was unable to read even the simplest of stories.   It was a revelation of how many children are left behind and forgotten for so much of our world, without adequate education, support, or life skills to prepare them for a promising life.

It took years of support for Ereminia to overcome these challenges, and she is now our success story, but she is not an anomaly.  How many more children, and young adults are like Ereminia?  The answer is more than you can imagine.  With this on our heart, we opened Carpenters Grace Ministries with the mission of providing resources to under privileged, at-risk youth, and young adults while also exposing them to Christ’s love for them.  Every part of our story was orchestrated and woven together by the Lord to bring us to this point, but our story is not over, it is just beginning.

Psalms 82:3-4 “Defend the weak and the fatherless, uphold the cause of the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”