Opal House Mission

To Love our neighbor and to comfort those who mourn through spiritual enrichment and educational advancement, nutritional support as well as medical, surgical and dental treatment.

During a training session for homeless street runaway teens, I met Joel Van Dyke a long term missionary from Guatemala and it was a divine appointment, so strong that I decided to spend my 50th birthday vacation following Joel in the very hard and dark place of Guatemala city. Diane and I had already spent a week there performing children’s surgery in 2004, but were not at all called to return to this dangerous Central American capital city.

After three intense days of gang ministry, slum home visits, homeless children ministry on the streets and even a visit with our recently orphaned sponsored girl at the Guatemala city zoo, we were super burdened with the pain and suffering we had just witnessed. How could such extreme misery, social injustice and darkness exist so close to the US in such a modern age.

We took a respite in Antigua and had one free day left on the trip and a decision was made to visit Lake Atitlan spontaneously to see this rural indigenous lake for the first time. Diane actually read an advertisement in a tourist magazine that screamed “farm for sale”. I really wanted to see the lake and being a city person, had no interest in a rural avocado farm high up on a volcano in small town Mayan rural Guatemala. We visited with a real estate agent who speedily drove 35 minutes out of Panajachel. The farm was locked and 30 minutes later the guardian appeared and let us in.

When we peered into one of the bedrooms of the second house, we both began to have an out of body experience. All of a sudden, without prior thought or desire, we began a “spiritual planning discussion” of how this abandoned farm would be the site of a children ministry, even possibly an orphanage. It was like being “on the other side” of reality, really not making any sense. A veil had been lifted and we could clearly see a vision. We didn’t have half a million dollars, didn’t speak Spanish, had no farm experience, and were entirely comfortable and blessed performing medical missions all over the world-why would I want to leave a super prime career job, recently being named one of Seattle’s Podiatrists of the year… Well Dr William Boegel, Seattle Virginia Mason career Podiatrist no more.

We did have a back to earth, reality check conversation but the Lord kept powerfully and unmistakably confirming the call, over and over. Through a series of miracles, after putting 100% of our life savings (equity, retirement, savings) as a nonrefundable down payment, over 10 months we raised almost $350,000 , the last $80,000 the night we were leaving the country to sign the contract, we purchased the farm and deeded it to the Lord in a non for profit children’s ministry.

The very day of the contract signing, our daily devotional had the exact same scripture as Diane’s original prophetic calling in 1990 – 17 years of waiting for the scripture to be fulfilled-Diane could only call this Mission the “God sized Faith Project”, not created by us, but being worked through our faith, hands and feet.