Out here in the rugged hills of Armenia, there’s a place where faith meets hard work — and lives are being changed because of it. This is the Mercy Projects Rancho California, a patch of land that’s turning hope into something you can see, touch, and feel. What started as a simple vision has grown into a thriving outreach where faith and farming come together. The team here isn’t just raising animals and crops; they’re raising up the next generation of leaders for Armenia. You’ll meet the men and women who’ve worked hard to build a safe haven for this part of the world, building a community that reflects God’s love in real, practical ways. It’s gritty. It’s beautiful. And it’s proof that when people of faith step out and serve, incredible things can happen. Come along with me as we visit the Mercy Projects Ranch — a place where hope grows deep roots in the Armenian soil. Learn more or support the work: https://www.mercyprojects.org/

“If a system pays people not to work, don’t be shocked when it produces more people who don’t work.”

The Real Cost of “Free”

Let’s do the math.

The U.S. spends trillions of dollars every year on welfare and entitlement programs—federal, state, and local combined. When you divide that by the number of taxpayers, you’re effectively paying about $3,500 a month to fund these systems.

That’s your money. Every month. Whether you like it or not.

And if only 1% of that is wasted through fraud—and I assure you it’s much more—that’s a billion dollars a month going straight into the ether.

The Government Accountability Office estimates 11% of welfare spending is lost to fraud, waste, and abuse. Eleven percent. That’s not a rounding error; that’s a hemorrhage.

“Fraud isn’t a bug in the system—it’s the business model for people who know how to game it.”

What I Found on the Ground

This isn’t theory for me. I’ve been to the villages in Guatemala and seen what happens when America subsidizes dependency.

One mountain town I visited looked like a ghost village. The mayor told me it used to hold around 2,000 residents, but now maybe 200 remain—mostly women and children. Almost all the men had gone to the United States.

And they’re not just sending postcards home. They’re sending money.

Those “remittances” are being used to build 3,000-square-foot mansions in a town where people once lived in bamboo huts with dirt floors. American tax dollars—channeled through welfare checks and under-the-table cash work—are being wired home and turned into marble staircases and brass fixtures.

Across Latin America, that story repeats. Over $200 billion a year leaves the U.S. in remittances. Not all of it is ill-gotten, but enough is that it’s propping up entire foreign economies—Mexico, India, even China—with money that originated from your tax bill.

When God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26), He was establishing something radical: every human life has intrinsic worth, purpose, and responsibility. We’re not accidents of evolution — we’re image-bearers of God.

That’s why Christians defend life from conception to natural death. But the Imago Dei doesn’t just speak to abortion or euthanasia. It also speaks to the way we treat human dignity in everyday life — including how we deal with poverty, work, and welfare.

The Cruelty of “Compassion”

For decades, the U.S. government has built an entire industry around dependency. SNAP, EBT, and countless welfare programs were supposed to be safety nets, not hammocks. But when “temporary help” becomes a permanent lifestyle, it robs people of the very thing that makes them human: agency.

Work was never a punishment — it was God’s design. Adam wasn’t lounging in Eden collecting fruit stamps. He was tending a garden, naming animals, exercising dominion. Work is how human beings imitate their Creator.

That’s why Paul said in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” Not as a threat, but as a correction. A culture that subsidizes idleness is not compassionate — it’s complicit in spiritual decay.

Mercy Isn’t Maintenance