New Hope Outreach began as a web site with the purpose of teaching the Bible, building life skills, providing teaching materials and offering lay counseling to people with broken hearts. The web site began with the domain name of Titus2Women.com on July 10, 2001. It began with two Christian women writers who desired to obey God's call to women as outlined in Titus 2:3-5 to teach other Christian women life skills and the Bible. The web site began adding women writers and, due to the volume of mail asking for help, the web site added e-counseling in the fall of 2001. In the spring of 2002 we became aware that many men were also reading the web site and a decision was made to transition Titus 2 Women.com to Titus2MenAndWoman.org. Many women and men writers gathered their experiences of life and their writing skills together desiring to teach the Bible and counsel others. The new web site opened with a special emphasis on child abuse and help for survivors of child abuse.
As of April 6, 2003 the web site had over 33 writers, 3500 pages of text and had over 12,000 visits a month.
For the year 2006 the web site had 88,280 unique visitors with 249,867 visits and 808,989 pages opened.
In February of 2007 our daily devotion program hit the 400 mark for readers each day.
The Plum Creek Counseling Center, Titus 2 Women's Outreach, opened in November of 2002 in Dyer, Indiana with Sharon Merhalski as director. This center was opened as a women's counseling and teaching center. In January of 2004, with the addition of staff and a change of location this center became the New HOPE Women's Outreach in Highland, Indiana.
Soon future plans began for other counseling centers. Our plans grew to open several across the United States in the next three to five years. Included in this began our plans to secure a retreat facility where we can conduct various kinds of retreats for Biblical teaching and recovery purposes: troubled marriages, abuse recovery, substance addiction, etc. In 2005 we opened a counseling center in Tinley Park, IL and in 2007 we will open one in Burton, MI and W. Lafayette, IN
In August of 2002 New Hope Outreach (as Titus 2) held the first women's conference in Dyer, Indiana. As of August 14, 2003 there have been more than 100 conferences, seminars and workshops held both nationally and internationally.
In the spring of 2002 we extended ourselves outside of the web site and 'adopted' two missionary families working with abused and abandoned children in Romania.
In November of 2002 we completed "Operation Romanian Orphans". At the request of our missionaries we sent a missions team to Brasov, Romania. This trip was to fill a request made to the missionaries by Romanian State Social workers and child welfare workers to teach them about child abuse so they could better deal with the overwhelming problem in Romania. The missionaries did not feel they were educated in this area and asked New Hope Outreach to come and fill this request to teach. For two weeks our Mission Team had seminars and taught day and night. They also handed out printed material about abuse and abuse recovery to the State workers as well as Romanian pastors and missionaries in 6 churches.
We have been asked, and are making future plans, to return to Romania. We have also received an invitation to come to Kenya, which is now in the planning stage for fall of 2007. Our future plans include at least one missions trip per year.
We are duplicating cassette and video tapes from conference sessions and Bible studies that continue to be well received. It is our intention to expand our inventory of available tapes as time, funds and staff are available. We have also begun to make available printed booklets of our teaching material.
The future plans of New Hope Outreach, Inc. include gaining the ability to print and distribute our material for teaching and recovery purposes.
We have been able to produce and provide a limited amount of material to fill requests by missionaries in Romania, Spain, Lithuania, jail ministries in Wisconsin, Arkansas, New Jersey and Texas, as well as books and Bible Studies we have made available at conferences. These projects indicate that a printing outreach should be a vital and integral part of our program. Target date for this outreach is the summer of 2008.