Team 2 Construction Progress

Construction progress?

Before y'all get on the plane this morning, Team 1 was just wondering how the construction is coming along...

Showtime!

It is now Tuesday night. We have done all the building we will do, we’ve had our last great meal from Rosa, we’ve distributed all the small gifts we brought, we’ve seen the kids for the last time, and we’re almost out of time for group fellowship. I’ve really enjoyed building new friendships and have especially liked being around my old youth minister and basketball coach again. Interacting with Jonathan and John respectively in a setting like this was something I didn’t think I’d ever get to do again. Right now I really just want to enjoy this final time with the team (instead of updating the blog) but I know I’ll want to record some memories while they are still fresh in my mind. I’m going to list items and anyone can ask for more or the story.

• Everyone whistling/humming the song by Rabito from the performance in El Carrizo
• Showtime, Rebar, and Ray Mysterio
• Oie’s simple but great devotions
• Poor Gringo Espanol
• That’s what she said
• Being given the responsibility to drive as one of the youngest on the trip
• Witnessing so many kind acts (a card for Ginger, prayers for Gerardo and Susan, the kids doing nice things for each other, and many other small acts of kindness)
• Playing Honduran vs. gringo futbol
• Jonathan’s microphone
• Greg’s Maxi Bodega voice
• Alexi’s artful assistance to Pastor Juan Manuel tuning Concha’s guitar
• Geoff riding his chopper down the streets of Limon de la Circa
• The brothers Clary
• Jose speaking Inglese to Hondurans and Spanish to us because we made him switch so much
• Sarah receiving eye drops for conjunctivitis that Ben and Jose invented
• The fact that Jose couldn’t tell which two team members were ministers (in a good way)
• Mark slicing block while straddling the highest point of the wall
• Lin being stopped by Alexi after laying block over the doorway
• Jess and her 9 packs of Cheetos

Chase

El Carrizo, Saturday and Sunday

On Saturday night, we visited El Carrizo. This past weekend they had a three night "evangelistic campaign." It was so wonderful to see our old friends. Oie has a great video of a special performance the kids did. An excerpted picture is with this entry. As you may notice, the service was held outside, with about 200 people in attendance, representing 3 different churches.

I saw Erika, a 14 year old who lives a couple of houses away from the church. Marcos (Clary) and I went to her house before the service and met one of her older sisters and her father, Juan Mesa. Erika's family lives in a mud hut, and they raise pigs. Erika has a piglet of her own. Her older sister was wearing a Georgia Bulldogs t-shirt (a big shout out to Hee-Haw and Pastor Juan).

It was wonderful to see Erika again. She is the fifth child of eight children. Her mother died last summer. She was a deeply sad child when I saw her in August but happier Saturday. She had been unable to go to school for a couple of years, but she did complete her sixth grade education. She showed me a picture (during the very long service of about 2.5 hours) that she keeps in her Bible of when she graduated from primary school. Fortunately by the grace of God she started colegio today (Monday)! Colegio is a combination of our middle school and high school. Today, Chuck Nichols and Pastor Antonio Mejia of Iglesia Bautista were there to see 12 kids from El Carrizo start colegio. This is the beginning of their school year.

At the evangelistic campaign on Saturday night, Erika's older sister Karen, who is 18, accepted Jesus Christ (Jesu Cristo) as her Lord and Savior.

Erika has a lot of responsibility for a girl her age (in addition to caring for her piglet). When I am in El Carrizo, very often either her or her sister Rita, who is 16, take care of "Ana", who is about a year old. (Rita could not write her name last February - Erika wrote it for her.) I believe Ana is their niece, but I haven't confirmed, given my limited Spanish. :-) The desire to know more Spanish burns in us when we are here.

Yesterday (Sunday), six of us visited El Carrizo again while five went to the beach near Cedeno (big shout out to Jeremias and a prayer for his Maria). Erika was busy cooking tortillas on a wood fire when I got there, and after she walked around the village with us, she was busy cooking tortillas when we left.

Eduardo, Yuneth proudly showed me a necklace you sent with a big butterfly in the middle. It took a while because of the language barrier for me to understand what the necklace meant to her - she kept saying "Eduardo con Carlito" - which I finally understood to mean Eduardo sent this by Carlito. She said it with a faraway look in her eye, as if she were imagining you in El Carrizo. She loved it Eduardo, and I am sure she loved everything you sent.

My prayer is that Erika will be able to stay in school in spite of her adult responsibilities. I saw Oie, Benjamin, Chuck N., Carlitos, Jose, Carter, and JB surrounded by kids in El Carrizo Sunday, and they know and love many, many children like Erika, as do many of you. It is our Hope and prayer that the children will get an education and improve life for themselves and their families, and they will one day be able to give others Hope in El Carrizo and beyond! As Oie said tonight at our devotional time (attended by Pastor Mejia and his wife Claudia), it is this Hope that gives us the energy to Love, and our Faith is that God's Love through our loving actions makes a difference. La Fe, La Esperanza, El Amor. Faith, Hope, Love.

Gregorio

Photo of the Day Contest - Pastor Juan VS JB

Monday Reflection

It doesn't matter how many mission trips I've been on or how prepared I think I am, travelling with a team of fellow believers to serve in the name of Christ is a profound, moving experience. Couple this with immersion in a different culture whose people who speak an unfamiliar language, and it becomes disorienting and exciting all at once. To say that being here elicits mixed emotions is a dramatic understatement.

There is joy and satisfaction in building a house for someone like Concha, a sweet lady who plays her guitar and sings for us while we work. There is also sadness in not being able to meet all of the needs of her and her grandchildren. There's a disconnect because of the language barrier (I have trouble ordering a cheeseburger without help) yet relationships form that are built on more than words, like when a little girl I've never met before smiles at me and takes my hand. I miss my family, but still I feel a sense of belonging as I live out the particular call I sense from God to be right here, right now.

In the familiarity of my home and job and family, it's relatively easy to avoid the challenge of moving outside of my comfort zone. But it's the disorientation and reorientation that make experiences like this so hard to describe and so wonderful. Like a potter reshaping clay, God can use my disorientation to reorient me more perfectly to him. That is the beautifully difficult reality of experiencing God on mission, and that's why I keep coming back for more.

Carter

Carter is an Angel - from Saturday