Honduras February 2012 Final Report

I was not able to blog consistently on a daily basis on this trip, so I will provide you a summary. It was an unusual trip in lots of ways but a good trip. Steve Gilstrap, Dan Kerr, and Warren Crawford left Indianapolis for Tegucigalpa on Saturday, Feb. 18. I arrived on the 22^nd.

Steve, Dan, and Warren did lots of good work before I arrived. They visited our adopted village of Guajire to build a house, distribute food and clothes, and to further build relationships with members of the church and the community. They fed people at the dump, and they worked at the school across from the dump, installing a new pump. The school had been without water for many weeks. Getting the water back at the school was a huge event in many ways.

When I arrived on Wednesday, the 22^nd, Marc Tindall picked me up, and we headed straight to the Mayor of Tegucigalpa’s office. There we met with the Mayor’s wife. She is genuinely concerned about the poor people who live in and around her city. She and Marc have worked together on several projects. The main focus of the meeting was to partner in rebuilding the downtown market that was destroyed by fire. The fire destroyed the meager livelihood of 1000s of people.

We spent a couple of days, Thursday and Friday, at the Farm at Zambrano. I really like this place and project. The dream is that it will feed lots of hungry people, employ several people from the dump, and provide a revenue stream to do even more ministry. Our two days there were focused on helping to build a building out of block made from the dirt on the farm. Our job was to move these 20 pound blocks. We moved 1200 of them, handling them 3 times before they got where they needed to be!

Dan and Steve left Saturday to come back home. Warren and I stayed behind to finish some business that we, mostly Warren, had been working on for a year. After leaving our 2 amigos at the airport we went back out to Guajire to visit some of folks from church. I got to see the newly constructed house and meet the grateful family living in it. We visited other church members and did a little scouting for our summer trip.

On Sunday we took off for Santa Rosa de Copan. It turned out to be about a 7-8 hour trip, twice as far as I thought it was going to be. Why did we go there? To see the ambulance that IU Health donated to our work. It is now in use there, helping a medical mission group. They are using it and will soon be using it even more. It was great to see it and meet the wonderful servants who doing great things for the Lord. The ambulance is a useful tool in their hands.

On Monday we returned to Tegucigalpa and then to Santa Anna, where we stayed. On the way back we stopped at some Mayan ruins, which was pretty cool, and we ate the fish you see pictured above. It was caught out of a lake next to where we ate. After we got back to Santa Anna, we started packing up, anticipating our trip home. We flew out Tuesday about midday and made it back to Mitchell around 12:30 a.m.

It was a really good trip! Perhaps one of the most significant things to come out of this trip is how we plan to build houses in the future. We plan to make the move to building block houses, which will take considerably longer, but they are so much stronger. We think it could take 5 days to build a house, and we really like this. Our plan is to partner with the church and the village of Guajire in constructing a couple of houses this summer, perhaps building 2 at the same time.

We like this idea because it will allow us to work side by side with Hondurans. We may not be able to speak to each other fluently, but working side by side is a loving way to communicate about God’s love. We think building block houses will really help us deepen our relationship with the church there.

Thanks for all your prayers! Our summer trip is scheduled for July 8 - 18.  I hope to post more pictures from this trip soon, so come back.