Mission Team Has Successful Trip to Honduras

Dark and early on the morning of May 22, 1998, thirteen travelers gathered in the church parking lot. David met us, and we and our family members held hands in a circle as he prayed for our safe travels and successful work. A mere six hours after our plane left Louisville, and after a plane change in Houston, we were coming in for a landing in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The air was thick with haze, part high humidity and part smoke from the fires of the burning at the end of the dry season.

The heat blasted us as soon as we stepped out of the plane. We passed down a long hallway and came to the passport booths and stood behind the yellow line in front of the sign which read "Extranjeros," (strangers). We passed through customs, entered the lobby and searched in vain for someone who looked like they were there to meet us. After only a ten minute wait we saw a large Ford Econoline pull up to the curb, and Gloria Wheeler (she and husband, Tim, are PCUSA mission partners in Honduras) headed for our group of lost-looking norteamericanos. As we stuffed thirteen of us into the four bench seats and felt the gritty air coming in the windows, we realized that we would not be worrying much about sweat or dirt or how we smelled in the next nine days. We headed toward the main highway which would take us to Monte Carmelo, the retreat and training center near Tegucigalpa, where we would spend the next two nights.

Two days later, we were on the road again, this time for nine hours, the last hour and twenty minutes of it on a dirt road which was the main highway through the southwest part of Lempira District, near the border with El Salvador. Our destination was a place called La Granja (the farm), which is an agriculture demonstration project and community education center operated by the Christian Comission for Development (CCD). CCD has projects in 132 communities throughout five of Honduras’ sixteen districts. At La Granja were small dorms for visiting work groups, cold showers, toilets one flushed with a bucket, lots of bugs (including scorpions), clean drinking water, good food, and some of the warmest hospitality we could hope for.

The short version of the rest of the story is that our medical team set up a clinic the the little town of Rodeo (another hour by dirt road), in a small, empty church with no water or electricity. Feed sacks had been nailed to the ceiling joists to make a private area for the exam room. Most of the people in Rodeo had never seen a doctor. People from surrounding communities walked for up to four hours to come to the clinic. The team saw about 250 patients in four days, including all the children from the school in Rodeo, all of whom received anti-parasite medicine. Most of the children did not have shoes.

The rest of us, who were not working support for the medical clinic, helped build latrines, dug ditches, gathered rocks for a wall, and maintained terraces on the hillside. We felt at times like burros, carrying concrete blocks and bags of sand and concrete up a steep hillside.

We shared the fears of being in an isolated place in a strange land and driving on highways where the rules of the road are a little different from what we’re used to, the frustrations of knowing that our efforts and resources were only a drop in a bucket, the joy of working in partnership with people whose energy and laughter is not dimished by their daily struggle to survive, and the faith that God is doing something through us beyond what we can see just now. We had a wonderful time and are already talking of what to do and take when we return to Honduras.

A lasting image of the strength and determination of the Honduran people I’ll share with you as I close. The day we were gathering rocks to make a wall, a group of small boys approached us, eager to help. I was throwing large rocks from the creek bed up onto the bank. A boy with no shoes on, smaller than my son, James, lifted to his shoulder a rock half again as big as his head and staggered off with it, and was soon back for more.

If you missed our group report on June 14, we’ll be giving a Forum program in the fall, and take a Wednesday evening for another presentation. If your group, committee, or class would like one or more of us to come talk to you, please ask.

We thank you for your support in prayer and through the mission committee in making possible what we hope will be an ongoing partnership in mission with CCD and the people of Honduras.

Vaya con Dios,

Honduras Mission Team PlansTrip

Dark and early on Friday morning, May 22, 1998, a thirteen-member team from Second Presbyterian Church will meet at the Louisville airport to begin a journey to Honduras, one of the poorest nations in Latin America.

The team members are: (standing) Trish Birchfield, Ruth Webb, Greg Blomquist, Joan Klint, Sean Blomquist, (sitting) Sarah Drahovzal, Courtney Olson, Abby Gorton, Sam Pendergrast, (not shown) Ruth Berry, Christie Lewis, Ben Lewis, and Ken Klint.

Our journey will first take us to a dormitory at Monte Carmelo, a mission site of the Christian Commission for Development (CCD), near Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capitol. We will be welcomed by Tim and Gloria Wheeler, Presbyterian mission partners who work with CCD in health, education, agriculture and evangelism. The next day, a 260-mile drive, which will take about eight hours on roads winding through the mountains, will take us to the town of Cololaca, in the southwest part of the country, near the border with El Salvador. Cololaca is the site of a CCD demonstration farm, where we will stay during our week of work.

The health professionals (Ruth, Trish and Christie) and one or two others from our group will spend the week providing medical services to the residents of the region around Cololaca and Guarita (about 15 miles southeast of Cololaca). The work will be coordinated by CCD and the government medical clinic in Guarita. We are carrying with us two large duffle bags full of medicines and medical supplies. Much of the medical care will be basic health care for people who do not have clean water to drink, suffer from poor nutrition, and have little access to regular medical services.

The rest of us will "be flexible," and will provide labor for the projects which are most necessary at the time around the CCD farm and on other CCD projects.

Besides the medicine, we are carrying with us $200 in project money for each non-medical team member ($1,600) to support CCD's work. We are aware of how great the needs are and how little we can do in one week of work. Yet, more than that, we are aware that our presence with the people of Cololaca and Guarita and our willingness to be partners in mission with CCD are in the long run more important that the physical work we may accomplish. Through our openness to God's Spirit moving in us in this new adventure, as we give of ourselves, we hope to be changed, to be shaped more and more into the likeness of our Lord, who came to share our situation and give himself to us.

We also hope that this will be the beginning of a partnership which can continue in years to come, the beginning of friendships, the beginning of our finding new ways to give to and to receive from our Honduran neighbors. My goal in leading a trip like this is (at least) three-fold:

1. to provide an opportunity for personal transformation for those of us who make the trip which will then enrich the life and ministry of Second Church,
    
2. to find ways to grow closer to God by knowing the joy of giving and sharing the lives of people whose lives are very different from mine, and



3. finding ways to give which make a real difference for people who suffer. I hope that while we are there we can identify projects we can work on in years to come. For instance, it would be wonderful to be able to provide clean water and waste-water treatment for people whose drinking water, washing machine and toilet often are the same creek.

We return from Honduras on May 31 after touring the Mayan ruins at Copan on Saturday the 30th.

Worship at Second on June 14 will be planned to focus on our experience and share some of our work with the congregation. Please pray for us as we prepare for the trip and as we travel and work, that our lives may bear witness to the strong love of God, who shared our lives and calls us to go into all the world to share that love with all people.

Gracia y paz,

Sam Pendergrast

 
 Some insight into Presbyterian mission activities in Honduras:

A Report of a Mission Trip by Dick Randall of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona. A photo taken on their trip appears here, and more appear in the report.