My Journey to Honduras!



Aqua Viva Internacional =Living Water International

First of all Honduras is a beautiful country. 

We arrived late on Saturday morning in the town of San Pedro Sula. Then we had to drive four hours to the city La Ceiba. Our stop in Honduras is Burger King... I think they were trying to ease our way into the country. 

Some our gang at BK

After the four hour drive we got to stay in this beautiful hotel.

The hotel was right on the ocean, I loved standing in the warm water. It had lots of fresh pineapple and we were able to take hot showers there as well. We started and ended our week there which was a very nice treat. 

Our team in front of the church

On Sunday we went to this church. Some of the staff/members of this church work with Living Water so they prayed for us and as we left they all gave us hugs and kisses. It was a great encouragement to start off the week. 

Then after church we had to drive another hour and half to a town called Seda. 

Sunset from the roof of our 2nd hotel 

The town of Seda.

On Monday we drove to the sight. So one expectation I had was that we were going to be working in a village, and that it would be a town like you see in "feed the children" commercials. We were in at a school in the town Descrmbro, Honduras, a agricultural town and some of the people are "middle class". I put it in quotes because I don't want people to think of American middle class. It is middle class for Honduras which means they mostly don't have electricity and maybe running water. By running water I mean they have a tank of water in their back yard. The primary water source for this village of apox. 3,000 is a river that serves as a dishwasher, laundromat & waste removal service for the community. The people of Descombro know that the water is unclean but only half of the community can afford to buy purified water and a lot of the students buy soda.

The school

One day these student practiced the drums from the start to end of the day.

The red doors in the back ground the bathrooms.

The windows of the school were covered in wooden planks. 

Inside a classroom. 

The teachers of the school cooked our meals for us while we were a the school. 

I was on the hygiene team which is more like the teaching team. For each class we did two hygiene, one bible story and then a craft. A hygiene story talked about how to wash their hands properly, how to treat diarrhea, what food to eat properly, how to keep water clean and how to use the pump properly. On the first day we talked about germs and we used glitter to represent germs. When we came into lunch with the drilling team, my friend joked that  "the drilling team was covered in mud and the hygiene team was covered in glitter."

On Tuesday our machine was broken so while some of the Living Water staff went to get new equipment we were able to walk around one of the villages the school serves. The school served up to 5 to 6 local villages but this was the closest village.

While there some house like this one (above)... they would sit right next to the mud hut house (below). I will admit when I arrived in Honduras I thought all the houses were going to be like the one below.

The biggest take away I will take away from the walk through the village was just how generous people were.

We stopped by one house that had a few coconut trees. The guy, who owned the house came out and asked if we want some and would not let us pay for them. Then he began cutting them down and taking his machete to cut them apart so we could drink coconut milk. His wife was there holding this little baby and I was saying how cute he was, in my most broken Spanish. She just came and placed him in my arms so I could hold him. I thought "whoa, she doesn't know who I am but she gave me her son." I love little babies, so this was a great moment for me.

I just loved all the horses.

A shot of the main road in the village

 On Wednesday we did what is called a good news bracelet.

My good news bracelet.  

Black- represents the sin that separates us from God.

Red- represents the blood of Christ that was shed for the sacrifice of our sins.

White- when we accept Christ we become white as snow. 

Blue- represents baptism

Green- represents the new creation God makes us.

Yellow- represents the glory of heaven. 

The day we made the bracelets the kids acted like we were passing out candy when we were giving out the beads. Some kids tricked us to giving more beads to It was great to see how receptive to the story of Christ and what it all meant.

I can't talk much about the drilling project as I mostly stood on the side lines and watched. But next year I would love to be part of the drilling team and get my hands, t-shirt, and pants dirty. 

Here are some pictures from the drilling sight...

At the beginning there was just dirt.

LOTS of hard work being done.

Never leave home with out your duct tape

One guy on our team had broken his foot so every day he had to wrap his foot with tape to make sure his boot did not get wet. Well his tape did not always hold up so I told him I had duct tape, of course it was bright pink, but it worked to protect his foot. I must say it looked quite stylish. It was just lucky I had it because I just threw it into my luggage at the last minute.

I know there were a lot of challenges for the drilling team, with broken machine parts, and the fact they kept hitting rock, rock they couldn't get through. So out of faith on Wednesday they had to send down some pipe and then attempt to pump to see if they could get water. God blessed us and we had water! My friend put it best... "Looking back we see this as a blessing in disguise (sometimes God has to slow us down for our own good)."

This was a great relief to all of us!

On Wednesday we also had our intense moment of being stuck on the other side of the border. To read more about that read my Shove comes to Push post. When we finally left on Wednesday we didn't know at that moment if we were able to come back and finish/dedicate the well. I wasn't so concerned about that but I hated not knowing if I was going to come back and see my students. I was amazed even with the barrier of not speaking Spanish how much I loved them and how much they loved us. Fortunately we were able to come back and finish the work we started.

At the end of that was water. 

Both the drilling and hygiene team at the pump. 

At the dedication of the pump. 

Lots of the girls gathered around me and I tried to put my arm around them all.

I can't fully explain how wonderful it was to be on this trip. I knew I was going down to serve them but I felt so blessed by the people I met there. It was a wonderful and amazing journey. I highly recommend that every one go on a mission trip. The best thing to do is find a cause, country, or another area you are passionate about and see how you can serve there. I can't wait to go back to Honduras and if God wants me, I will go back next year. 

When I left Honduras, I told Emmillo (the boss) "I am not going to say Adiós but Hast Luego (see you later)."     

I know these aren't the best pictures... but I am going to miss the beauty of Honduras. 

 

Letting go of the "but"

{Pic}

Hello Lovely Readers,

A few hours ago I got back from a wonderful retreat and I come back with one BIG take away. I have written many times on this blog that I have wanted to be a wife and mother but that feels very  far away from distant from me. For awhile I walked around a little depressed because I thought if that is the purpose of my life why is it not happening. Then I wondered is this really God's desire? So I began praying "Lord please change my desires if they are not yours" quickly followed by "but I really want to be a wife and mother." Up until this weekend I thought this was a good prayer. I mean I couldn't lie to God and pretend that I didn't want my desires but I knew His desires were more important so I thought this prayer was a good compromise. 

This weekend during one of my prayer times I wrote...

Dear Lord, 

I don't know why I am sulking over the thing I don't have. Lord as much as I want to be a wife and mother I am not there yet, I am not sure when (or if) it will happen. Lord I am fine being single but I feel I am missing something. Lord I know you are he only one that can fill that spot. So Lord I to change me. Search me and find what I need to change. Lord if marriage and motherhood is not your desire please change my desires, not but this time. 

Match my desires to yours. I know day in and day out I know may not work will perfectly, but at the end of the day I want your desires to be mine. So Lord what you desire in my life? 

You know my heart, you know brain, I don't need to list what I want, you know that. So Lord help my wants line up to your wants.

Then this morning I wrote...

I am sick of that feeling where I am missing something. Lord it is just not true. I need to cling to the knowledge you (Lord) have given me all I need. There might be more I want but Lord if those wants line up with your wants then I know they will work out in your timing. But Lord right now I need to cling to the knowledge you are providing everything I need. 

...

Lord you know all my wants and desires, you them all. I have spent countless hours, and 100s of pages tell you what I want. I feel that is selfish because I have never once asked you what do you truly want in my life. I have never asked what you desire. So Lord what do you want in my life? What do you desire?

I then sat quietly and waited for a bit. While, it would have been cool/weird if God spoke in that moment and told me what he wanted; that didn't happen. This will be a continuous on going prayer. However, I think it is the first step in actually getting to the heart of what God desires. When I not only verbally let go of the clause and actually let go of it (in my heart and mind) then God will direct me to where he wants me. So right now I am letting go of the "but". 

let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith,

having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience

and having our bodies washed with pure water. 

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess,

for he who promised is faithful. 

-Hebrews 10:22-23 (NIV)

View from the home of our retreat. 

Video from Honduras

A short video my church put together to show during our service. 

A good overview of the trip.

More will come, I just got my photos back and I am writing a long post with pictures. 

Shove comes to push

Our wonderful leader Emmilio while we were in Honduras speaks English and Spanish but once he messed up on the phase when "push comes to shove" and said when "shove comes to push." That became our catch phrase for the week. 

But when shove comes to push you must depend on God. When I moved to Boston I felt this huge  dependency on God because I knew no one, I didn't have a church and I will still new in my faith. However now it is seven years later I have lots of friends, a wonderful church family to depend on.   This week I was really dependent on God. I know we are dependent on God for waking us up each morning and for giving us all we had but it is way different knowing this and feeling. Don't worry I was never in a life and death situation down there I just had reminders of my dependency on God.

We were dependent on God for the water. One question we were not allowed to ask was "what if there is no water?" We knew there was water; there was some technical survey that had been done before hand; also if you looked up all you saw were trees; and it there wasn't water in that spot Living Water would just find another spot to drill in. But we had some problems with the machinery. Some one on the drilling team will have to explain it to me better. But our machinery broke a few times and we hit rock we couldn't drill through. So we kept praying for water and by Wednesday after noon we had water (pic above). 

Also on Wednesday we did have a pretty intense moment. It could have been scary but God kept us safe! On Wednesday afternoon we were told we were going to have to leave the school early because their was a strike at the border. (Our school was in one district and our hotel in another district so we had to cross a border). They wanted us to cross the border before the strike go worse. So the original plan was Roberto, a driller, was going to drop us off at the border and then we were going to meet Emmilio on the other side. Well the strike grew worse into a riot so we could no longer safely cross the border. At first we thought we could sneak around it but that was no longer an option after awhile. Well at first we heard a practical joke that because of the riot we were going to have to stay the night in the school. But eventually we settled on going back to the hotel we had been staying at on Saturday night. It was pretty nice hotel and we got a nice hot shower and got to eat delicious pineapple. Maybe if we had been able to leave the school earlier we might have gotten stuck in the riot, then it could have been a life and death situation. But God kept us safe. 

So when shove comes to push depend on God.