Latin America Missionary Retreat during Semana Santa (Holy Week)

Greetings from sunny Honduras; the same place that has successfully turned me the color of a cooked lobster in only one days time. I received that laying block and mixing concrete on Monday the 23rd, but that experience will have to wait a week as I want to take this time to share a little about the Latin American Missionary Retreat that took place from the 14th to the 19th of this month.
After a day of working on the 14th, we headed up into the mountains to a little tourist town called Ville de Angeles (Valley of Angels). We spent the next five days with the BICWM missionaries of Latin America in a time of refreshment themed, “More Like Jesus – a Lifestyle not a Program”. Joining the full-time missionaries and us were Marshall Poe (Regional Administrator for BICWM), Matt Lewis (a pastor from Wisconsin), and the Whitt's (the Resource family from Matt’s church).
Just as an FYI bit, the missionaries in attendance were:

The Cassel family serving in Mexico
The Main family serving in Columbia also working in Venezuela
The Bert family serving in Honduras
The Thrush family serving in from Nicaragua working with MCC (Mennonite Central Committee)
The Moyer family serving in Columbia

We were very blessed to have the chance to get to know each family and I especially enjoyed making the acquaintance with Mike Cassel (whose 10 year old son taught me a substantial amount on the guitar for only a few days worth of lessons).
We spent each morning in a session lead by Matt Lewis and then headed into a small group discussion which I really enjoyed. We then would spend the afternoon relaxing in our rooms, swimming in the incredibly cold pool (that’s why we only went swimming once), walking about Ville de Angeles, or playing pick up games of Ultimate Frisbee.
In a nutshell, we enjoyed the time with our fellow North Americans. We were able to share funny stories as well as things from our hearts, spend time together in refreshment both spiritual and physically, and each of us got to spend time seeking what the Lord holds next in our lives – or how He simply wants us to get to know Him a little better.

The group before church on Sunday

Nathan Burt, Matt Lewis, and I pouncing on the candy that fell from the piñata used to celebrate Rachel Bowman and Christina Main’s birthdays. I got a lot of candy, but only ate one piece – I promise.


Us at a local park playing one of my favorite sports – Ultimate Frisbee!!

PS - My mom and my sister arrived today (Tuesday) safely and we anticipate experiencing many goods things together over the next eight days. In fact, my mom just edited this blog here in Rachel's house (she's hopes she did a good job ;-)

My week at CEDER.

For information on this, I refer you to www.step0708.blogspot.com. I wrote the blog this week for the team and it was focused on my week of minsitry. Enjoy!

A week with a few kids and a Honduran that has been to IWU!?

This was our first week as a team starting our rotation of ministries. The first place I was at was at “Proyecto Manuelito” (Project Manuelito) which is a project from the church “Amor & Vida” (Love & Life). The tagline is, “Un proyecto de… ‘Amor y Vida’. Para los ninos de Honduras” (A project of... “Love and Life”). For the boys and girls of Honduras. You can find more at: www.proyectomanuelito.org

I also started another role that will continue for the next five ministry weeks (I say ministry weeks because we have a few other things planned in which we will not be working with the various organizations.) On Tuesday’s and Thursday’s I go a little bit outside the city in the mornings to help tutor and work with a young man named Tony. Tony is 20 years old and has been confined to a wheel chair for the last two years after a diving accident broke his neck and he cannot use his legs. His arms have limited motion and while his hands can be moved, he has very little to no control of his fingers. I don’t know the details of the accident but hope to continue to get to know him well enough that he is willing to share with me sometime. Basically, my schedule this week was in conjunction with Karen Wilson as she is helping with Tony as well. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I will be spending my entire day at the organization in our rotation that week. Karen will then come in the afternoon and we will be able to work together with what each place needs. On Tuesday and Thursday I will begin my day with Tony, then after lunch I will join Karen at the worksite.

First, I tell a little about “Proyecto Manuelito”. This program is meant for street kids and is a way to rescue kids while they are still young. The place I was working with here in Tegucigalpa is called a transition house. The kids that are new and fresh off the streets spend one year at the house before leaving for the main facility several hours away. The main facility houses eighteen kids right now and they learn to care for animals and manage a farm while they are there. It’s really neat to hear about and I am hoping to go next Friday with a group. At this house in Tegucigalpa they get plugged in to school, have a person there to help them with their homework, feed them, play with them, and encourage them in a relationship with Christ. This transition house has eight children now: three brothers - ages 9, and twins that are 13, two older boys that are back from the other facility to study, and three babies - ages 2, 2, and 3. It’s amazing to hear the story of the older ones and what they came from when seeing how far along they are now. The brothers are close and love to fight. They need a lot of attention and soak up every minute of it as they have experienced some very traumatic things in life that I need to keep confidential. As for the babies, we had fun walking through the park chasing pigeons and feeding them rice one day – I bet I had just as much fun and we ended up catching and petting one. The only bad thing, a two year old peed on me to make my week complete.

I worked with Jorge (George) who is 21 years old and pretty much runs the life of the kids. He is the one who plays with them, brings in volunteers to work, helps them with homework, eats with them, and sleeps in the same dorm room as them. He also works with the other staff there to get legal custody of the children. He was fun to work with and believe it or not, he knows some people I knew from Indiana Wesleyan University. In fact, he has been to my college. He saw a shirt I was wearing and told me he went there, I figured he was mistaken but he described it and said he went with his dad he spoke for World Gospel Mission and he was definitely there as he brought up several names I recognized! Crazy, huh?

Now a little bit about Tony though I should be able to say something each week. Tony lives with his family just outside of the city in the same place where we worked with the dental brigade (his house is literally two or three doors down from the clinic). Tony has a laptop and works to put all the questions and answers from his home school program in a Word document. Though this takes a while, sometimes a really long while, it is incredibly good therapy for him. While not being able to use fingers, he can move his arm and use his thumb to push the appropriate key. I am currently teaching English and Math while helping him work though an Art book. Karen is teaching Science and working through a Spanish book with him. Tony likes to talk in the downtime about soccer (I have talked to some other people and I guess he was a very, very good player before his accident) and drawing (which he also used to do and I hear still tries today and can do somewhat). I would love to be able to find and give the Joni Erickson Tada story to Tony so that he could be encouraged with that. He has plenty of time to read and it is good practice for him. Given the opportunities in Honduras for people of his level of disability, he is fairly far behind in school and we would love to help him how we can.

That was the week in review, this next week I will be working at C.E.D.E.R (I don’t know what it stands for) which is a home for older people from the street. There is a lot of care in this and most of the people have mental conditions including a Alzheimer’s. Pray that Karen and I can show patience and love to each one while being able to understand the stories they want to share. Also please pray that we can have ideas about what kind of activities to do with each of them.

Short catch up for all of you.

Last week seemed to just float by casually, yet rapidly as they are all beginning to do now. It’s hard to believe that in only three weeks I will be picking up my mother and sister at the airport here in Tegucigalpa for their eight day visit. I am looking forward to being able to show them around this city of 1.2 million and taking them along to the school in which I will be working with that week. But more or less, I’m just looking forward to hugging my mom and bugging my little sis.

As I mentioned, the week passed quickly in a casual manner, but I do have a few things I want to share. My mother sent my host family a calendar of beautiful Swiss pictures and since I have been forgetting it routinely at Rachel’s house (basically, STEP headquarters) and traveling a lot since I received it, I finally gave it to my family on Monday the 25^th of February. It worked out perfectly because Rachel had given our team some Swiss chocolate as a random thank you treat, so I could share that with the calendar for a little Swiss fellowship. What impressed me and just made me so happy was how absolutely delighted they were and in awe of the gorgeous scenery. My host mother has problems with her sight, but Lemuel was able to explain all the pictures one of the many times she looked through them, and though she really couldn’t see it well she was in absolute awe and very expressive about each picture. It was just a lot of fun to be able to share something as simple as a (promotional) calendar and be able to see such joy and excitement. It really touched my heart and I think it was a situation in which you just had to be there and have some background with my family here to really understand.

I thought I was done with classes when I graduated from IWU (Indiana Wesleyan University) but found myself in a chemistry and mathematics class at UNAH (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras) on Tuesday the 26^th with Lemuel. Each member of our group did something separate that day mostly involving visiting school and colleges with host siblings or church friends. I went with Lemuel to just get a glimpse of his daily life. He had three classes that day and I had to miss the first class as he had a test, but it was interesting sitting through the other two classes and writing notes about the differences and similarities I saw between UNAH and IWU, my Alma Mater. To be honest, there really wasn’t a whole lot different. The teachers taught, the students scribbled down notes, and the guys tended to sit at the back. After, I enjoyed a nice lunch with Lemuel then caught a cab to the center of town to meet my group for the evening.

The other days, my group visited and acquainted ourselves with the ministries we will be working with over the rest of our time here. We have five ministries that are each a little different and will be rotating between them individually. This will give each of us experience in different areas of work and give each of us a chance to compare and contrast how different organizations work. This really fulfills our mission here as we would like to have a very broad set of experiences that even while short, teach us a variety of things and confirm personal strengths while exposing weaknesses.

I will do my best to outline each ministry as I work through them and provide appropriate pictures, which may be hard since we are working individually and I lack a camera.
Thanks for your time and effort to keep up with my life. I appreciate the comments and notes I get regularly. It’s nice to know I have such a supportive base back home and I look forward to returning and seeing you all!

A friend that I have been talking with about some options for my future after STEP (if you have any ideas feel free to pass them on) sent me this verse. I really appreciate it and am going to claim it for this stage in my life.

“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.” (Philippians 1:9-11 NIV)