It didn't take long for me to fall in love with Honduras. This month we are in Tegucigalpa, pretty far from the city, at a home for street boys called Zion's Gate, or La Puerta de Sion.
Zion's Gate
This place is a street kid's dream. There is one very general rule – respect. This covers no drugs (here that means sniffing paint thinner), respect for authority, and respect for others. There's no fence around the property, so people can come and go as they please. But with a family, home, food, clothes, opportunity to go to school and more, coming here is pretty appealing.
There are a couple dozen boys living here with Tony (the founder), his wife, and a handful of mostly American staff. The boys range from 8 to 22 years old, most of them with high aspirations to make something of themselves. All of them came off the street, either doing thinner or trying to survive the extreme poverty of LaKennedy or Los Pinos. They are here for various reasons (maybe food, love, or safety) but it's clear that God's hand of protection has been on all of these boys from the beginning.
Life here
Our place here is right in the thick of it. 7 teams are here tenting on the field of the property, trying the avoid the rocks and bugs. (Today inside my tent I found a fire-engine red worm making a beeline to my pillow. Um, no gracias! Squish.) The 52 of us share one bathroom (ain't nobody got time for gender segregation!), which has 3 toilets that rarely flush, and 2 showers which have never felt the warmth of a slow exhale. Nice big mirror, though!
Not only are we located centrally, but we are very much being included in the ministry that happens 24/7 at Zion's Gate. The boys are all over us all the time, ready for love and games and broken Spanish. What's more, my team has invited the sister of one of the boys here to come live with us for the remainder of our time here. She is 13 years old, loves to paint, and is so precious.
Meals are cooked for us 3 times a day, 7 days a week. Praise God! It is very yummy, very Honduran food. Plantains, goat cheese, rice and beans. The menu contains a lot, a lot of beans. Combine that with the intense heat, lack of incentive to shower and the garbage lined floors of the people to whom we minister, and we are one great smelling group!
Ministry
Our team ministry site is in a colony called LaKennedy. Down in a small valley off a parking lot adjacent a main road is a community of a few dozen people who have little more than the clothes on their backs. There are some shelters that have been pieced together with scrap metal and plywood with curtains for doors and garbage for floors, with trash lining their very existence. The residents include men and women of all ages, teens and small children. Most of the families are broken and scattered around the city.
One thing that is in comparative abundance is the amount of sofas and sofa chairs, on which the men sit and sniff paint thinner morning and afternoon. In the evening the men squeegee car windows to earn enough to eat that night, and buy more thinner.
Our role in this place is to love. We enter with no judgment, no condemnation, just love. We're not meant to fix them, preach at them, or bring them food or new clothes. Just spend time with them and spread the love of Christ. The first day we spent time there we just sat, talked and laughed for 2 hours. Time goes fast when every conversation takes twice as long to get the point across!
Today we went to the nearby soccer field and played street soccer against the natives. Let me tell you, it was a massacre. Regardless, we spent time with some kids there, and squeezed one extra in the car to come home with us.
Overall, it's great to get out of our reoccurring team task of painting things, which we did virtually all month in Guatemala. We have moved from paint fumes to paint thinner fumes! Praise God for progress.
After one full week of ministry, and literally taking it home with us, we are ready for the weekend! Let's go light up the city with some gringa loving! And of course, stretch every wireless router in our designated day-off mall to it's extreme limit.
