Never have I seen greater poverty than in an area of Tegucigalpa, Honduras called Los Pinos. In Los Pinos I saw a toddler waving around a machete. In Los Pinos you will find houses that have just one room. The contents of one of the one-room houses we visited were a bed, a chair, a TV, and a couple cabinets for clothes and kitchen stuff. Five people live in this particular one room house. Some of nicer houses in Los Pinos have more than one room. The walls of the rooms are made of cardboard, and bed sheets are used as doors.
Los Pinos is located on the side of a very steep mountain. Houses cover this mountainside, and to get to the houses you must climb up dirt paths, praying that you don’t slip and fall.
The ministry we are staying at this month is called Puerta de Sion (Zion’s Door). This ministry is run by a man named Tony and his wife, Nidia. Puerta de Sion is a place for street boys to stay. Tony works to develop relationships with the boys in Los Pinos and other parts of Tegucigalpa. Many of the teenagers in Los Pinos are involved in violence and are addicted to drugs and alcohol. Some of the boys that Tony talks to are ready to be done with their lives of drugs and violence. Tony invites those guys who are sincerely ready for a change to stay with him for a day. Those boys come to Tony’s property (just outside Tegucigalpa) and are fed, given a safe place to hang out and sleep, and are showered with parental love by Tony and Nidia. If a boy is able to refrain from drugs, behave himself well, and show respect for God and others, he is allowed to stay on the property as long as he wishes. Some stay for a day, some for a couple weeks, some for several months, and some for a couple years. The past couple weeks there have been about 11 boys staying in Tony’s house each night.
Puerta de Sion
This month I am teaching English classes to kindergarteners and third graders every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 9:00am until 11:30am. As I make lesson plans for each day in the classrooms, I’m gaining an extreme admiration of teachers. In the afternoons, we rotate doing manual labor on the property, ministering to and serving families in Los Pinos, and visiting the community of people who live in the dump. In the evenings we hang out with the boys.
I am so excited about what Tony is doing! God is using him to CHANGE the LIVES of the boys who come here. He teaches them the importance of working hard and respecting God and others. And he shows them fatherly love that reflects the love of our heavenly Father.
