This month, my team has been working with Hope Farm Honduras, an amazing ministry set up in a village just outside of Siguatepeque, Honduras. My team and I have been blessed to be able to serve alongside the Colbath family (the family who runs the ministry) here this month. Every morning we work in the local public elementary school for 2 hours, teaching English and PE (I am having a blast teaching fifth and sixth graders English every morning)! Then we come back to the farm, where the family lives and has their home opened up to eight Honduran kids, to whom they serve as “substitute” parents to (similar to the US foster care system, only more long term. They ARE parents to these kids). We work on the farm for 1-2 hours, gardening, weeding, cutting down trees, picking berries, or just doing whatever we can to help out. Then after lunch, depending on the day, we either help with the tutoring program the family has set up for local public school kids (since they only go to school half a day), we run baseball or soccer camps, help with a self defense class, or lead a youth group for missionary kids here. It has been a packed full month, but I would say my team would probably be in consensus that one of our favorite things has been talking with our hosts and their kids and just hearing stories from the ten years they have been here!
It has been a unique month in that we have gotten a fairly in depth look at the life of a missionary family and missionary kids. It might sound glamorous to some people… and probably the opposite to others… But being invited to be a part of their family for a month has shown us they are a family like any other. Only they have a very good sense of God’s calling on their lives and they are being obedient in living this out. And it’s not always easy!
The story of them moving to Honduras with their four young kids and all the obstacles they encountered is incredible… and even more incredible to imagine that they stayed through all of it! Most people would have left… they would have seen that the mission was not what they were expecting and they would have gone back. But instead, this family felt God’s calling. They saw kids desperately in need of love, and they were obedient in showing hurting kids the love of Christ. They have now been running the children’s home for ten years, and throughout those ten years they have had ups and downs. They have been parents to many children whose own parents couldn’t provide for them. They have shown love to kids who grew up only knowing touch to be associated with hurt. They have introduced the kids to the love that Christ has for them, and they are an amazing example of following the Lord’s calling in their lives.
And yet, with all the good they are doing, there is pain. There are kids who are still hurting, whose hearts have yet to open to the love of the Father. They work with kids in the community who, at the end of the day, go back to homes of abuse. There are older kids, who have chosen to leave the home, and who choose to follow the path of this world rather than the one the Lord has laid out for them.
I find myself seeing all the pain and hurt, and I don’t know if I could do what this family is doing. I don’t know if I could handle the hurt of kids choosing to leave a home of protection and love for the world of hurt and pain.
But then I remember, the Lord has given us this choice. And it hurts Him when any of His precious children turn away from His love and protection.
There are not roses without thorns. I am reading Esperanza Rising this month in Spanish, and this was a quote I came across at the beginning of the book. It is so true. The Lord’s love is evident in the Colbath family and their ministry here in Honduras. He has given them His heart, in hurting for the lost and broken, and He allows them to feel this pain that He feels. However, He is also using them in His plan of restoration, in bringing people in this community closer to Him.
I have been reading Brene Brown’s books on the race, and she consistently will say that in order to experience and feel true joy, we also must allow ourselves to experience the pain. There is a lot of hurt, and a lot of pain, here in this small village in Honduras (and all over the world). And my team and I have felt that this month- I have cried after hearing stories of young girls being abused by their fathers, of boys being locked in closets and thrown against walls. But I have also laughed and smiled and felt true joy as the kids run around playing baseball and as they sing their hearts out “I love Jesus a bunchy bunchy!”
There is pain, and a lot of it, in this place. I have felt more darkness here than I did in many of the other places we have been. But there is a light shining so brightly at one small farm in the back corner of this village. And that light is spreading, each day, as the kids come to the farm for tutoring or sports, as we travel to the schools and are able to openly share the love of Jesus with the kids in public schools here (an awesome opportunity that I’m sad we don’t have in the States)! That light is spreading, and we can already see the fruit in the lives of so many children and families that the Colbath’s are reaching. I would love to come back someday and see the work that God is continuing to do in this place 🙂
