We have actually ended up staying together as a whole group for everything that we have done so far (this week is a week off of school in Honduras so we have been able to shift ministries around accordingly).
Last Friday we went into the town and found ourselves a street corner, dressed in our bright colours and armed with signs on neon card. With statements like “Jesus loves you”, “Can we pray for you?”, “Honk if you loves Jesus” (cheesy I know) and so on, all in Spanish of course, and with a whole lot of sweets with bible verses attached to them. We found a spot and Marian and I, equipped with our guitars, joined by a couple of others, started up singing the three songs that we have so far learned in Spanish – ‘How Great is our God’, ‘Open the Eyes of my Heart Lord’ and ‘Blessed be Your Name’. We were there for about an hour and a half and had a lot of fun, with a lot of joy shared with all of those who drove past, taking prayer requests and sharing what we could.
Saturday took us to a colony somewhere on the other side of Tegucigalpa where a large group of young people were playing in a football league. Whilst that happened we were able to play with the kids, share face paint and give out lollypops. A group of our girls were able to play a game against a group of the girls from the colony, but Americans aren’t known for their proficiency at the universal sport (sorry guys, it’s true) so the locals won. After it all the kids gathered and we were able to play our Spanish songs, and Dusty shared his testimony quite openly and frankly from his story and a call was given by the pastor for the kids to respond, with fifty kids doing so.
Sunday saw us visiting a church, including leading our songs again, joined by one of the Passport boys who added a drum beat for us.
Yesterday was a trip into Tegucigalpa that took us to visit a 24-hour Alcoholics Anonymous rehabilitation centre for Alcoholics and Drug Addicts. One group of us went in in the morning with the other going in in the afternoon. Our group in the morning shared a drama, we performed the Lifehouse Everything skit and two of our girls shared testimonies, including one of whom’s sister had a many-year struggle with drugs who, despite failure at several rehabilitation centres, eventually found freedom in Christ and who’s life was completely turned around. Two of the boys from here also shared their testimonies which was inspiring for us to hear, and of course all of this was great for the rehab patients to hear and they responded very positively. The other group did similar things in the afternoon.
When we weren’t in the centre we took to the streets of the park nearby, just outside of the Catholic cathedral and, following our good old Spanish songs (we will be learning others Spanish songs this week) we handed out a number of tracts and spoke and prayed with people who were interested. We had an interesting time with one man who spoke with us (I say spoke…) – it was obvious immediately that he was deaf and so Dusty came over since he can speak some ASL. Interestingly enough it seems that the sign language is the same because, despite the fact that Dusty was pronouncing the English words, and this man, Manjuel, was mouthing the Spanish words, they were able to have a relatively good conversation. We had Bea, one of our Spanish speaking girls, nearby to help us through any difficulties where words had to be finger spelt to get the message across. We were able to pray with him in general and we prayed specifically for his hearing and we hope to see him again if possible.
