The last day of ministry in Honduras is spent visiting 8 homes in an 8 team rotation in Los Pinos. Miss Megan Bland and I pair up with two members of Team Mashach since we will be ministering with them in Guatemala next month and the rest of their team members are too sick to travel outside of Zion's Gate Ministries. We sing worship songs in Spanish, talk, and pray with the house's inhabitants, which are mostly grandmothers, single mothers and daughters.
Let me tell you about Naomi.
Me, Naomi, and Miss Megan in Naomi's house in Los Pinos.
Naomi has 4 children that are often around Zion's Gate: Ronny, Arial, Dania, and Amalia. Tony, who runs Zion's Gate, is in the process of building a house for their family on the property, and after they all move in Naomi will begin working for Tony on a salary.
Arial currently lives with Tony's family already and attends school. Ronny used to live with Tony's family, but currently lives in Los Pinos as he's fallen back into smoking weed and getting high on paint thinner. Dania and Amalia are often on the Zion's Gate property, but Tony's ministry is currently oriented at teenage boys so Dania and Amalia must live with their mom.
Me and Megan with Ginnifer and her mom. Ginnifer is also often at Zion's Gate.
Her house is approximately 10' by 10' inside with a corrugated metal roof. One full size bed, a cupboard, and two stove burners make up the house's furniture. The concrete floor is swept clean, and she turns over a bucket and throws a jacket over it for me to sit on.
While our team sings:
Abre mis ojos, oh Cristo
Abre mis ojos, Senor
Yo quiero verte
Yo quiero verte
she puts the battery into her cell phone and records us singing, while she also prays and cries.
After the songs are over, she opens up about her life. Her husband was an alcoholic who often beat her in front of her children. He tried to kill her multiple times with a machete, and her oldest son Ronny was the one to physically stop him. He once stabbed himself in the stomach in front of Ronny in an attempt to kill himself. Naomi came home one day to her husband drunk and fornicating with a dog and that's when she had had enough with him. Shortly after separating from him, her husband hung himself from the wooden beam of their house and Naomi was the one to find him.
Naomi says she knows God was the one to help her through the aftermath of her husband's suicide. She tells us how eagerly she looks forward moving out of Los Pinos, as the environment is full of drugs, alcohol, gangs, and abuse.
There's something about her that I recognize. The expectancy with which she welcomes our team, the fervency and desperation in which she petitions God, the passionate outpouring of her spirit during worship. The Lord told me to tell her that He sees her and does not pass her over, and the spark in her eyes at those words are familiar.
Luis' Grandmother. Luis is one of the boys that lives at Zion's Gate Ministries.
Hope in Christ. It's really all we have. What else in life is guaranteed? What else is worth living for? Dying for?
Naomi is my sister, and her story is mine as well as yours. Pray for her, Church, for she is dearly beloved by our Daddy.
