So I have fallen in love with another country… Honduras is absolutely beautiful and I have loved the past ten days here so far! The air is different here than in Guatemala. It is more crisp and peaceful. The first couple days, we were able to have a lot of down time and I was able to think, pray, and relax on my teammate’s hammock. As I sat there, I took in the view of the city below while having a panoramic view of mountains. Something about Honduras has a different feel to it. The people are different, the culture is different, and the energy is different. Its hard to put into words, but I feel a sense of home here- something I did not fully experience in Guatemala.
This month we are staying at Zion’s Gate, a ministry in the capital, Tegucigalpa. Zion’s Gate focuses mainly on reaching out to street boys and girls by loving them and showing them that there is more to life than a life on the streets. Most of them have been addicted to paint thinner or other drugs, but they thrive at Zion’s Gate and love living here. They also partner with the schools nearby, the hospitals, Gracie’s Ministry (The Heart of Christ), and send people into places like La Kennedy that are heavy in poverty and drug use. I have not experienced ZG’s ministry yet because I spent my first week here at Gracie’s, a few hours out of the capital. The next few weeks we will be focusing our ministry back at ZG so I will write about that next time!
When our squad first met Gracie, we were all in awe by her strength. Gracie and her husband Lee run a ministry that take in girls who have been victims of rape and incest who are pregnant and are sent there by the court. She also takes in children who have been abandoned and who have special needs. What she says is that she takes the kids no body wants. Which is hard to hear and comprehend because the children that live there are incredible. The mothers who now live there with their children who were sent there are beautiful and intelligent women. Three toddler boys also live there. They are all two, turning three. They are the Three Musketeers and travel in a little pack around the compound and they cause havoc the way normal toddlers do. They are so cute and I loved playing with them all week. One of the boys was born with a tumor the size of this own body and his mother abandoned him at the hospital after birth. With fundraising and a lot of prayer, he was able to have a surgery to get the tumor removed and is doing great. The other two boys had mothers living at the compound with them, but one day their mothers went out to church together and never came back. Gracie and others believe that they were convinced to leave with men. It was so fun to hang out with the toddlers all week. I have a ton of pictures on my Facebook of them!
There are also three girls who live there with cerebral palsy. I didn’t get to spend much time caring for them because at the end of the week, I got really sick. But the day I did get to spend with them, my job was to feed a bottle to one of the girls and it was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Every drop of the bottle made her choke or was spit up. It was so hard to see her try so hard to swallow every time she ate anything and how much effort it took to breathe. It brought tears to my eyes watching her struggle with something that I don’t even need to think about. The other girls who got to spend more time with the CP girls helped out with feeding and physical therapy.
Our week consisted of being assigned to toddlers, babies, CP girls, dishes/cleaning, cooking, or construction. The boys worked on construction all week building a second story to the compound for more rooms and bathrooms. They had to wake up at 5 A.M. every morning to start work at 6. While we were there, we laid bricks and the rooms are coming along nicely. A second team from our squad are going tomorrow and starting where we left off. It was also great to sleep in beds for a week because we are camping again this month at ZG.
While we were there, we got to experience first hand what the ministry does. In the middle of the night mid-week, seven children came for the night that are involved in a parental negligence case. Another night, a mother and child came that are involved in physical abuse. The guests were able to get clean clothes, a full belly of food, baths, and a place to rest. They stay as long as they need or are able to. It was amazing to see the ministry work and see how safe a place it is for mothers and children to come to. Overall my week there was both exhausting and amazing. I learned a ton about the “darker side of ministry” and see first hand how important ministries like Gracie’s are for this country and for this world. This month was my first experience with the feeling of brokenness for the world around me. It's an intense feeling- one that does not come very often. But it makes me proud to be apart of such beautiful and hard ministry. God needs more people in this world that are out there being a voice for the people who need it most.
As for the rest of the month, we are back at Zion’s Gate! Will post a new blog in a few weeks when I have internet again!
