Last week culminated our Month 2 in Honduras. On Saturday, we took an all day bus ride from Tegucigalpa Honduras to Granada Nicaragua. All the teams spent a few days in Granada together as a squad debriefing the last two months.
Yesterday, two teams (including mine) journeyed four hours north from Granada to this month’s ministry site in Nicaragua. We will be based near Chinandega. We will be working with Vision Nicaragua and we have some pretty cool stuff going on the next three weeks. More on that later. First, I’d like to recap last month. Internet was spotty last month so I wanted to share some snippets of the amazing things we did while in Honduras.
Our ministry in Honduras focused primarily on loving kids and their families from the poor areas of Tegucigalpa. Tegucigalpa is apparently one of the most dangerous cities in the world. (Mom – don't worry; we survived!) We were working with Tony and his wife Nidia this month through their organization called Zion’s Gate. As I’ve mentioned before, their hearts are getting kids off the street. He has about a half dozen boys or so living on his property. He gets sponsorships that pay for them to go to school with the contingency that they stop doing drugs and get off the streets.
I’ve really enjoyed being a part of this ministry. Tony and his wife are so passionate about what they do and in our short time here, we have seen changes in so many of these boys. Tony’s very passionate about a community in the city called Los Pinos. Several of the boys he sponsors comes from this part of town. Los Pinos represents just one of many colonies throughout the city that are characterized by poverty, drugs, murders, etc. He has built relationships here and CHANGE is happening. It's been awesome to be a part of it. LIVES are changing. These kids are being loved, fed and given grace like they've never felt before.
One of the weeks we worked with Pastor Armando. He runs a sports ministry that has hundreds of youth soccer leagues all over the country. The ministry gets the kids off the streets and into a Bible study and organized sports group. We visited a couple of the colonies, infiltrating them with 45 gringos ready to love and spend time with the youth. We sang, played sports, made bracelets, and acted out dramas. The photos below show us doing the Parable of the Lost Sheep drama.
I loved this kid's expression (in the red) as I came up to him during the sheep skit "baaa-ing".
Here we're sorting donated jerseys from the States. These go out to thousands of youth throughout Honduras so that they are able to be a part of a soccer league and get off the streets.
We spent a week visiting the families of some of the boys from Los Pinos that have become involved in the Zion's Gate ministry. We prayed over sick people, including one man who had been stabbed the night before by one of the local gangs.
This was once a school in Los Pinos but was abandoned by the government. It's nothing but a shell at the moment and is where some people hang out and do drugs. Tony and others through the Zion's Gate Ministry would like to see this infrastructure someday built into a 24 hour drop in youth center for the community of Los Pinos.
Lastly, we did a lot of work on the Zion's Gate property. The property used to house the Cotton Club, the most happening bar in the city more than 15 years ago. It is no longer a strip club and now hosts Zion's Gate, the ministry that is building youth up and showing them God's love. We used machetes to clear some of the property, raked, moved rocks, planted garden areas, and painted over the old paint on the buildings, to name just a few of the things we did.
BEFORE
AFTER
(Psalms 34:14 Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
This was one of the Bible verses one of the boy's at the ministry said was his favorite.)
The Zion's Gate property was beautiful, located on the hill right outside of the capitol city. I had the sweet opportunity to run almost every morning at 6:30am and watched the sunset every chance I got.
Internet access is better this month so stay tuned as we continue our stay here in Nicaragua. Some of our work will include working at an orphanage that does their own organic gardening. Yeah; can't wait! Love to you all.
