My team's main ministry in Honduras thus far has been working alongside and teaching kids 6-12 years old as well as some teens that are staying here. Teams Ignite and Zoi have paired up this month with occasional help from team Spittin' Image and others. We're teaching English, playing games, having fun, setting boundaries / enforcing rules, cleaning the grounds of the property, and helping with other odds 'n ends as needed. I've been helping with the 11-12yr old English class as well as they 8yr old English class the last couple of days. It's been going great overall and I feel so blessed to be here!
(Pictures hopefully coming soon! Depends when I get internet again…)
The place that where we are staying used to be "The Cotton Club" aka: the #1 place in the area to go to get anything and everything worldly you could ever want. It used to be a karaoke bar / club full of drugs, alcohol, etc. But now, it is the complete opposite! PTL! Our contact Tony, his friend Nathan, their wives, and some others have completely changed this place around the last few years. Out of all the places in the surrounding communities, I believe this is the absolute perfect place for this ministry to be because of the negative history here. Tony's been told time 'n time again that his ministry in the nearby dangerous city of Los Pinos is pointless and just can't work. Similarly, he's also been told that because of the long history at "The Cotton Club" the positive work here won't be successful. However, all those who have told him that are completely and utterly WRONG! Those people don't realize the amazing power of a loving, graceful, redeeming God! They also haven't taken the time to see how hard Tony, his wife Nadia, and Nathan work to clean this place up and bring some restoration to this lives of the local street kids. The currently have 4 boys and 1 girl that stay here, a couple more that come on the weekends, some others still in Los Pinos that they've been building a relationship with over the last few years, and over 100 others that come by to play outside at any given point in time. A quick summary of Honduras and those that live in Los Pinos is as follows: violence, alcohol, and drugs (particularly huffing paint thinner) runs rampant, 80% of birth certificates written don't have a father listed, it's the poorest country in central America and as of a few weeks ago considered the most dangerous in the world, many have little to no formal education due to the need to work, and political, military, and local corruption is at a ridiculously high rate. With all that said, despite any statistic that people throw at me, this place has my heart like no other place I've been. People have asked me why, but I don't really know how to answer that. It's just something I can't explain. Nathan and his wife put on a concert of worship songs last night that they plan to do every Friday and at one point she said that it seems like destiny for the B-Squad to be the ones that are here. I couldn't agree more! I feel so blessed and so, so lucky to be here! There's no such thing as unreachable and no such thing as too far gone. Like Tony, I refuse to believe that there is. I've always had such a heart for the hurting and such a passion to help those that others have cast to the side. This is the perfect place to do just that! It's exactly what the ministry is all about and they're slogan is "don't miss the opportunity" because yesterday is already in the past and nobody knows what tomorrow will hold. I've learned more Spanish since launching than I thought I would, but there's definitely still times in which it's really frustrating to not be able to communicate with people. Pray for walls to be broken down, communication to increase 10-fold, this ministry to flourish, and the lives of these teens to be positively changed long-term.
