All I knew about Honduras before getting there was that it had a reputation for being dangerous, so when our hosts came to pick us up accompanied by an armed guard, I felt pretty good.
Spending approximately ten minutes in Tegucigalpa where our bus arrived, we wasted no time heading up to Zambrano. Here, we met the six people who would be our family for the month: our hosts Val and Ed Schubert, their daughter Cheynece, Chey’s homeschool teacher Miranda, and two other ministry volunteers: Destiny and Stephany.
We were going to be working in two locations this month, both under the umbrella of Casa de Luz, in both Tegucigalpa and Zambrano. Both branches of the ministry focus on children, with the former being a primary school and the latter being a community program that operated every Friday.
I can’t say enough good things about Casa de Luz. It could take an entire series of blog posts just to talk about what they do, but it’s an incredible ministry. Their main focus is education and early intervention, as well as involving families in their children’s school experience. At the time we were there, The Schuberts were hoping to be able to start a daily program in Zambrano like they had in Tegucigalpa. Today, they’re doing exactly that.
On the days we went to Tegucigalpa, we would split up into the different classrooms to assist the teachers. Most of the time we just observed and did what they asked, but there was one time where a student -Josue- decided that he was going to get the most out of having a native English-speaker in the room. During their free time, he took the seat across from me, grabbed a box of crayons, and held up one. “¿Como se dice?” (“How do you say…?”). For the next few minutes Josue held up different colors, I would say the color in English, and he would repeat it. We went through this for a while until he was satisfied. This kid is going places.
In Zambrano, the program ran a little differently. The kids went to different activities on Fridays, including Bible, English, and crafts. We’d stay in one room throughout the day and help teach one activity. The Zambrano campus also hosts a women’s bible study and various other events. The Friday program has since been expanded to a full daily program.
At both locations, my team added a new skill to our World Race resume: puppetry. There was a set of professional, high-quality puppets as well as a collection of scripts and the audio CD’s that went with them (so we didn’t have to read the lines in Spanish). It was honestly a lot more fun than I expected it to be, although not without some amusing mishaps. The first time we performed, the chair that I was sitting in collapsed, causing my character to disappear mid-line. The last time we performed in Zambrano, we discovered that I had left the audio CD in Tegucigalpa. As the old saying goes, the show must go on, so I put my theatre experience to good use and provided voices for all three characters in Spanish (including a cantankerous librarian – that one was especially entertaining).
Outside of ministry, our time was mostly spent at home in Zambrano. My team lived in the missions team house with Stephany (who had done the World Race herself a few years ago) and we were only a gate away from Ed and Val’s house. We all had “family dinner” together once a week, and came over other evenings to play board games. Towards the end of our month, Val sat down with my team and talked to us about re-entry and how to do it well. Now that I’ve been home for a while, I can definitely say that this was some of the most helpful advice I received when it came to returning home.
Children’s ministry isn’t always my favorite thing, but I loved being part of such a great ministry. The work that the Schuberts and company are doing in both urban Tegucigalpa and rural Zambrano is too amazing to put into words.
