It’s official, we are now in El Salvador for month two of ministry; and many of you are probably a little curious as to what exactly we did in Honduras.
As I mentioned in my previous blog, amor y frijoles, we stayed at Zion’s Gate with Tony and Nidia to become apart of their family that consists of about 15 street boys trying to fight against the negative lifestyles that they were born into. Their family is also blessed with four teenage girls that were super awesome. The only catch with them is that they only stay with Tony and Nidia part time, on the weekends; until the dormitory is finished. Once that happens the girls will move in full time!!!
In our first week we spent our ministry time digging up all of the rocks, dirt, and trash from the front of the girls dormitory to protect the foundation. This was such a grueling process that sometimes seemed completely hopeless. But my team did so well; we worked hard, laughed a lot, and even danced some as well. That was our first real task as a team and we really did work together so well!
The following Saturday we spent our afternoon in a gang neighborhood, just hanging out with the kids. It was so much fun, and for the first time on the trip I felt myself truly come alive with the talents that Jesus blessed me with! I had a group of about 8 kids and they were hanging on my every word, which was funny because I don’t really know all that many words in Spanish! It was nuts, I had them acting out all sorts of animal motions and sounds!!
Our second week was spent at, what I like to call, the poop farm. At the poop farm Theresa is trying to build a pond to raise tilapia in. She is going to use the tilapia to feed orphans, people who can’t feed their families, and missionaries. So our time was taken up by digging huge rocks/boulders out of the earth’s surface, rolling them down the hill, and stacking them to build a dam. After the rocks were stacked we had to gather mud, and because of the inevitableness poop too, to cover the rock with. This week was exceptionally challenging because we were running out of rocks. And the deeper that you dug for them the more creepy crawlies we found.
This workweek was followed by a day at the dumps. People actually live here, they use materials that they find to build structures to live in, and a lot of times eat the food that restaurants throw away. Our purpose for being there was to feed the people that live there a nice little spaghetti lunch. While we did do that, the day turned into so much more! We had some pretty awesome conversations with the people, we prayed with a lot of them, and we even had quite the dance party as well.
Our last week in Honduras was a little different because the grandma of many of the boys on the property passed away. So on Monday my team got to go to a ministry that was about two and a half hours away. This ministry was intense!! There were about 8 teenage girls that were victims of some sort of sex crime, whether it be rape, incest, or bribery. These girls got pregnant, and the courts mandated that they stay in this ministry until the age of 21. While we were there we were able to help the young mothers out by taking care of their babies for them while they were in school. It was an awesome day!
The last two days that we were in Honduras we actually spent camping on the beach with the kids from the property; which was awesome because some of them had never been to the beach before, in their lives. They had so much fun, which made out time there so incredibly worth it. It was kind of gross though, because they caught about 50, huge crabs and took them back to the property with us.
Honduras was a great first month, full of a lot of different ministries, and more rocks than I could ever know what to do with! I had a great time, and I learned a lot about my squad, my team, and myself!
