Day 1 – June 9th - Yellow Dogs and American Food

Praise God for a great flight over. Check-in was great in Birmingham and getting into Tegucigalpa was smooth. We got off the plane, grabbed our luggage, went through the easiest customs check ever, and went outside to find three yellow school buses waiting to take us to our hotel and a cargo truck waiting to take our luggage to the same place.

The first things I see when I walk out side: Burger King, Church’s Chicken, Baskin Robbins, Pizza Hut, Little Caesar’s and Dunkin Donuts! How awesome is that?!?!?! For a lover of food like me, this was a gift from God.

We got on the bus, yep “the Big Yellow Dog”. I felt like I should be toting a big black garbage bag of rolled up butcher paper with “Tame the Tigers” on it. It definitely sent me back a few years to high school. However, not one bus I had ever ridden around on through the streets of “Metro-Jackson” ever had “rims” like these nor a booming stereo system and tinted windows. It was a culture shock…even for this Jacktown girl.

The driver was crazy…not mentally…he just drove crazy. And he was not afraid to test his horn either. In fact, not one person on the streets was. And we found out quickly that stop signs and traffic lights were really just suggestions. (Throughout the week we were shocked when we actually stopped at a red light and we only saw one wreck the whole seven days we were there.)

It was surprising how much English I saw too. Sherwin Williams. Wait! There’s a Marriott?!?!?! In Honduras?!?! I was expecting much worse. Then I look off into the distance and the Lord says to me, “Is this more along the lines of what you were expecting?” Tons of shack houses right on top of each other. And when I say “right on top of each other”, I mean it. It looks like a bunch of pieces of metal and plywood and just stuff piled up. This is what people lived in.

After many twists and turns in the streets of Tegucigalpa, we reached our hotel, but backing up this alleyway at least a quarter of a mile, nonetheless. After being given room assignments, Emily and I hear that we are in a suite with all six of the other girls who are in our group. We had no idea that we would all be together in the same room. Now, when I hear the word “suite”, I’m thinking, “Ok, Hampton Inn type suite. Two full/queen beds, a TV, and a mini fridge.” Much better than the hostel I though we would be staying in. When we reach room 406, we open the wooden double doors to what looks to us like a presidential suite. This is awesome! God just keeps surprising me! This is the Plaza compared to most places I stay in on trips within the U.S. There were two bedrooms with two beds, a cot, and a balcony each, two bathrooms with oversized tubs, a kitchen and a super-sized mini fridge.



We settle in, finding a plethora of bottled water, Coca-Cola Classic and Coca-Cola Light (Diet Coke for us Americans). Emily and I check the view from our balcony – if you look straight ahead, it’s pretty neat. A nice cityscape with mountains in the background. Look straight down and you find a trash heap. Nice… but I digress. Off the kitchen area balcony, there’s a view of the pool area. There’s a cage down there with four exotic birds in it. One says, “Hola!”



Moving onward…our room becomes the place to be. We had an “open door policy”, as we kept both doors open so that everyone who walked by would be jealous. Just kidding. It did become the place that we would meet every night for debriefing and devotion.

The luggage comes next followed by dinner. Pizza…Dominos! After eating pizza, our group of 12 was off to our mission – Communion Baptist Church. This was the church we would be supporting and empowering throughout the week. The other group of 100 would be supporting Luz y Verdad Church.

We had our own bus. It was a small touristy type bus, complete with air conditioning. Needless to say, the other group was quite jealous considering they had the “yellow dogs” all week.

As we got on our bus, we met Carrie, who would be our leader for the trip. She is from Tennessee and is engaged to Eric who just joined the Global Missions Staff at Brookhills. They are getting married in September. She’s been on five or six trips before so she came to help out. We also met Archie, who happens to be from Venezuela. He’s our videographer for the week and will be putting together our video of the trip. He’s actually here training Hondurans on the video equipment as well.


(Me with Carrie and Archie)

So onto Communion we go, but Billy, our Global Missions Pastor, informed us that we weren’t supposed to get pizza because the wonderful people at Communion had prepared dinner for us. So we arrive to dinner numero dos – barbeque chicken with onions, bread, and the most amazing homemade mashed potatoes I have ever put in my mouth. We also met the pastor of Communion, Cesar Peña.

Next we learned we would be going to a church service outdoors. They wanted two people to give their testimonies, through translators, and then they wanted three of us girls who were in the choir to sing one of our Spanish songs. So Emily and Jason agreed to give their testimonies and Candace, Annette, and I decided to sing.

We drove up to the sight where the church service would be held – a fútbol (soccer) stadium. The church gets permission to use it every week and the people go around the neighborhood and invite people to come. So at first, we all go sit down on the concrete “bleachers”, which is a series of steps, and we just begin to survey the scene.

Soon enough we were swarmed by Honduran children, all under the age of nine, and speaking faster than our ears can hear and our brains can translate. Through a series of rough questions, and asking and listening, over and over, I connected with a boy named Marcos; he had a homemade kite and was very much into showing it off. Then he asked me something I’ll never forget, “¿Es usted un cristiana?” After not knowing many of the questions he asked before, this one came clearly through. I gladly answered, “Christiana? Christian? Me? ¡Sí! ¡Sí! ¿Y tu?” (I asked him if he was a Christian) And he answered with the biggest smile, “¡Sí! ¡Es verdad! ¡Sí! (Yes! It’s true! Yes!)”



Members of the church began to lead the crowd in singing some very cool Spanish praise songs. We all followed along as best we could. Next, Emily and Jason gave their testimony and soon after it began to rain. Needless to say, the rain cut short the service and the three girls didn’t get to sing.

When things had wrapped up, we said our goodbyes with the boys that had been sitting with us and invited them to church in the morning. I couldn’t get little Marcos out of my head and the question he asked me. My expectation was that I was there to make sure he was a Christian and the tables had quickly turned to him making sure that I was one.

At that point, God smacked me. Well, more like a love pat. God said, “See Katie…you had expectations of what you were going to experience. I’m doing something that you don’t even know about. Just look around this week. You’ll begin to see it!”

I suddenly realized how wrong I was. We are definitely here to spread the gospel and make God’s glory known, but we are going to do it the way He wants it to be done. No expectations. Just obedience.

May prayer for tomorrow:

God wake me up in the moring speaking Spanish fluently. Ha! Ok, maybe not. But seriously, Lord help me not to create expectations for this trip. Help me to put aside all stereotypes and all the things I think I know, in order for you to fill me with what you want me to know. I ask that your will be done through is, whether it brings me out of my comfort zone or not. And I’ll rest in the knowledge and hope that your grace is sufficient to give me the wisdom and an open heart/mind/eyes/ears to know when and where you are working and how to respond.

I do want to share the day's devotion with you as I close out each post. They were so applicable to what we were doing each day and can be so applicable to our everyday lives.

Day 1 – Matthew 6:9-13 – Read through these verses. Note what the pronouns are. They are all plural, right? There’s not a me or an I in that prayer anywhere is there? This is how we should pray – universally. The Lord’s Prayer is for everyone and about everyone. When Jesus prayed, he prayed for us, all people, in every nation. When we pray, we should not only pray and ask forgiveness for ourselves. We should pray for his blessings on everyone, even those we do not know.

Day 2 – June 10th - When It Rains It Pours

We wake up to have breakfast at the hotel. Scrambled eggs, watermelon, pineapple, fresh-squeezed orange juice. Good stuff! After breakfast, around 9 a.m., we head off to Communion for church service.

Here's the devotion for Day 2.

The Rubberband – We didn’t really have a scripture reference for this. We just used the rubberband as an illustration for how we needed to be during the week. We talked about that what determined the value of a rubberband was how much it could hold without breaking. However, when a rubberband does break, it is able to be tied back together or tied together with other rubberbands to become stronger. Our prayer was that God would stretch us throughout the week to a point of breaking so that we could bond with each other and become stronger individually and as a group.

God stretched us all immensely throughout the week, from giving our testimony for the first time, praying out loud for the first time, preaching the Gospel to a congregation for the first time, overcoming illness, dealing with stress, or allowing others to see who we really are.

My prayer is that we will want to be stretched by God everyday of our lives, to the point of breaking, so that we can tie ourselves back to God and become stronger day by day.

Anyway, we sat in on the service and the girls that didn’t get to sing last night got to sing this morning during the service. Also two group members, Phyllis and Melody shared their testimony. When Pastor Cesar started the sermon, several of us left and went to help with children’s church. Funny thing. We were told that we all would be told what bible story to act out when we got down there but when we got down there, they were ready for us and we hadn’t been told what to do. So we congregated in the hall and decided to act out the Zaccheus story. I, always wanting to be the star of course, volunteered to be Zaccheus. The kids loved it. About half, maybe over half, of the kids were Christians. It was amazing! I think there were probably over 50 kids there.





After the service, Cesar sat us down and told us about the church, what they’ve done, what they are doing, and what they are going to be doing. He went through they way they apply the disciple-making process to their church. They have planted 12 churches in nine years. The mission of the church is Matthew 28:19-20 and just about the whole book of Acts. Their disciple-making process is this: Teach. Discipline. Build.

Communion serves as a central church, a training site, if you will. People come to Communion Baptist first, they receive Chirst and are discipled. Then they are sent out to start a church. Pastor Cesar calls the church a mission until another church is created from that one.

They’ve planted a school in the middle of the church for the sole purpose of producing disciples of Christ. At one point we asking him how they got the computers that are in the classroom; who donated them and how were the students going to learn how to use them? Pastor Cesar quickly responded with a short answer to the question (the government pays for it) but then he also went on about how there are 10 Christians intentionally put in the class to produce other Christians. The class may start out with 10 Christians but their hope is that by the end of the class, everyone in the class will be followers. How awesome?!?!?! The mission of spreading the glory of Christ is central in everything they do. Oh, that that would be the desire of our hearts in the U.S.

Next, we had lunch. Communion cooked for us again as I’m supposing they are doing for the whole week. We had burgers and fries, and for dessert, watermelon and the best pineapple I have ever had.

After lunch, we went back to the hotel to get our supplies together for the week. We were under the assumption that kids would be at the church tonight and the service would be really an opportunity for is to play with them, so we packed a good but of candy, crayons, bibles, and coloring books. However, we misunderstood once again. The service was just a regular service.

We headed back to the church around 3 p.m., to prepare for our afternoon mission. We were going to be split up into three teams, each with a translator and a member of the church. We were to go to the surrounding neighborhoods with small tracts of John and prayer request sheets and talk to the people and ask what prayer needs they had. It was somewhat like Sunday visitation.

Once again, we were put on the spot and told we would be the ones sharing our testimonies and sharing the word with the people through the translator. However, my group was split in two and Candace and I were sent off with a female member of the church who spoke no English and Carrie, who spoke some Spanish but not a lot. I think this is how the Lord wanted it though because this lady was fierce. She was amazing! She talked and shared the word until she got what she wanted, or better yet, what God wanted.

The first house we visited was the house of a woman named Gladys, probably in her upper sixties, with I think I counted probably 10 or 12 other people living with her ranging in age from 5 to 30, including two pregnant women. They had just finished watching Honduras play Mexico in soccer. The game was being played in New Jersey, ironically, and Honduras won two goals to one, so it was a happy day for everyone. Mexico is Honduras’ archrival so it was pretty much like the Super Bowl for them.
After our group leader read a little bit from John, she laid the Gospel on thick. I don’t know what she was saying but it had to be the Lord talking because it was obviously what Gladys needed to hear. Gladys began to share how her husband was severely ill and had been in the hospital and she was needing medicine for her eye sight as well. Our leader prayed for Gladys and her family and Gladys began to cry. I think she was feeling a lot of weight and as soon as we started praying, it seemed to lighten up a bit.

The next house we went to was up a bigger hill. I’m pretty sure we hiked up the side of a mountain. Not to mention, it was pouring down rain. The owners of the house were a mother (Alba), grandmother, and two daughters, probably 11 years old and 7 or 8 years old. Out leader began to read and Alba was kind of skeptic or stand-offish. Throughout sharing the word and talking to her she mentioned that they didn’t go to church because her mother (the grandmother) was too old and ill to make the trek down the mountain to church. Our leader began speaking to her about accepting Christ and we began to pray. Candace prayed in English first and them our leader began to pray in Spanish. The rain got harder. The power in the home (which was surprising that there was even power because it was just a one-room shack) flickered. I knew God was keeping the rain going to keep us there so He could continue to work on Alba’s heart.

The rain just got harder and harder and our leader just decided to continue reading from the John tract. We asked Alba to read and then we even had her 11-year-old daughter read. When she finished reading, Alba said that that was the first time that her daughter had read from the Bible. When she said that, Candace and I decided that we had to get this little girl one of the New Testaments that our group had brought. However, we didn’t have any with us, but we knew that our group leader Tom had packed some in his bag. The problem was, though, that our group had been separated and everyone was in a different location.

Candace and I even read from the Spanish version of John. After we finished reading for the second time, our leader prayed for Alba to continue to consider accepting Christ. I couldn’t believe my eyes! This woman’s heart opened up right before our eyes! I could tell when we walked in that she was ready to get us out. However, God made a way to keep us there in order for him to use us to open her heart to him. Not too long after we prayer, the other half of our group came and found us to tell us that our bus was coming to get us since it was raining. We immediately found Woodie (Tom) would had a backpack full of Spanish New Testaments and grabbed one from him to give to the 11-year-old girl. She could not have been more excited. And neither could I. She immediately sat down and started reading it. We said our goodbyes, and headed out into the rain.

We made our way to a bus stop – me with our leader, this 70-something-year-old woman in heels using me for support down the hill. I’m in my sneaks, praying that the traction on the bottom of my shoes is enough to keep me from slipping on the wet rocks that made up this 60°-angled hill.



It was time for us to go back to the church for dinner and the evening service. We had meatloaf and baked potatoes. I think the folks at the church are trying to make us feel at home.

When it came time for the service, we all headed upstairs to the sanctuary. It was a little hard to hear because of the rain, but we made it work. More singing in Spanish; I think I’m getting pretty good at it.

Annette and Haley, two more members of our group, shared their testimonies which was really cool because they both have stories of healing. Annette has Chrone’s disease and was in and out of the hospital for about a year and a half. She spoke about the power of prayer and what a huge part it played in helping her not to be as sick as she was before.



Haley is a recent survivor of breast cancer. She just turned 25 and had a double mastectomy about two months ago. She found out in the midst of preparing for this trip that she had cancer, had numerous surgeries, and found out about a month and a half ago that she was completely cancer free. This was a huge step for Haley because it was the first time that she had shared her testimony ever in her life.



Melody, who gave her testimony this morning, offered to five the “sermon” for tonight. It was amazing! She spoke complete truth. She talked about how each person has a story and then went into the Roman Road and the Plan of Salvation. For having found out that she would be doing this four hours earlier, she did an amazing job.

Day 3 – June 11th - Nuevo Sacremento

Today we spent the whole day in a small village/town outside of Tegucigalpa called Nuevo Sacremento. We left the hotel around 8:30 a.m. and got on our private bus. We worked all day doing a carnival as well as other things at the mission that Communion has planted in that community. For the first half of the day we did face-painting and nail painting, balloon animals, and played games/soccer/football outside. We had one group of people who hadn’t been designated a specific task for the day, so they went out into the community to hand out New Testaments and pray for people. Tom, our leader, was able to meet a man whose six-year-old son was sick with polio. They also met a boy whose mother had died just five days before.

For the second half of the day, we had planned for a group to stay and do crafts with the kids and another group to go out and pray and hand out New Testaments, but the weather disagreed with us. It rained and rained and rained so we all ended up staying and doing crafts, then concluded the day with one of our infamous acted-out Bible stories. We did the story of the Good Samaritan and guess who got to be beaten and left on the side of the road? Si! Me!

On our way to the mission, we had no idea where we were going. On our way out of the capital, we stopped by the church that the other group from Brookhills is working with, Luz y Verdad, to get some of the games. We also picked up two 12-year-old girls who were members at Communion. Ariana and Elisa were their names and they would be serving as our translators for the day. 12-year olds serving as our translators. How awesome is that?!?! We also had two women from Communion join us who helped us out.

One of them, Roxalina (Roxie, for short), was definitely helpful while we were painting faces because I came to rely on her very much to tell me what these kids were asking me to paint. The drive to the mission was almost an hour and the roads along the way were great until we got about 15 minutes away from the mission. Our bus became a rollercoaster car and began to weave from left to right, trying to dodge potholes. Soon we passed a prison. It was just a bunch of tin buildings surrounded by a fence with barbed wire on top.

Anyway, Emily and I painted faces for the first half of the day. We though we had the best job because it started out pretty slow plus we were inside and not out in the sun. But, oh, did that change quickly. Soon enough, we were swarmed. Emily kept making fun of me because the boys all come to be to get their faces painted. I swore it was probably because I was wearing a hat but who knows.



Time flew by. I learned very many new Spanish words, seeing as I was will to paint anything the kids asked me. Emily’s customers were just asking for butterflies and flowers. The boys were more creative. Here is were my friend Roxi came in handy. Every other customer I had to have her translate. Here are a few of the words I learned:
- mariposa (butterfly)
- flor (flower)
- bandera (flag, Honduras and the U.S. were most popular)
- águila (eagle)
- león (lion)
- corazón (heart)
- pluma (feather)
- flecha (arrow)
- espada (sword)
- reloj (watch)

Meanwhile, I made a new friend. His name is Julio (which as he told me translates to English as July and I told him that was the month I was born). Julio is 10 and he’s a Christian. He loves people and absolutely loves to help. I think he became a little attached to our group and our group definitely wanted to take him home. The girls and I were plotting how we could fit him into a suitcase. Ha! He even colored a page out of the coloring books that we gave them and signed it “Love (except with a heart) Julio”. He was the most amazing little boy. He definitely cared about others before himself. His friend Luiz split his toe and he came to find someone who could fix it. Thankfully, Melody is a doctor so she cleaned the cut up and bandaged it. And Julio was right there next to his friend the whole time.





We also latched onto a little girl who had a severe case of epilepsy. She was definitely out of it because of the medicine that she was on but we also think that she may have had some brain damage as well. At the end of the day, after everyone had left, the sweet little girl was still standing around with us. Someone in the group came up with the idea to take the Mardi Gras beads that we had brought with us to pass out, and everyone would take a strand and put it around her neck. Jason mentioned later that he sort of saw it as God pouring out his grace on her. God was saying, “This is my child too. She deserves it as much as everyone else does. Keep it coming. Never let it stop.” A few of us prayed over her, for healing and just a presence of knowing God is there and Roxie translated so that she could understand what we were saying.



Before leaving the church, we met the pastor and his family and prayed for him and the mission. We also presented them with some supplies that we brought specifically for the mission.

Around 4 p.m., we hopped on the bus, reluctantly, and started on the 45 minute drive back to Communion.

Here is our devotion for Day 3.

The Spoon – Proverbs 29:18 – This scripture is written so differently in many of the different translations/versions of the Bible.

In the NIV it says: “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but blessed is he who keeps the law.”

The Message puts it like this: “If people can't see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves; but when they attend to what he reveals, they are most blessed.”

The New Living says it differently: “When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild. But whoever obeys the law is joyful.”

Whichever way you chose to read it, what it basically comes down to is changing our perspective on our place in God’s work. If we constantly look inward, thinking about ourselves, and what God’s plan for our life is, we totally miss what God is doing in the first place. It’s not about what God’s plan for our life is; it’s about where we fit into that plan and if we choose to be a part of it.

We used a spoon as our illustration and it made perfect sense.

Okay…walk into the kitchen, open the silverware drawer, and get spoon out. Seriously, do it. Okay, hold the spoon up to your face with the top of the spoon toward you. What do you see? You see yourself, upside down and all distorted-looking, right?

Okay, now turn it over to where the bottom of the spoon is facing towards you. You see yourself again, right? But how does it look? Better? Still a little distorted but you are seeing the image right side up. Correct?

This is how we should view our life. If we turn the perspective to what is going on around us, if we look for where God is working and what he is doing instead of worrying about what we constantly worry about, we are going to see God working and he’s going to show us where we fit in.

The funny thing about going on mission trips is that we end up seeing God working more on the trip that we do in our everyday lives. But the thing is, we are looking for Him. We are completely removed from everything that we are distracted by every day (TV, radio, work, etc.), so we aren’t preoccupied and are able to see more clearly what God is doing.

Our challenge as disciples of Christ is to seek him out daily. Ask him to make you aware of where you fit into his plan and then obey.

Day 4 – June 12th - Aqua Blanca

Here is the devotion for Day 4.

The Seed – Mark 4:26 – This is a special one. It’s one we weren’t expecting. This was our devotion for the second village that we went to. It talked about how the farmer scattered seeds on the ground – God was planting seed through us in these people’s lives all week. Carrie told us that some of the people we encounter this week will not have heard the gospel before, some it will be their second, third, fourth, fifth time to hear it. But we needed to remember that God’s word will not return void and our work is not in vain.

I really think we needed to hear this and let it soak in because at lunch we started talking about how we didn’t feel like this village was as responsive as the first one we went to. We didn’t feel the connection like we did the first day.

However, God gave us a love tap when we got back from handing out food in the community during the second part of our day. When we approached the mission building, we were swarmed with kids who had been waiting for us to get back. For the rest of the time that we were there, we just played games with the kids. And it wasn’t us initiating the games. The kids would start patty cake with the girls in the group, or a Latin version of “Ring Around The Rosie”, or the boys just hanging out with the guys. The table had turned. The kids were pouring their lives and their culture into us just as we had done the first half of the day.

Today we went to the mission at Aqua Blanca (White Water). It’s a community outside of the capital that was devastated by Hurricane Mitch. The houses there had been built by the Red Cross and were incredibly better-looking than the ones we’d seen the day before. We didn’t know this until Jesse (pronounced like it looks or in Spanish, Ee-sigh-ee), the Pastor’s son, told us the story of the community. Jesse has been working with the mission in Aqua Blanca for a while now. He comes two days a week to train disciples and to empower the church.



Jesse took us to place that looked out over the village and told us how it was rebuilt and how God is working in the community. We were shocked at how good the houses looked. It really looked like all the cookie-cutter neighborhood houses that you see in the U.S. where the houses all look alike. However, Jesse said that although the houses look great on the outside, there is nothing in the inside. The houses are all the people have. He said there are about 40,000 people in the community, which we figured out equaled to about 8-10 people a house.

After Jesse finished telling us what all the church was going in the community, we headed down to where the mission was. We started setting up and the pretty much did the same thing we did yesterday morning. Face and nail painting and coloring inside and balloon animals and soccer/football/games outside.

I actually got a chance to go outside and play football a little today. It was good to be able to get outside for once, and be able to interact with the kids a little too. There is only so much interaction you can have painting faces. Although while inside, I was surprised by the number of mothers who wanted their faces painted and especially their nails painted. It was like they were getting a manicure. We were able to give them something that they’ve never had before and that was very neat to see.

Playing outside with the kids was very fun. We had a football throwing game set up and a soccer game set up. Both were made of big tarps that had a hole in them and had a soccer player or a football player painted on them. The kids would try to throw the football into the player’s hands or kick the soccer ball into the hole of the tarp.

I was very surprised by how many girls enjoyed the football game. They would throw the ball and then get back in line and throw it again. I spent a good half-hour with three girls there just throwing the ball, fetching it out of the hole, and throwing it again.

When the morning session wound down, we all gathered outside to play a game called “Gato y Raton” or “Cat and Mouse”. Everyone stood in a big circle, holding hands, and one person would be the cat and another, the mouse. The object of the game was to keep the cat from getting the mouse by either keeping the rat inside the circle and not letting it out or keeping the rat outside the circle and not letting it in. I do have to say, the game was pretty intense. Emily even hip-checked a kid but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with protecting the two-year-old she was holding.


Once we were finished playing the game, the kids went home and we ate lunch. We all seemed to mention that we didn’t feel like we were connecting with any of these kids like we had the day before. But then we started talking about our devotion that we had had that morning and how it was about planting a seed. Maybe weren’t here to make strong connections with the kids. Maybe we were here to plant a seed that would be watered and nurtured in days to come.

While eating lunch, we were informed that what we would be doing for the second half of the day was taking food and water to the poorest families in the village. So once we finished eating, we started filling bags with food and then prayed over it.

By this time the kids had returned. We separated into three groups and then members of the mission and kids joined us, as well as a translator. We all grabbed bags of food and jugs of water – I think each group had 10 of each, maybe more. I can’t remember the exact number. It was a lot. A heavy load.

One group took the bus out to houses that were along to road that led out of the village. The other two groups went to houses within the village.

As we started walking, one by one, kids would come up to us and take a bag from us and carry it. As we were struggling with it, they would take it and carry it like it was nothing.

As the afternoon progressed, we stopped at different houses that the ladies who were with us thought were the poorest families. A church member would hand them the food and water and then one of our group would pray for the food and the family receiving it, while a translator translated the prayer into Spanish. Most of people we prayed for were mothers or wives asking us to pray for their alcoholic husbands or sons or family members that were in the U.S. trying to make a living. It really was neat to just be able to go up to a person and just ask if there was something we could pray for them about, instead of pounding the gospel down their throat right off the bat. (By the way, we did stick a bible in each of the sacks.)

At one house we went to, the lady asked if she could pray for us. That was cool. She called us missionaries, which took most of us by surprise because we never looked at ourselves that way. She thanked God for bringing us there because she doesn’t have any more friends. All of her friends had died and she was so happy to be able to meet brothers and sister of the faith.

When we got back to the mission, we had to wait on the group that took the bus to come back so we got to interact with the kids for a while longer. However, this time, instead of us sharing things from our culture like football, balloon animals, and face painting, they shared things with us from their culture, like little patty-cake games, a sort of ring-around-the-rosey and more. It really was fun to see them pouring themselves into us like we had just a few hours before. You could tell that they were just happy to have new people to play with.

When the bus got back with the other group, all the kids swarmed the bus. As each person got off the bus, they had at least two kids just on them. They were so excited to see them back.

Soon we gave the members of the mission the supplies that we had brought to leave with them and prayed with the members since the pastor couldn’t be there. Then we packed up and got on the bus. It really was sad to see them go, but we got on the bus headed out, and began to share stories.

One story that sticks out in my mind came from the group that took the bus. They visited this woman’s house who had obviously injured her leg and the wound was just festering and getting infected quickly. As the group walked up to her, a lady yelled at the woman to cover her leg because these people didn’t need to see her leg like that – all bleeding and with flies around it. However, Melody, who is a physician back her in Birmingham, told the lady that it was okay and that she would like to take a look at it. Melody quickly determined that the wound needed to be treated with antibiotics, something we didn’t have with us that day. We told some people at the church when we got back and we want to make sure that she got them.

As we got back the Communion, there was another fantastic American meal waiting for us. We, of course, gobbled it down, said our thanks, and headed back to the hotel to debrief.

Day 5 – June 13th - Santa Rosa

The Salt of the Earth – Matthew 5:13 – Did you know there are four main functions of salt – to add flavor, to preserve (be the enemy of decay), as an antiseptic (ridding the wound of all the bad stuff), and to stimulate thirst. There are two parts to this.

One – if we are the salt of the earth, shouldn’t we be these things in the hands of God? Shouldn’t we radiate the love of Christ and the glory of God all the time? Shouldn’t we so demonstrate the life of Christ that men thirst for what we have? Shouldn’t we stand in opposition to evil everyday?

Two – we need to penetrate the world. Salt has no function if it does not leave its container. We have to come in contact with those who are decaying, those who are lost in a world of darkness. For so long, we have confined ourselves to our fancy salt shakers, our “church buildings” that we’ve lost all sense of what “the church” really is. The church is not a building that we go to for worship. WE ARE THE CHURCH! We don’t need a building. Let’s start turning our focus on what the church can do to impact the surrounding communities and the world, instead of worrying about Sunday School attendance and membership numbers. Luke tells us in Acts that when the church went out into the community and focused on the needs of other people, when the church participated in fellowship and prayer, “the Lord added to their number daily those who believed.”

Some of you may be asking the question, “But how can just one week make a difference?” One week, without follow-up, doesn’t help. That is why, in everything we did, we did it with locals from the church we were empowering. We, as a group, did not go over there to do some great work. We went over there to continue what God has already begun, and many more groups have and will come behind us every week following.

It’s more than a mission trip. It’s making disciples of all nations. And we don’t have to travel thousands of miles to do it. It’s all about pouring your life into someone, and allowing them to do the same in return. That’s how Jesus did it. And it started with just twelve.

Today we got up and went to our last village – Santa Rosa. This village was far up in the mountains and the view was amazing.

We did the same thing we did the two days before but everything seemed to run much smoother – maybe because we had done it twice before or maybe for some other reasons.

As we started setting up, there was a group of ladies sweeping off the basketball court (which was our main space to use for the sports games). It had rained quite a bit the night before and early that morning so there was water just puddled in the middle. They were sweeping the water to one side of the court where there was this one piece of pipe sticking out the side of the concrete to drain. Emily and I decided to go grab a broom from some of the women and help out. Soon enough, the water was cleared out and the court was as dry as it would get.

Everything went great. The kids loved the face painting and crafts and balloon animals and I soon saw myself swarmed by kids (boys, mind you) who wanted flags of all kinds (Honduras, Italy, America, France, etc.) painted on their arms as well as a soccer ball. This village definitely had soccer fever!

(Notice the division of the table. Boys on one side, girls on the other.)
Soon it was lunchtime and then we were ready to head out into the village again. This time we carried Spanish New Testaments that we had brought with us. We split up into three groups again and headed out. This time we had a 12-year-old as our translator and let me tell you, she is amazing. If anyone thinks that a girl that young can’t make a difference in the world, this girl will prove you wrong.

Our group began taking turns speaking and praying at each house we came to. At the first few houses, we just handed the bible to the person who answered the door, told them we were with the mission, and asked if there was anything we could pray for them about. The farther down the road we got, the more desperate the prayer needs were and the more hospitable the people became. We began to be invited in to sit and talk and pray. We hugged, kissed babies (I know that sounds a little presidential candidate-ish, but really), and held hands.

At one house we came to there was a man sitting out on his porch. He really looked like he had just finished crying. We handed him a bible and prayed with him, and the group started to walk off. Jason, the only guy in the group, stayed behind. I think the Lord was telling him he needed to stay back and pray and talk with the guy one on one. It was amazing to see.

Once we got up the hill and made our way down the next street, Jason and I spotted a landing a ways up the hill. We thought it would be cool to go up there and pray over the whole village. So here goes our group…climbing the side of this landing amidst the screams of people saying, “Watch out for skunks! They’re really bad in this area!” Thanks for the heads-up guys.

As we reached the top, it was a view unlike I had ever seen before. You could see the whole village…and more. Each one of us prayed and then we headed back down. We hit a few more houses and then decided that we should probably get on back.


When we got back to the mission, everyone was waiting on us. Apparently, we lost track of time and our “B” type personality group leader, Carrie (we love her anyway) was a little worried that we were a bit off schedule. We soon handed over the supplies to the pastor of the mission, prayed for him and the mission, took a picture, and headed out.

On our way out, we took an elderly woman back to her house (which ended up being one of the houses that my group prayed at) and then headed out – all the way, kids chasing the bus. It was like something you see in a movie. Strangely enough, as we headed down the hill, a group of horses ran by. It seemed like they were racing the bus down the hill.


We got back to the church for our daily meal, prayed with Pastor Peña and also prayed over Ariana (the 12-year-old stud translator) and headed out.

Day 6 – June 14th - Tour Day, Big Jesus and Wrap Up

Today was our touring day. We first stopped at the Catholic Church to look around there. After that we were taken to a seminary in the area where Brookhills had set up a souvenir shop. They had bought a bunch of Honduras stuff and set up a little store there.

After we finished shopping, we went to “Gringo Alley” which is just a street where all the American Restaurants are located. Just to give you a little background on what “Gringo” means. It’s a somewhat derogatory term for American, much like “Chinc” or “Cracker” are here in America. We ended up going to Pizza Hut for lunch.

From there we went to another place to shop. This was a more upscale type place with lots of pottery, ceramics, and pewter. Needless to say, the girls spent more money here than the boys did.

Soon it started to rain but this wasn’t going to spoil our trip up the big mountain to see “Big Jesus”. The sky got darker and darker and the rain got harder and harder but we were determined to get up that mountain and see the big guy. When we reached the top, we found out that we weren’t going to be able to get into the park because of the lightning so we had to sit there and wait for the rain to settle and then start back down.

As we got back down to the city, we passed people sweeping water out of their doors. That is how bad it was raining. The city began to flood in some parts. It was the worst rain they had had all season I think.

We got back to the hotel and got ready for our last dinner and our group meeting with the other group. We were the first to arrive at the restaurant for our dinner and it was incredible. We had so much food left over, we packed it all into to-go boxes and took it with us. We gave a few to our bus driver and then gave the rest to the maids at the hotel.

At the group meeting, we all met at Luz y Verdad, which is the church that the big group had been working with all week. Billy went over the global-disciple making model that we had learned in a sermon series earlier in the year. He explained how he knew we had seen it before but now that we had been putting it to practice all week, that we would see it in a different way. We broke down the “Great Commission” and began to pinpoint the truth in the verses and then pinpoint what Satan tries to turn around into lies.

After we finished that, we split up into our two groups and watched our videos and then shared what was on our hearts within our groups. I’m not sure what the other group did but I know my group did a lot of crying. Ha. We prayed over Carrie and Archie before we left. Both of them are getting married soon so we prayed for that – Carrie in September and Archie in December.

Once we wrapped things up there, we went back to the hotel to pack and get a few hours of sleep before we had to be up and ready to leave a 4 a.m.

Day 7 – June 15th - Back To The Grind

Up at 4 a.m. and on our way back to America. We had to stop in Miami to go through customs which again went smoothly and we were back in Birmingham in no time. We were all sad to see each other go, although we would see everyone in two days at church.

We all just wondered what it would be like getting back to the routine of everyday life back here in Birmingham. It's going to be a tough but I think we all have new perspective on life now.