I just returned home from a week and a half trip to prep this year’s projects, and boy do we have a couple exciting new places to go, along with some of the still exciting regions we have been going to for a while.
One new place is El Carbon in the Pech region of Olancho, the wild west of Honduras. The Pech are an indigenous tribe that has been marginalized ever since the Spanish arrived 500 years ago. Many still speak their own language, but it is rapidly being lost because of transportation and technology. 
We will be taking a LAP (Limited Access Project) group into the area and stay in the homes of families from the church. This is a new area of ministry for the North Coast of Honduras, and El Carbon is the center of the Pech culture. They already have small groups started in other Pech villages farther back into the mountains where the people are even more isolated. Pray for God to continue to work through Francisco and Jorge, the two pastors evangelizing the Pech.
The other new and interesting place I visited was Tablones, in Intibuca, Honduras, near the border with El Salvador. It is located about 4 hours from the nearest paved road on the Honduras side, so I decided to go from there to El Salvador, to see if it would be faster to go that way. Sure enough, after about two hours we ran into another paved road. So we asked around how far to the Salvadoran boarder. Everyone just looked at us funny, because we were already there. We crossed over the border and didn’t even know it, because there wasn’t an immigration office or even a welcome sign. Along the way we had a big tire blowout, but God kept the old spare strong for the rest of the trip. We also got to stop by the old Radio Vencedor, the voice of the guerillas during the Salvadoran Civil War, which has a fascinating museum and even better tour guide who was shot in the head during the war.
I thank God that he is working through many national ministers to take the gospel to places that are very inconvenient for the rest of the world. Please pray for the groups that will be going to these and other places this summer, that they will be witnesses for Christ, and that they will see the Hondurans’ witness of Christ back to them. Pray also for Lesly as she is getting some major dental work on her front 3 teeth over the next few days.
Mike
Our experience last year was amazing. We visited some poor villages that have no access to medical care and where the local churches were already evangelizing and trying to plant a church. After we left, the locals had Bible studies up and running with the local communities prepared to receive more of the Word.
While there, we will take you to 2 or 3 villages in a very poor area of western Nicaragua near the Honduran border. We will spend 4 ½ days seeing patients as a team, while local church members organize evangelistic outreach activities. They are already meeting people in the communities telling people about Jesus. At the end we will spend a day of rest and enjoyment in Granada.
One of the locations we visited in Nicaragua was a small community called Los Huérfanos, just outside of Masaya. We were greeted by Pastor Jairo Murillo and a small group of folks that have been worshipping in one of the homes. Most of the current members of the church were from one family – a family that Pastor Jairo had visited often to encourage them and develop church leaders. Our visit was not long as we had a full agenda with Rigoberto Reyes who had many ministries he wanted the vision team to experience. We prayed with the family and were on the road again. I could not help but notice a tension in Pastor Jairo’s typically gregarious demeanor and in retrospect, overall, even the family members seemed heavy hearted but I just could not put my finger on the source.
One of the “invisible” ministries that touched my heart was in the kitchen, where Claudia Reyes and the many sisters in Christ would work non-stop to ensure everyone who came to work on the site was properly fed – and man did we eat week that week! But what was more sweet was captured in a photo just before we all departed the last day – the women gathered together to pray for how God provided for all and how He will provide in the future!
Sometimes I wonder what long term results come out of these Children’s programs. Each team puts on one of each project. As I thought about it, two things come to my heart. First, this helps the national church evangelize the neighborhood. Doors that probably would not have been open to the local church are now open. We may not see the results but I have been told over and over again that this is part of the impact.
Secondly, kids are able to be kids for a short time. Poor kids do not get a lot of time to simply be kids. Several years ago one of our staff asked a six year old girl, “What is your favorite food?” She looked up at Mike and responded, “Do you mean to cook or to eat?” How many of our kids would respond like that? None. The kids will be in their poverty when we leave. Their families will continue to struggle. But we gave these kids some time to be kids for a week. I think that God is happy about that.
