A team made up of people from
Wisconsin, Iowa, & Michigan will be heading down to La Union, Honduras
Saturday, October 26th-Sunday, November 3rd.
The main focus of the mission
trip is to share the love of Jesus with the Hondurans in the town of La Union.
Our team will be splitting up during the day as some will be doing construction
projects and others will be working at the Abundant Life Christian School in La
Union.
The Abundant Life Christian
School has around 150 kids in the school. The majority of the kids that go to
school are sponsored by fellow Hondurans that live in the bigger cities or by
Americans. A sponsorship for a student is $500 and this sponsorship will
provide the student with a snack during the day, school supplies, and uniforms.
This school is an English speaking school and they use the Beka curriculum.
Spanish is the main language of Honduras so the kids have to really study to
read and understand what is being taught as the teachers use English in the
classroom as well. The school recruits around 20 teachers a year from the
United States to teach at several of the schools. Some of the teachers from the
US are teaching at La Union. It is nice for them as well to see others that
English is their native language and to catch up on what is happening in
America.
The kids at the school and all
around town love to play soccer. They also play volleyball and basketball for
other sports. The community has mainly dirt roads and the majority of the kids
either ride bus, walk, or ride a bike. When I was there a few years back there
were several families that used horses as a way for transportation as vehicles
are rare. If I remember correctly I don’t think there was a gas station in town
and this is one of the larger towns in the area.
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| Field Trip Transportation. A bus would not make it up to the cave so they had to borrow a truck. |
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| Chickens on the road in front of the house we stayed at. |
Another interesting fact is when
we were down there the chickens were everywhere. At 6 in the morning you could
hear the roosters crowing and there were a lot of roosters. I am not sure if
they knew which chickens where whose, but everyone seemed to get along and not kill all the chickens. I know Leah and I wanted to kill a few roosters by the second morning. I guess it is like living next to a railroad, you just get used to it after a while.
The first night we had arrived
and next door to where we were staying a guy was building a wooden coffin. Jake
told me that someone had passed away and they would be using it sometime in the
next day or two. It was the only thing going on after dark. The town reminded
me of a small town in Iowa where everything shuts down, but several of the
houses did not even have lights inside so they were either sleeping or sitting
outside watching the stars.
Back to the second half of what
we will be doing. We will be doing a construction project either for the school
or someone in the community. There are several houses in the community that are
made of mud and have dirt floors so there work that can be accomplished. We
will probably be hiring someone local to help us with the projects that we are
doing as they know the correct way to build things for that climate. Not only
is it a blessing for whoever we help, but we are also helping by hiring a
person or two while we are down there. The biggest occupation is picking coffee
beans, which is only a few months out of the year so there are several people
that are looking for jobs.
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| I am picking unripe coffee beans. |
The average income per capita for
the year 2007 was $1,649. They are the third poorest country in the western
hemisphere behind Haiti and Nicaragua. The people are averaging to make $6 a
day. My heart just breaks every time I think of a statistic like this. La Union
is also one of the poorest areas in Honduras so these statistics are a little
high for the area. I know when I go out I usually pay more than $6 a meal.
Anyway I am writing this blog to
bring awareness to the situation as several people have expressed interest and
want to know how things are going with the trip. We will have Internet access
down there so we will try and keep the blog updated while we are down there as well.I am new to the blog scene so if there is a place to attach photos we will try and do that as well. (Yeah! I figured the photo thing out.)
This mission trip is a God thing
as I was telling God that this trip should not happen this year because Leah
and I are working on buying a house, and we had a few other unknowns this year.
God worked on my heart for a few weeks as I really was pushing against him. Within
a week my heart started to change, and I said alright God I will do it. He gave
me some instructions and I have just been praying about this trip ever since.
If you are looking to help out
with this trip, here are a few things that we are looking at bringing.
-Deflated Soccer Balls (Girls
love the pink soccer balls)
-Soccer Cleats
-School Supplies (Especially Arts & Crafts like paint)
-There might be some other stuff as well, but those are the big 3 the kids love.
-Soccer Cleats
-School Supplies (Especially Arts & Crafts like paint)
-There might be some other stuff as well, but those are the big 3 the kids love.
