Honduran Mission Trip

We had the opportunity this week to take our teens from our church here in Santa Rosa on a mission trip to Ojojona, Honduras. It was a great success! We had a blast, they worked SO hard, and I was so proud to watch them grow in their spirituality and relationships with one another.

We spent one day doing some labor for their mission houses; one day we built a house. Wednesday we went to the dump, which was one of the most wretched, smelly places I have been. People live and work there, pulling plastic and recyclable materials out to trade for money. That afternoon we went to play with kids at an orphanage. Thursday we went out to evangelize, and that afternoon we went into Tegucigalpa to see a movie, and have dinner at a restaurant called Carnitas, that is inside a ballpark. It was really neat to watch them help their people, especially when most of them come from very poor situations themselves. They have incredible hearts, and I was so proud to watch them work and get to know them better.

I’ve been on a couple of mission trips to Honduras before, but with Gringos. There were very notable differences in traveling with groups of gringos and this trip with some sweet, young Hondurans. I wanted to tweet them, but since I was without Internet, thought I would blog about it instead.

#ViajeCatracho

1.     No translators.

2.     Their culture shock was because most of them left Santa Rosa for the first time, made it to the capital city, and went to the biggest mall they’ve ever seen.

3.     We spent 20 wide-eyed minutes in Wal-Mart, the most amazing grocery store they’ve ever seen.

4.     We stayed in a place previously described by gringos as “rustic,” but was the nicest place some of them have ever stayed.

5.     Not only did we completely build a house in 1 day, one of our teens has been a carpenter for three years, and was therefore quite a lot of help.

6.     The house that we built was nicer than some of their houses at home.

7.     One of our teens had shoes with soles that were basically worn completely through, and one of the other teens gave him his own shoes in the middle of the night, so that no one knew who it was.

8.     The cooks are used to cooking for gringos, so it’s Honduran versions of Americanized food. We gringos thought it was different, AND the Hondurans thought it was weird.

9.     When the bus driver let some random street venders on the bus in between red lights, the Gringos were the only ones that thought it was unusual.

10. The kids’ testimonies and life experiences in general.

11. At Wendy’s most of them ordered chicken on the bone, which they have in Honduras.

I will post pictures in a day or two.. The internet is too slow to add them today.