Honduras Missions - Hearts and Hands

 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven”. Matthew 18:1-5 Today our challenge was to become child like, be like the children, have the faith of a child.  There were many opportunities where this came naturally for most of the group.  From VBS playing games and laughing with kids, playing ball outside, goofing off with some of the kids in the clinic, etc. Lots of fun around the mission today with the people coming through.   Today, I spent most of my day in the optical clinic and it was very busy.  We saw over 80 patients!  Most of the receiving a prescription of some sort.  All of them very grateful and thankful for the ministry.  I found out how expensive even just readers are here in Tocoa, and it made me realize just how important this ministry is.  T...

 “How beautiful are the feet of the that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!” The faith we have and the life we lead by example are all we need to share God’s word with others.  We are simply here to spread the seed and God is what nurtures that seed to grow.  The small things we do, the little things we say and the short conversations we have, can have a huge effect on someone.  Everything we do in our daily lives leaves a footprint somewhere.  Our challenge today in our daily devotion was to notice how we see the domino effect throughout the day.  There were many examples that were later show during our evening devotion.  For me it was encouraging two boys sitting next to me in church to stop messing around and teasing each other, and listen to what the pastor was saying.  I did separate them at one point but what came next was so awesome.  These were two boys that don’t usually come to church, they had been a...

 “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24 Today our devotion challenge was to be present in what we are doing.  Really putting away our own agenda and being with the people we serve.  Not trying to crunch through the numbers of people in optical, or read as many stories as we can in bible study or even get to as many houses as we can on home visits.   Today I was able to leave the optical clinic as people were trained enough on the equipment and I felt confident to let them run the clinic.  This was a little challenging for me, letting go of that control and being okay with things possibly going wrong, and me not being there to fix it.  Sometimes I get caught up in the numbers and want to get through as many people as possible, but then I’m reminded that its about the people not the numbers.  We always try to remind ourselves that we need to take time to talk with people and get to know them.   So, w...

 “There is a time for everything, and a season for everything activity under the heavens”. Ecclesiastes 3:1 You know when you make plans and you get everything all in a row and ready to go, and something happens and nothing is what is was “supposed” to be?  Well yeah, thats kind how it is often when we come down here.  But those are our plans, human plans.  God’s plans are exactly what they are supposed to be and coming down here to be with our friends and family here, we are humbled always at the paths we take and where we end up.  We can work hard to make things perfect, but God’s timing is what really determines the “perfectness” of it all!   Today we arrived at the church in La Ceibita to begin our first day in mission.  The first hour was a lot of set up and sorting through bags to figure out where things were and to get the optical ministry set up.  There are over 2000 pairs of glasses in inventory that are in boxes with cubbies.  They ...

“You’ll travel safely, you’ll neither tire nor trip…..because God will be right there with you; he’ll keep you safe and sound”.  Proverbs 3:23 I tried to post this last night, but the internet was not working for me.  We certainly had God’s blessings with travel yesterday - with smooth connections - albeit short, no lost luggage, and no hiccups.  Thankful for all of those blessings yesterday.  It was a long, long day.  Illinois team started at midnight, and the rest of us around 3:30am.  After we left the airport we piled in the vans after watched our translators play a game of Tetris with our luggage.  We hit the road and grabbed some Popeyes chicken along the way.  The rest of the drive we stopped a few times to use the rest room, but that was about it.  I believe we got in the vans around 1:30pm and we got to our hotel in Tococa around 9pm. I think by the end everyone was a little dazed over and definitely ready to hit the hay!  Pasto...

Welcome back to the Honduras travel blog.  This will probably be the only coherent blog post for the trip because I have not quite reached complete exhaustion!  Although it has been a week.  Moving kids home from college for the summer, and college graduations and all the things that life throws at you with raising kids and living life.  At one point I was completely frazzled at all I had to do to get ready for this mission. Overwhelmed, exhausted, stretched and behind.  But then I came across an older post from one of my favorite authors, Bob Goff who helped me find some perspective and remember the reasons why we do this.  Although I want this trip to be perfect, especially for the newbies on the trip, I know it won’t be humanly perfect but it will be perfect if God is at the center of my plans.  I spent too much time working on the details, trying to make it humanly perfect and not remembering to fill my bucket with things that matter.  The pos...