Report: Day 3 in Honduras

You see that kid I took a picture with? My current profile pic? I actually got to see little Ernesto on the second day and take a similar picture with him! I can´t wait to come back home and show you. He´s grown up in two years. God is so GOOD!

Saturday, Feb. 17 a group of 21 flew from Miami to San Pedro Sula, Honduras for a week long mission trip with Project Teamwork. We met 5 more members who came before us. The hardest part of travelling was waiting through customs at the airport. Other than that, all went well. In our group we have 3 ladies from Oregon, 1 from Arizona and the rest from Miami or Ft. Lauderdale. All in all we are 4 men and 22 women. And everyone is just GREAT!! We all get along very well.

Day #1-2
Saturday we didn´t do much except settle in, but on Sunday we were able to visit Iglesia La Cosecha. We actually went to their 9:30am service because their 8am service was in a stadium filled with 15,000 plus people. The service we went to had about 2,000. We had a great time Honduran style (starting 30 minutes late and lasting 2 and 1/2 hours). After service we hopped on the bus for an hour drive in our Sunday best to visit the village we´d be working at. We greeted the kids and invited the women to come to the chapel area where we gave them and their kids a taste of what was to come and then registered them for the week of conferences. Then we came back to the hotel to eat dinner, shower and work to prepare for the next day.

Day#3
So many little neat things happened today. It rained hard at about 6am. We left the hotel at 7:45 and it was drizzling, but by the time we got to the village, it was just walking through the clouds.... literally - it was fog! But the temperature was so nice (in the 70´s) and by mid-afternoon, it was nice, sunny and still cool. PRAISE GOD!! That was a huge answer to prayer.

Our first job was to divide up into groups and paint the interiors of 5 homes. In total we have about 20 homes we´d like to do by the end of the home. There wasn´t enough paint for any of the homes, so we´ll be finishing them tomorrow and starting new ones. At noon we had lunch and at 1pm we started our women´s and children´s conferences.

Only with mothers and children registered (only those from the village) we had 93 children to work with for 2 hours. Our 8 volunteers, mostly teenagers, got worn out. They ended up singing songs for a while because that was the only thing they could do to keep them busy and not talking. Thankfully, they have another plan for tomorrow. The women on the other hand had a great time. I got the chance to teach them some new songs. Today we sang the Spanish versions of ¨Trading My Sorrows,¨ ¨You Are God,¨ ¨I Could Sing of Your Love Forever,¨ and ¨Above All¨. They really liked the songs... especially ¨You Are Good.¨

My mom, Bee, then led the ladies in a fun ice breaker game and then gave a study on God´s forgiveness of us. She shared the story about the prostitute who was about to be stoned to death until Jesus showed up and challenged the accusers to throw the first stone if they were not guilty of any wrong. After they all left, she looked up at Jesus - the only one with the right to condemn her - and He told her, ¨I do not condemn you.¨The lesson was about God´s forgiveness. Bee then went on to talk about forgiving yourself. Many times we´ll accept that God forgives us but we can´t let go of something that we´ve done. We hold on to our past as if we still need to be punished for it. But the Bible says our sins are as deep as the sea and if that´s where Christ threw them, who are WE do dig them up again and hold on to them? Then why did Jesus die?

After the great teaching, we taught the ladies to do facials on themselves. We had about 55 women there (over 60 registered) but we didn´t have enough facial gift packs for each one. As we handed them out, we looked back and took from our miscellanous bag and had JUST ENOUGH for every household to take home some wash clothes, soap and other fun things. They LOVED it. The ladies left GLOWING.... literally and figuratively.

After leaving the village we went to a hardware store to pick up more paint. The manager of the store gave us a discount on all the paint because he saw us in church the day before. Not only that, but I heard that we brought curtain rods donated by Lowe´s. Somehow the contact at Lowe´s went to all the stores in S. Fla. scrounging up what he could get and donate and he ended up giving us 120 rods - the exact number we needed. So, even in the supplies God is working.

THANKS to all of you who are praying for us, our safety and our impact. We have 5 more days to go. Our creativity and energy levels are being stretched, but our hearts are being blessed. So, GLORY TO GOD! It´s good to be in HIS service.

In yours as well,
Ruthie

-More updates to come plus pics when I get back. God bless!