Honduras Trip summary with Pics and Video

We made it back. Praise God and thanks to so many we are safe and so happy to have been used by God to bless this village just outside of San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

Here are some pictures and videos of the trip: (more details to be added to this blog soon)

The kids make everything worth it. They're beautiful!

Here's a little of what we did:

BJ teaching the ladies to clap on beat... and square dance!

Thanks again to all who supported and prayed for the trip!
To God be the glory, GREAT things He has done!

In HIS service and yours,
Ruthie

Days 4-6 in Honduras

Sin, suffering and salvation are no respectors of your economic state. I remember learning that for the very first time coming to this same village 2 years ago. I met some very greedy people who had nothing, but then I met others with huge hearts. This time around I´ve seen other angles of humanity.

RICARDO:
The little boy in the picture has an older brother (11 yrs old now) by the name of Ricardo. He´s the most energetic, smart and funny kid you´ll meet around here. I LOVE HIM! Well, Monday he was just standing by some of the ladies in the team as they waited. Jokingly, I came by, put my hands to my waist and shrugged my shoulders and said, ¨What are you doing here?¨and that´s when he just took off running. It didn´t take long for me to realize how much I hurt him. Why is this ¨center of attention¨ kid so mad at me for? I was just playing around? So, I told him I didn´t mean it in a wrong way. He ran home that day and I didn´t see him again.

I told his brother to tell him that I say ¨I´m sorry¨and I even told the other ladies in the group to help me get him aside to talk to him tomorrow. Well, the next day came. I finally saw him by himself... still grumpy and depressed. I ran to him, hugged him and told him I was so sorry. I told him that my American humor doesn´t work in Honduras and that it was my fault. I asked him to forgive me. He shrugged me off and ran off telling me, ¨No, I don´t forgive you¨. What could I do? I felt terrible!

At the end of the day as we were about to leave I saw another team member, Wanda, take him aside and talk to him. All of a sudden, he walked over to me and hugged me as we posed to take a group shot. I asked him again if he forgave me and he said ¨Yes.¨ I told him I cared very much for him, that he´s special to me and that I´m glad we can joke around again. (He´s going to be a tremendous leader one day.... he already is one.) Come to find out Wanda told him that his unforgivness hurt me and that I was really sorry for what I did. Thanks, WANDA!!

OK... so that´s ONE story. Here are a few more details about the past 3 days:

Day 4
We went back to the village to finish painting some house interiors and start new ones. By the end of the day we had 11 houses done. My mom and I led another session for the ladies. We played a game to see what woman could blow the biggest bubble with her 2 pieces of Double Bubble. That was funny. Then my mom gave a really good lesson on forgiveness - a HUGE lesson for so many of these women who were and still are being abused by so many. There were still babies and toddlers everywhere making noise. My mom struggled to keep her concentration. But at some pivital points, you could here a pin drop. So, praise God! It was all good. Return to hotel. Crash into bed - end of Day 4.

Day 5
Sleep IN! Eat breakfast, wrap up gifts for kids to hand out Friday, hop on bus, drive 1 hour to home for girls. This house had 7 girls who used to be in an orphanage, but who aged out. An American girl from Ft. Myers (I think) opened it and helps these girls finish high school and get into college. All but the younger two spoke very good English too. One of them may even come to the states for college. We ate lunch there and then took them to the beach with us for a relaxing day. It was just that.... HOT and relaxing - just like S. Fla. We then came back to the hotel, showered and went to a typical Honduran restaurant for dinner (great meat!!!).

Day 6
It was HOT today. Nice and sunny skies, but HOT! I have a really bad farmer´s tan (sorry, no pics of the that...lol). We had a morning session for the ladies. Today we played a game with lollipops and used the wrappers in the lesson. My mom did her classic ¨Thermometers and Thermostats¨ lesson, but using the acrostic POP. Mothers are to have POP in their home - Peace, Obedience and Perdon (Forgiveness). The ladies loved it. They´ve all been asking for copies of all the lessons. We painted some more houses today and put up curtain rods and shelves for the families. In total I think we´ve done 18 homes with 10 of them having shelves. That´s it for us, though. We´re leaving the supplies behind so they can finish the work.

At 3 o´clock we invited the women to come back and train briefly for some evangelism we were going to do. We taught them how to use the EvangeCard (Like the EvangeCube... but on bendable paper). We then stocked up 8 teams of 2 or 3 ladies and gave them bags of corn/flour, a wash cloth with a Christian message on it and a tract. Almost every team had a ´gringa´ with them. We walked to the next village to share gospel and had a good time. My teammate and I even went to a farm where a nearby cow shared his affection towards us by peeing on the cement while we were talking. I thought it was a hose of water!

All in all, it was a productive but EXHAUSTING day! The sun just sucked the life out of us, but we´ve all eaten, showered and are ready for bed.

Tomorrow´s the last full day here. We´ve got some nice things planned. I´ll probably write again when I get home on Saturday.

Thanks again for your prayers. Besides some minor scratches and migranes, the team is doing well and we know it´s because we´re backed up spiritually.

We´re all learning that humans are humans but that God´s love surpasses not just culture but language. A hug and a smile go a long way... no matter where you are.

Mary & Martha´s Excellent Adventure has been JUST THAT!

May adventure live in your daily lives as well.
God bless you,
Ruthie

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!

I'm going to Honduras in February!

Two years ago, I went on my first missions trip to Honduras. It was a wonderful experience. Mostly I did translating and painting some homes and houses. It was wonderful!Some weeks ago I was invited to be a part of a special mission trip to return to Honduras February 17-24, 2007. This Central American country was ravaged by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and people are still recovering from that devastation. Project Teamwork, the organization that is sponsoring this trip, has built communities of homes in Honduras, they've repaired homes, schools, churches and orphanages. So this is familiar territory for them and myself.

The team of volunteers will be working in a small village in the foothills called Zona America, a village that previous Project TeamWork volunteers built. We will be reaching out to some 60 women in that village, helping them paint their homes and make other improvements. My mom Bee and I have been invited to go with the team to lead teaching sessions and assist in leading worship times. Only 2 or 3 other women on the team speak Spanish, so we will also spend a lot of time translating. But our goal is to minister hope and healing to the women in Honduras who are recovering from tragedy and suffering We will also be teaching Biblical principles for the home.

In order to go, I need to raise $1,275 in the next few weeks. This will cover all costs, except for a small amount of spending money. I consider it a privilege to be invited to go to this country and share the message of Jesus. Would you be willing to be part of my team – to pray for me and help me reach my support goal? As I am part of the "going" team, would you be a part of the "sending" team? OR, if you'd like to go yourself, go to http://www.project-teamwork.org/ Please let me know soon. Shoot me an e-mail for more information. Thank you for considering this special request.

Can't wait to come back and share some more cool pics. God bless you!

Sincerely,
Ruthie