As our bus clanked up an old dirt road through the mountains of Honduras, Steve and I had no idea what to expect.  We were crowded so tightly into this big yellow school bus (Many of the public buses in Honduras are old school buses from the States.) that we could scarcely shift our feet. Nonetheless, we were anxious to arrive at our destination, which was a ranch in a small village called Junquillo. This ranch was owned by an American friend of Steve’s who was actually back in the States. We were to be greeted by his ranch manager Juan Lili. When we got off the bus, we were met by an eager gentleman in a baseball cap–it was Juan. Throughout the week, we would be our guide, confidently strutting around in similar attire with a handgun in his jeans and a slingshot in his pocket.  As Juan brought us through the gate, we were further greeted by six guard dogs, a yard full of chickens, and some pigs. I anxiously passed through this entourage and we arrived at the primary living quarters of the ranch, a small concrete house. This would be our new home for the next few days; our nights were to be filled with squealing, barking, and clucking. It wasn’t exactly the Ponderosa, but it was all we needed.

Over the next few days our goal was to investigate the needs of the community in hopes of finding future projects for mission teams. As it turned out there was no lack of needs. Initially, Juan discussed some community projects. The people of Junquillo and the nearby community of Ocotal are very religious, but there are not adequate meeting places for churches. One local evangelical church does not even have pews, and a whole side of the building consists of nothing but a blue tarp. The efforts to construct a new building have not been able to reach beyond a pile of stones. There is also a need for a kindergarten. The education of the children is very important to the community, but thus far they have not even been able to start this project. The resources for these projects simply are not available.

The gravest concern for the people of Junquillo is personal poverty–food and water are their top concerns. In Ocotal, they lack an adequate water supply. There is drinking water, but because there is no water system people are forced to walk a long way to draw water. Further, they are faced with the reality that the cost of living often exceeds their income. The average person will only make 100 lempira a day, which to put in perspective converts to approximately $5.25 in the US. It takes an entire day’s wages for a Honduran family to purchase 5 lbs. of beans. With these wages, it is a real struggle for the people of Junquillo to keep themselves fed. When you barely have enough money to buy food, you will be hard-pressed to find money for other important needs such as clothing or housing–forget about trying to save for the future. In Junquillo, there is little room for any ambition that extends beyond your next meal.

I compare this to my life in the States and I cannot help but be thankful. There are so many opportunities here. Not only do I have a job that provides ample financial stability, but I have the luxury of choosing between multiple career opportunities. In the US, we often take these privileges for granted. I have the ability to shape my future because I know that I will be rewarded for hard work. In Junquillo, a hard day’s work may not be enough.

As the days progressed, we found that everyone was both friendly and hospitable. Juan and his wife faithfully provided meals and plenty of coffee for us. The food was delicious, and they gave us generous portions. They told us that gringos (as white people are called) were always welcome in Junquillo. Because I don’t speak Spanish, there was a limit to how well I could get to know the Lili’s, but nonetheless I was treated as an honored guest.

The climax of our stay was a community meeting with representatives from Junquillo and Ocotal. A group of community members gathered into a concrete building that serves as a community center. Steve and I grabbed a couple of nearby chairs, which turned out to be children’s size and opened the floor for anyone to ask questions and make requests. We found that the construction of local churches and a kindergarten were very important to people; however, the clear consensus was that the most urgent needs were running water and food. One lady summed it up, by posing the question, “What good is a church if we’re starving to death, and we can’t walk there!” We were then informed that there are actually homeless families living out in the woods. Obviously, all of the projects are important, but we want to be sensitive to the immediate need to improve quality of life.

As we said our goodbyes and headed out to catch the bus from Junquillo, I was utterly convinced that we need to do what we can to help revitalize the community. The people are honest, hard-working folks, but they’ve been weighed down by poor economic conditions and low wages. They need a boost. It is my hope that we can provide the resources to make a new water system a reality. Further, we want to think of creative ways to help the food situation. Perhaps, as we accomplish these goals, the community will be energized so that we can partner with them with renewed strength. Most of all, I hope that through this process God’s love will be evident in our interaction and that he will work in people’s hearts and lives.

-  Josh Gray

There are many short term mission trips with Experience Mission (www.experiencemission.org ) Go to our website and select from one of our Honduras mission trips for this upcoming year.

One of the more amazing things about going on these mission trips is seeing the changes they make in people’s lives. Generally, the incoming group and our organization are there to make a long term beneficial impact to our community partners. However, often, it is the community that brings greater benefit to the people who serve them. Never has that been more true over my past six weeks with Experience Mission than here in Seattle.

During typical rural or international mission trips, it is easy for group’s to gauge their contribution to the area they serve. They see homes built nail by nail or walls painted stroke by stroke. Here, though, on this urban mission trip, there are no benchmarks to measure against. The team is here to serve the homeless of the city, but they cannot cure it. On a macro level, the meals they serve and the conversations they have do not create more shelter beds, affordable housing or job opportunities. But it does fill stomachs. And hearts.

The team from Harbor Trinity Church this week has served meals every day at lunchtime out of the Union Gospel Mission shelters and passed out sacked lunches to homeless around the area as well. These meals are necessary, but unlike building a home, they are a temporary solution. They are a beaver dam when the Hoover is needed.

But still, Harbor Trinity has served with patience and grace during this week, understanding the role they play in the scheme. They may not end homelessness, but without volunteers like them, an end would be impossible.

Because they understand this, they have been able connect with the homeless of the city, to listen to their stories, issues and jokes. This has forced them to put away some of their preconceived ideas about the homeless. They are not all drug-addicts, most do not choose to be on the street, and, most alarming, it truly can happen to anyone – many families are only a paycheck away.

As we were in a Seattle park, next to the county courthouse, I spoke with one of our first-time missionaries. He had connected with many of the stories he had heard in the park while passing out lunches, and many had connected with his. He said he was going to try and organize his church to hand out lunches in this way near the courthouse in his county.

This means that while the mission trip may end tomorrow, the impact of it will continue and its spirit will spread with those who have been here. What better result could there be?

For me, one of the most challenging things about being here in Ruiz is working in the overwhelming poverty. From what I’ve seen, it manifests itself in all aspects of their daily life. The roofs over the people’s heads leak in the rain and some children swim naked in streams that double as sewers. I’ve learned to see beyond these things and become envious of the joy many of the people display even in these circumstances. They are hospitable and talkative, even as many of them go hungry. But what I didn’t realize until today was the ways that the poverty of the area affects people in ways I could have never seen at first glance.

I had the chance to sit down and talk with one of our translators, Carlos, today at a work site and ask some specific questions about Ruiz and the struggle in the area. The biggest problem, he says, is the lack of jobs. The jobs that do exist, mainly construction, pay very little even by Mexican standards. Carlos, one of the top in his class at the University of Nayarit, estimates that only about 8 percent of students make it past high school. With the lack of education and the lack of job opportunities the men of Ruiz look elsewhere. Many leave their homes, families and lives behind to try and find a route across the border to the United States risking life and limb to do it. Some make it across, some stay in the border towns to work at factories and some are sent back to Ruiz.

Carlos personally knows a man of only 24 who has tried and failed three times to cross the border. On one attempt he rode for hours gripping the undercarriage of a freight train inches from the track. He then walked for almost three days through the desert with no food or water. He was caught and sent back to Ruiz.

Once the men leave Ruiz for better pay, the true problems begin. While they begin to send back money for their families it often slows down and eventually stops coming at all. It is common for the men who left to start new families across or along the border and never look back at what they left. The money stops coming in and the boys grow up without fathers to learn the harsh reality of their town on their own.

In the United States, we tend to thing of illegal immigration as an American problem – just another topic for the pundits on television to fight about. But being here has shown me that immigration is not only an American issue, but also a Mexican one. It is not only a political problem, but a personal one as well.

- Matt Grager

Our boat sped out across the Caribbean away from Honduras, bouncing on the the low rolling waves and occasionally spraying the warm sea water across those of us seated in the back. Only after the land was out of view did I really start to think about how easy it was for us to leave.

At $50 each, our boat tickets to Belize were well out of reach of the average Honduran. Most earn only $100 a month, and they have little hope of saving anything. Almost all of their income must go toward food and rent; for even skilled workers it costs more than half a day’s wages to buy enough beans for a few meals. You don’t have to spend much time in the country before you start to see those who have a roof over their heads and meals of any kind on the table as fortunate.

Honduras consistently ranks as one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, and evidence of that fact is seen even in the richest areas of the country. The capital city, Tegucigalpa, consists primarily of sprawling tin-and-wood shantytowns that cover the steep mountain slopes around the downtown area. They are the sort of impromptu developments that famously collapse en masse during major earthquakes or hurricanse, causing thousands of deaths.

There are high-rise buildings, a few upscale businesses catering to travelers and a smattering of people walking around in business suits. If you confined yourself to a few city blocks, it would seem possible to sheild yourself from the most glaring signs of poverty.

But even in those guarded, well-developed areas of the city, they are there. Behind a newly built city park with stucco walls we saw a vacant lot filled with trash. This is a common sight throughout Latin America. In this lot, however, five enormous pigs nearly blackened with filth grazed through the refuse, oblivious to the half-dozen constantly barking dogs or the 20 or so vultures moving through the trash with an ugly waddle. The animals were near downtown Tegucigalpa and there were no homes nearby. The pigs appeared to have no owners.

A day later I was walking through downtown when it began to rain. I saw an old woman sprawled on the sidewalk shift herself under an awning as she spread soaked newspapers across her lap. As I got closer I saw that her legs had been ravaged by elephantiasis. Both were grotesquely swollen and deformed and covered with patches of dried, dead skin.

Those wretched sights aren’t endemic in Junquillo, where we hope to work next year, but seeing them is a reminder that in Honduras, even the most ambitious and gifted residents have little hope of escaping the crushing poverty there. As one Costa Rican friend of mine puts it, Honduras is the place “where dead dreams go to die another day.”

The internationally publicized phenomenon of the crumbling U.S. dollar and the fragile state of our economy would make it ignorant, arrogant and absurd for me to start talking about how rich we are in America and how we so often take it for granted and all that jazz. Just the same, when you see people suffering like that it’s tough not to feel guilty about the undue privilege we were born into; our economic worst-case scenarios would still leave us richer than almost all Hondurans. Running water, seeds for family gardens or a kindergarten–things mission teams could help provide–are well out of the reach of Junquillo residents. They would come at little cost to a team from the U.S. and would drastically improve the residents’ quality of life, and when you realize that, you want to get started right away.

Looking at the few Hondurans on the boat with us, I felt as though they had dodged a bullet. They were packed not for a visit, but for a move to a better life in Belize.

By comparison, Belize seems utterly rich. But it’s not. Countless Belizeans live in a sort of poverty not normally seen in the U.S. and there is plenty of work to do there. As we’re seeking it out, though, it’ll be hard to shake the thoughts of the suffering in Honduras.

-Steven B.

I came into Ruiz Saturday along with Yonathan and Alison from the Tecate intern team. We were replacements for another intern who became ill as well as reinforcements for the sixty or so youth missionaries who arrived the same day.

The bus ride from Puerto Vallarta took over four hours, but there was a lot to learn about the area along the way. Immediately the beauty of the land strikes. The green ground cover grows about knee-high off the roadway and across the fields before it rises along the mountains into lush forest where the rain clouds hang like soggy laundry on the line.

Once you look past the landscape you quickly realize the poverty of the area. The ribs of the roadside livestock are visible, while the homes constructed of second hand materials and thatched roof are more hidden amongst the vegetation.

Sunday morning after breakfast at a local church, we converted the dining area into a sanctuary and Pastor Abel, our main EM contact in the area, led a service with Yonathan translating to English for us gringos.

Later that night a storm blew through Ruiz, dumping warm rain and flashing lightning directly over our three story hotel. This morning, the storm was still going strong, giving us a late start to the work day.

After the rain stopped at about 10 a.m., I had the chance to visit the four worksites for this week. Each group is constructing a single brick room for families in the area.

While at a site in Tijuanita, a town adjacent to Ruiz, I came across some local children playing in a street that the storm had converted to a stream. The kids were playful, splashing me and one another. They were curious about the United States and asked me a few questions that I tried to answer in my broken Spanish. When I took out the camera to take a few shots the kids posed in every which way, absorbing all the attention they could, even joking that their model services would cost me a hundred pesos each.

As we left the kids and the site, we got only a block up the cobblestone street before we were forced to the roadside. I couldn’t have been more surprised by the herd of cattle being driven through the streets directly toward us. The vaqueros even tipped their hats and smiled as they rode by us while I snapped more photos.

The Tijuanita kids and cowboys reinforced what I had learned already here in Ruiz – that the only thing more engulfing than the humidity is the hospitality. I can’t wait to see the work we accomplish this week.

- Matt Grager

Last night our team from South Carolina had a joint evening program with another church from their area staying a few miles up the road in Waveland, giving us interns the night off. Rather than take off for the beach or head into New Orleans, we took the opportunity to lend an extra hand.

I met Sonny Wilkinson on my first day here in Pearlington and have had to go back and talk with him almost every day of my stay. Despite his hard financial luck after the storm, the 75-year-old man wears a cheery attitude and wide grin as consistently as he wears a plaid shirt and blue jeans.

Yesterday we noticed that one of our groups had left the vinyl siding on his new house crooked. Cory had the idea to spend our evening bringing him dinner and fixing the siding. We also invited along his two friends Bud and Dilbert to join us.

We brought over a feast of barbeque brisquit, watermelon, strawberries, macaroni salad and a staple of our deep southern diet–sweet tea.

While helping Sonny with his siding was a rewarding task, it was small in comparison to listening to the old men. They shared their stories and jokes with the precision and timing that only years of practice can bring. And they still laughed genuinely at each one.

Sitting there on the porch swing with Sonny, it was clear to me, and I would think to the rest of the group, that these are the most important moments of our Experience Mission work. The homes that are built are a necessity for the community, but they are ultimately temporary. However, the relationships we build with the community are permanent. The vinyl siding at Sonny’s house will ultimately wear down and weather, but his hearty laughter will not.

-Matt Grager

Josh and I spent a day in Danlí working out all the logistical details we could, including lodging, food and transportation options, and then headed back up to Junquillo to finalize things there. We met with three different bus drivers, all of whom own smaller buses and their own 40-person school buses–the public transportation vehicle of choice (or perhaps necessity) down here.

Tuesday morning we met with Billy Peters, a missionary from South Carolina who’s been here on and off for about 15 years. It was a great conversation about potential work projects and general community needs he’s noticed since moving here–we’ll definitely be keeping in touch with him. We also met a nice gringo named Roland down here who runs a cigar shop/laundromat, which of course is a perfectly logical combination of services. We’re going to stop in and say hi to him today before heading to Tegucigalpa.

There we plan to look at bus options from some larger companies. There are plenty of reasons for this, one being that one of the three drivers we talked to had his bus break down just hours after our conversation–it’s always good to have a backup.

We’re in Danli for most of the rest of today, and one thing we’ll be doing is checking out seed prices. Junquillo residents, who earn less than $5 a day, can’t afford them, but they could be an excellent way to help combat hunger here. Food and water are by far the two primary needs here, as we learned during a community meeting Tuesday night. Right now, residents of the village of Ocotal, which sits near Junquillo, have to pack water to their homes, and nearly all their money goes toward food.

On Saturday we’re going to head up to a place called Guimaca to visit a church connection Josh has–a guy named Jorge who used to live with family friends of his.

God bless!

-Steven B.

One of the most appealing things about staying here in Pearlington is the amazing people I have met. Like no other place I’ve traveled to, this community has come together to help one another. The same small town unity that spreads the local gossip so easily has also, it seems, spread the resources and connections.

After the eye of Hurricane Katrina came straight through the town of about 1,600 every building was either destroyed or severely damaged. The only fresh water left after the salt water of the Gulf of Mexico rose between 12 and 20 feet above the ground was at the artesian well of Larry and Beth Randall. They can look back now and laugh at the nudity in their lawn as people came to shower. Even the small outhouse they built as a community shower, toilet and vanity still stands outside their home.

But the Randalls didn’t stop there, after the disaster relief organizations left, the couple started the Pearlington Recovery Center using the land and buildings of the former schoolhouse, as a base for the rebuilding effort.

The PRC, where the Pearlington Team and I are staying, is made up of six bunkhouses, a few temporary cottages, some military tents and a half dozen trailers that have housed and fed volunteers from organizations across the world. The PRC also has what has come to be known as the Pearl Mart in the old gymnasium. At the Pearl Mart the community can come to get supplies from ice and water to building materials and even borrow tools.

Other members of the community have raised tools to help as well. A man I met today, who asked not to be spotlighted for his work, has worked since his retirement over a year ago to repair his neighbor’s homes. Right now, he has a few of our Experience Missionaries from South Carolina are working with him to take the rotted sheetrock from a home built in 1922 that sits only a hundred yards down the road from his own home.

It’s reassuring to see that the workers that come to the area are only the supporting cast of the effort, and that the community has decided to spend its time swinging a hammer rather than reaching for handouts.

- Matt Grager

I was lucky enough, amidst my trips to Mexico this summer, to be stateside for the most American of holidays – the fourth of July. The team down here in Pearlington has accepted me as one of their own, and took me along for their Independence Day adventures.

After a wake up call of bottle rockets outside our bunkhouse, delivered by on of the project coordinators, Glenn, we were able to use a small five-person fishing boat to head out onto the river for the afternoon. We spent a few hours exploring the Pearl River and a few of its fingers that amble off amongst the lush greenery. The hope was to find a few alligators along the way, but the closes we came were some rotting logs with a similar shape.

When dusk came, it was time to build our relationships with the community and here in Pearlington there is only one place go – Turtle Landing. The restaurant and bar is the only local hang out in town. After Katrina devastated the area, the owner, Janine, kept the kitchen open to help feed the local residents whose homes had been destroyed. Because of this Glenn has made it his personal project to help rebuild her home and can often be found working there late into the night.

While at Turtle Landing, us guys, tried to show a little patriotism on the karaoke stage. Mark, Corey and I sang Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.” Our voices were off-key, but the song choice alone earned us a few sparing cheers.

Shortly after the fireworks display ended, Corey’s child-like excitement flared up as we watched two gators swim past on the bayou off the porch of the restaurant. Before we had time to realize our inexperience with alligators, the five of us were back out on the Pearl in the fishing boat armed a spotlight, seeking them out in the endless dark of a bayou midnight.

The alligators were much easier to spot at night, not only because there were more of them out, but because their eyes reflect the spotlight with a sparkling glow that can be spotted from over a hundred yards away.

Unlike our daytime trip, we saw an abundance of gators at night. Most of them were small, from three to five feet, but we were able to get close enough while blinding them with the light to nearly touch them. We watched another seven-footer glide slowly beneath our tiny boat as we killed the engine and paddled by.

By the time we docked the boat at 4:30 a.m. we were already recounting our gator stories, which Corey described as “like fishing stories, but more awesome.”

What better way to celebrate the nation we live in, than to slip into some of its local culture?

Matt

Josh and I arrived in Honduras after a pretty uneventful overnight flight–and by uneventful, I mean one that omitted all events aside from flying, including the event known as “sleep.”

No matter, though. We turned to the gift God has given us all to get through such times, and that gift is coffee. Best place we could find to drink it in Tegucigalpa was a Dunkin’ Donuts, which didn’t seem too cultural, but whatever. We found a bus headed to Danlí, which sits just past our destination–a town called Junquillo. Neither of us could really stay awake, but since they sat me in the middle front seat next to the driver (yes, such seats exist in Honduras) I sort of had to stay up to avoid falling into the gear shift.

We got off at a police checkpoint and waited for another bus, which was supposed to arrive at noon, then at 1 p.m., then at 1:30. It arrived at about 1:45, and every seat was full and the aisle was crammed. Josh and I ended up hanging out by the doorway, and the bottom line is that we made it OK.

A guy named Juan was waiting for us at a small ranch here owned by a friend of mine, and he brought us in and gave us a brief tour of the neighborhood. It’s a small, mountainous town that sits just high enough that it’s comfortably cool compared to the rest of the places we had been. We ate and then slept for about 12.5 hours, which was great.

Yesterday we went on another tour of the area to check out service projects and grab some photos. We met a 92-year-old man named Lucio who, as Juan put it, has to live “by the hand of God.” He can’t work, he doesn’t have family to support him, and with food prices rising rapidly–a few pounds of black beans now costs almost a day’s wages–he’s starting to suffer. Nonetheless, he appeared to keep a sense of humor about everything and told me that at 92, you have to be thankful for every day you have, since by rights you should have died long ago.

He had a homemade violin that he played fiddle style, from the hip, and it sounded quite good.

Everyone here struggles with food, but the main projects they keep pointing us toward are a kindergarten and a church that the community would love to see built. Water is also an issue–due to a lack of infrastructure, many people have to hike miles for their water during the dry season.

We’re in Danlí today–a city of about 250,000 people–to check hardware and food prices and to check for lodging and phone options.

God bless!

-Steven B.