Other than an exploding shower event this morning, it was a restful and good start to the week.  Showers here are nicknamed widow makers – for good reason.  My shower this morning started with a bang and a bunch of sparks and smoke.  No more hot water for me, and than they Lord I didn’t get hurt!  But, we have a new shower now, so fingers crossed that one doesn’t try to kill me!  

Sunday was a mixed day of church and visiting with our friends here down in Honduras, setting up the clinics and then a little down time to rest and get ready for the week.  

We began our day at church in La Ceibita where we were greeted by the kiddos from the community, as soon as we got out of the vans.  They always have the cutest smiles and the best hugs!  Love all these kiddos so much.  So many of them have grown up with the mission are turning into young folks helping in the church.  Church was spiritual and fulfilling with a clear passion and faith.  I love to listen to the way the Hondurans say prayer and I’m always moved by it.  They are uninhibited and heartfelt.  At the end of the service the local team and North American team were blessed for the week of work ahead.  

Lunch was made and served by the church and were treated with home made tamales and fresh fruit.  Then it was time to get to work. 

The church began to transform into a clinic with exam spaces and a pharmacy, VBS and health kits were being prepared and the team working in the local school spent time setting up optical and talking over logistics for the week. I will be at the school in La Ceibita where the 400 kids will each receive a health exam, ear cleanings and lice checks as well as vision screenings.  At the health screening, if a child is deemed sick or needs to see a doctor for any reason, they will be transported to the clinic at the church where we have a team of doctors seeing patients all day long.  

At the school, It is our hope that we manage to see every child here this week and likely some adults too.  We will be busy!  I have not done vision screenings on as many children as this before, so it will be interesting to see how it goes.  

I’m always amazed and touched by the sense of community that there is here and how much people care for one another.  It truly is a village and community is important.  That’s what it is all about and it’s such a blessing to be part of it.  The people here are kind and have compassion.  It is because of them and their faith and trust in God that good things will happen this week.  Sometimes miracles are just people with good hearts.  I truly believe that and I believe we can all have an impact on the world for the greater good. Even if it’s just a small thing.  

Keep us in your prayers this week for a safe, productive and blessed week! 

Shelley

Kiddos receiving a blessing for the week 

Me with my little Honduran girl Valery 

The School team with the principal and some parents 

Talking logistics 

Unloading the truck with all our supplies 

Kids performed for us at church today 

Homemade tamales for lunch 

More selfies with Valery 

Blessings 

Me with my bestie Bessy! 

The team at church this am 

The shower that tried to kill me

John giving a blessing 

Setting up the clinic

Piled in a van with Pastor Orlin and Juan 

Honduras

Love the hugs and greetings from the kids 

 Just a short post.  Good day of travel with few hiccups and travel delays.  Customs was a struggle again but thank the Lord we made it through with all our stuff.  Seems to be a struggle that is not necessary though.  All good.  We finally got on the road around 3pm and arrived the hotel around 11pm. Everyone is exhausted and looking forward to some sleep tonight.  The folk from Illinois have been traveling for 24 hours.  Long day..

Tomorrow we will be rested and ready to see our family here in Honduras. 

On Saturday, 26 people from various places in the US will board a plane to Honduras.   Its time for our annual medical mission.  There has been a lot of prep work, collecting of donations, planning and logistics to coordinate.  But its time to get our hearts and minds in a place of spiritual openness.  Something that can get lost in all of the busyness of preparing for mission.  By spiritual openness, I mean opening our hearts to possibilities, learning and growth.  Being willing to be part of something bigger than ourselves.  Listening and accepting people where they are at in their own spiritual journey and simply opening our hearts to the possibilities and loving each other for who we are.  

As with a lot of things in life, our spiritual journey is often not linear, but more often is cyclical.  Personally I can attest to that, sometimes convinced I am on a straight and linear path and then something comes along to spin me in circles again.  The more accepting I am of that “path” I think the more I grow.  When we get thrown off our path, is often the time we learn the most.  Whatever the case may be, when I am in Honduras, I know there will be things that cause me to question, cause me to doubt and cause me to struggle.  But, I know that it is a time of growth for me and there will be so many blessings that I witness, I won’t be able to recount them all.  Being open minded spiritually to all the things that are laid out in front of me, behind me and beside me, is my goal.  

Being able to be part of this is a blessing by itself.  I love to be there and it grounds me.  I have met so many great people in Honduras and can’t wait to be with them all again.  

Yes, there’s still packing to do, and logistics of travel, but I’m doing it with and open heart and mind.  

My goal with this blog is always just to share my experience, spur good conversations and thought and to encourage others.  There will be typos, there always are!  I usually write at the end of the day, and I’m usually exhausted – so please excuse those typos and errors.  I have also been known to fall asleep mid blog!  Sometimes the internet is spotty and I can’t post or I get frustrated that I can’t put into words what I’m feeling.  Regardless, I hope that you can get something from this blog and enjoy reading about our journey. 

More to come, we leave Saturday for Honduras, keep our team in your prayers for safe and smooth travel.

Blessings, Shelley. 

This week has certainly been an interesting mission with lots of ups and downs from all aspects of mission and at home happenings. Good things and bad things.  All week long we have been adapting to circumstances, holding each other close at times when things weren’t so great, and celebrating the good things.  Between sick kids at home, loss of family members, orphaned children in Honduras dealing with terrible traumatic events, and all the “regular” things that happen on mission its been tiring.  But, there has also been much to celebrate and it is always clear that God is with us every step of the way.  There’s no way to explain in words how we all feel when we are down here and how you can see the power of God in every step.  From getting the feeding center one step closer to opening up, to giving over 250 people readers and prescription glasses, to cooking classes, snuggling with kiddos, giggling with kiddos and worshiping with our extended family and so much more, our hearts are full. 

Today’s journey from Tocoa to San Pedro Sula, was no exception to the crazy week we have had!  Several team members and a few translators got up and left at 3am to get our team member on an earlier flight home, due to her loss of a family member.  The rest of us were to follow and meet up in San Pedro Sula later on in the day, where we spend the night close to the airport.  The first group were probably about 3 hours into their journey when they came to standstill traffic.  Only to find out that there was a workers strike and the road to the airport was closed until 2pm.  There was nothing they could do and as they sat in traffic at a standstill, they worked through the options and changing flights once again.  The second team got on the road at around 8am and learned of the issue with the road closure.  There was not much point in trying to get more than a few hours into the drive as we would just be sitting at a standstill in the traffic.  So, the two groups met up at a Dunkin’ Donuts and had coffee.  We then headed over to the beach for a few hours and had lunch there before getting back on the road.  The ocean is beautiful. I always love spending time there.  It was a nice relaxed couple of hours.  

We then hit the road again and by the time we got an hour or so into the drive, the strike had cleared up.  Still the drive seemed to take forever tonight and we didn’t end up getting to San Pedro Sula until about 7:30pm due to more traffic on the roads.  Normally we would head out on our last night and have a team celebration dinner, but we were all exhausted!  So, we checked into our rooms and met up for a quick bite in the hotel restaurant.  Tomorrow we fly home to the states.  

It truly is a blessing to be part of this mission and to experience the things that we do when we are here.  I love all the people who have come into my life down here and feel very connected to them.  Each time I come, I get to know people a little bit more.  Its a beautiful country with beautiful people. Filled with deep faith.  

Didn’t take too many pictures today as most of the day was spent in the vans.  But there are few beach pics!  

We head home tomorrow, but a little piece of our hearts stays here and we will be back again soon. 

With love, and goodbye for now Honduras. 

 At least in optical it was a very busy day, but the other areas we are working in were also busy!  The construction crew was working really hard to get the projects finished today so that we can get the feeding center up and running.  There were people shopping for supplies for the La Ceibita feeding center and Mike was meeting with people planning for the future.  So people were kind of all over the place today.  Lots to do and lots to finish for the day. 

Optical was crazy!  Lots of people and some really interesting cases.  Some funny moments and some amazing moments.  The funny moment was with an older lady.  We scanned her eyes and gath

ered a few different pairs of glasses.  When she tried on the first pair she looked at me and burst out laughing. She literally giggle like a little girl for 5 minutes and we finally got out of her what she was laughing at.  She said I had two noses! Lol.  Clearly those glasses were not going to work for her.  So after we all laughed a lot together over my double noses, we finally found a pair that worked.  She walked out giggling again.  

My amazing moment was finding a pair of glasses for a young man with down syndrome.  The pair of glasses that worked for him were pulled by mistake and miraculously worked perfect for him.  That was a goose bump moment. 

We had a crazy day but it was a good day.  

After clinic was done we packed up all the glasses and equipment and then walked over to the feeding center were they were preparing a celebration for us.  A lot of church and community members were there and that was fun to see.  We even had a cultural dancing group come.  Lots of speeches, good byes and prayers and after some good food, we got in the vans to head back to the hotel.  A short devotion and planning for tomorrow and we were heading to the showers to clean up and go to bed.  

One of our team members had a tragic situation and lost her sister today.  We are praying for her and hope she can find peace.  Tomorrow she is leaving us early to catch a flight back home, while the rest of us will spend the night in San Pedro Sula. 

I’ll write more tomorrow for reflections of the week and misc stuff but for now its good night!

 There are no coincidences in Honduras is a phrase that was spoken this morning at devotion and has been on my mind a lot today as work through our various different missions here in Honduras.  It seems like every time we come down here, something big or small is placed on our hearts and in our path.  We don’t always know what it means, or what to do with it, but we know it wasn’t a coincidence that it was put there.  Yesterday (Tuesday) Mike our team leader, was at the Cricol and our mission coordinator pointed a house and said, I think that was on the news a few days ago.  Turns out that house was an orphanage and was on the news because 6 people were arrested due to sexual abuse of the children.  Now there are 2 good people taking care of 28 children and now the orphanage is lacking funding.  That same afternoon, out of the blue, some government officials came to us and asked us for help.  Not a coincidence, God put this in our path and it has been heavy on our hearts.  These poor, already broken children, have been traumatized and are now potentially lacking some basic needs due to lack of funding.  What can we do for them in the short term, and how we help them in the long term?  We don’t know, we just know we need to and can’t ignore this call.  How this plays out we don’t know but we will do what we need to do to help where we can. So, please keep these kiddos in your heart as you go about your day.  They need our support.  

Today was a good day in the mission field though with lots of progress being made in the feeding center with the children’s dining furniture, shelving for the pantry and other projects.  Lots of helping hands have been making the work go fast and even strangers offering tools and offering to help.  Its a great community.  

Several of our team members were invited today to be part of the Honduras Independence Day parade.  So that was a treat, to be part of that.  

We continued seeing patients, this time in Tocoa and today was our busiest day yet.  I believe around 73 people seen.  Some really tough cases with extremely poor vision too.  But, we managed to get glasses for just about everyone who needed them.  Readers or prescription.  People are so very grateful for the ability to see when they didn’t have that before.  You can’t help but smile at the lit up faces when they pop those glasses on and see clearly for the first time.  At least today we got to be in air conditioning for the day which was great.  The CRIE (school) is letting us use their classrooms since the kids are off of school due to the Independence Day celebrations.  

Tonight we went to the church in La Ceibita and we all did communion together, which was so beautiful.  Pastor is still in training and is not able to do communions, so Mike and John were the ones who officiated the communion.  Afterwards we were given dinner made by the ladies of the church and just before, Valery came and jumped in my lap.  We sat together all throughout the dinner and I shared my plate with her. That little girl clearly loves vegetables!  I let her eat as much as she wanted.  She needs it more than I do.  

It was a great day.  I just love coming here and I love the people I meet along the way.  You can’t help but feel the love and faith in the people here.  

Tomorrow is our last work day.  It has as usual, flown by.  I will be sad to leave, but also glad to get home to my own family in the USA.  Especially Josie, who has been really sick with Covid.  She’s better now, but it was hard to be gone while she was sick.  

Time for rest!