Personal Reflection on Honduras

In June our family will have been in Honduras for 4 years.  We have been out of the United States for 5 year.  Looking back at my time here allows me some perspective of where we started and where we’ve come.

Armenia Bonito is the community we work in.  If you were to be an outsider looking in, the things that you would see would probably be:

When someone is diagnosed with cancer it is a death sentence, almost no one can afford the treatment – whatever type of cancer you have. 

A broken limb is repaired in almost a barbaric fashion, or just amputated because it's cheaper.

Childbirth is lonely, scary, and often times dangerous.  Life threatening emergencies almost always lead to death.

We see people living out lives in a fashion that would leave us wanting.  Collecting wood in the jungle to make their fire to cook their food and we turn a switch to cook ours. 

Trekking down to the river with their laundry to scrub their clothes on a wash rack or on a rock in the river, then to trek back to their house and hang them on a line.  We throw our clothes in a machine, flick a switch and get out fresh clean laundry in an hour.

We see women crying in desperation over their severely sick child, wondering if they will survive to see the next day, and we are allowed to sleep in a sleep chair in an air conditioned hospital room where nurses and doctors care over our little ones.

We get grumpy because we have to buy school supplies for our children when entering school.  Families here can’t even send their children to school because they can’t  buy the simple pencil they need to attend.

We, as a nation, receive food stamps to sustain us if we are in dire straights.  Here, people die on the streets from starvation because there are zero social services to help them out.

9 year old girls who never have the chance to be a child because they are too busy caring for their 18 month old sibling.  And we in the U.S. have children who complain because they have to wash the dishes.

So what do we, as missionaries who serve in this beautiful country see:

Children laughing and playing – just grateful to be alive.  Women who live every day to be a role model to their children, and give up everything to put food on the table.  We see people who are craving to know the God who is our Father for those who have no earthly Father, and for those who do.  We see people who know their lives will be harsh, short, but they live for the moment!  We see people who love their elderly and care for them, not as a burden, but as  a joy. 

 Oh how we can learn from these amazing, resilient people.  Oh how I love to give – to give the love that God has given to me.  But also how I learn to love life like those in Honduras.  What a blessing indeed to be living in and among these amazing people.