The Honduras Effect

Pastor John Drage led 19 students from The Rock also to Choluteca, Honduras over Spring Break - most of whom had never been before. The team helped a family move into a new home at Casa Hogar Vida, the AIDS orphanage our partner church is building, installed a shower for a family, helped with the church expansion, and served in Limon at the Malnutrition Clinic. They also brought money down given from supporters for the church to use and buy a bus in Tegucigalpa, which they did. They bus will be used to transport HIV victims from Choluteca to Tegucigalpa for treatment, to transport mission trip groups and to transport families to Casa Hogar and to church each week.

Trips like these really can mess you up. In a good way.

Aimee visited Choluteca with a team a couple of years ago and her heart was broken. She had just been studying Spanish for a little while in school and after the trip, she fell in love with the Hispanic culture and the idea of serving in foreign missions. As many of you know, last Fall she spent three months serving with the GCLA (Great Commission Latin America) church as a full-time missionary. It was a life-changing experience that she will carry with her forever.

I went down last January with a team, never having been overseas in my whole life. I never laid my eyes on such physical poverty, never had dozens of children line up before me to receive a pair of shoes, never poured a concrete floor in a house whose family considered it a luxury, never stood under the gaping holes of a hut-like house while rain poured down and ruined what little a family had, never played soccer with bare-footed children while nearby broken glass and trash covered the ground, never sat in a prison having a broken conversation with a man who told me he shot and killed a man.

Trips like these flip your world upside down. Consider a recent excerpt from a journal post that Joey Soto, a young man who went on this most recent trip, writes:

"When I arrived in Honduras, it felt like a homecoming. My heart was finally at peace; I finally felt as though Christ was unveiling my lot in life for furthering His kingdom.

Whoever says the course of a week can’t change the course of a life has never met my God, the God of the Universe. The God that is always faithful. Always perfect. Always gracious.

Throughout the week, growing in community with fellow local Honduras believers and even those I went on the trip with, I felt as though God was giving me a taste of what he has in store for me.

While it would be irresponsible for me to speak for God and claim that my lot in life is as a missionary in Honduras, I feel as though God is leading me down the path of missions—something I may have never truly realized without a 10-day heart-renovating experience."

The guy has written three journal entries for his friends to see how much his perspective has changed. Also, please see this excerpt from a journal of Caley Palmer, another girl who writes about her conversation with a Christian couple who worked at the city dump for less than $3 a day:

"I had asked before if they went to church, and they said that they did. With Tyler, we asked, that if they were to die today, would they think they would go to Heaven. With utmost certainty, they replied, "Yes.". When we asked more questions, they had all the right answers, and I honestly believe they have a deep personal relationship with Christ. The one thing that they said, though, that I will never forget, was this statement: "it’s not good works or deeds that get us into Heaven. it’s our faith. Without faith in God, we have nothing." …WE. HAVE. NOTHING. This blew my mind! How could two people be so sure, so confident, passionate, sincere, and excited about their faith and hope in Christ and live and work at a city DUMP?!? It puts my faith to shame. Hearing their hearts and responses was so exciting and encouraging to hear, and immediately tears filled my eyes. I couldn’t stop crying. THAT moved my heart."

Trips like these change perspectives and lives.

So why go? Why do we send students to Honduras? There is definitely the need down there that we can make a small difference in each time we go down there for sure. People down there need love, need to know the generosity of their Christian brothers and sisters in America and that there are faces to match with generosity. Our trips no doubt have helped bless the area and the church in Choluteca.

But it's the experiences that we are most after. Seeing worlds collide, eyes open wide, young men and women put names, faces and stories to worldwide "injustices" they see and hear about on the news. The story does not end on the plane trip back to the States. No no. Dozens of students come back each year wondering what their experience means for their Christian walk. As John Drage put it, we ask the question, "What does responsibility look like?"

We read a Bible with about 2000 verses dedicated to social responsibility for the poor. Experiences like these charge students with a call to love, pray for and care for others who may not be as materially fortunate. It also charges them to see the spiritual poverty that we see all around us. The spiritual poverty among the complacent and apathetic, of which Mother Theresa called the worst kind of poverty.

Mission trips are meant to make a difference in the lives of those we serve, in our own lives and in turn, the lives of others in our community if we choose to make a difference where we work, study and live. These reasons and others are why we go to Honduras each year.

see how The Rock has been involved in sending trips to Honduras over the years.
Casa Hogar Vida
local news segment on our latest trip