What Our First Week of Ministry Looked Like

Hello from Honduras, or should I say Hola 😉

We have officially been in Honduras for a week now and it has been such a sweet time. We have fallen in love with our ministry partner and his family. They have made us feel part of their family and welcomed us into the community. Each day our ministry and the focus has looked different which keeps us on our toes with being flexible. 

A week in and we’ve enjoyed building connections with our ministry partners and members of the church, bucket showers (that’s right, our main form of showering has been using water from our pila which got concerningly low), learning Spanish, and itching our bug bites 24/7

Now I want to share a preview into our first week of ministry:

Sunday: Field Day and Church 

The church we are partnering with recently bought some land to eventually build a new church on. We have been partnering with them to help clear the land for it. This has looked like picking up trash, raking, using a machete (I think I enjoyed that a little too much), breaking down previous structures on the land, and screaming from seeing tarantulas, scorpions, snakes, and rats. We ended the night with church and at the point I was really wishing I knew more spanish.

Monday: Adventure/Ask the Lord day

Each week we have an adventure/ask the Lord day. We went to the closet city to run some errands and pick up groceries and spend some team time together.

Tuesday: Sabbath

Tuesday is our Sabbath day, where we get to find rest in the Lord. This looks different for each of us but we each did things that filled our cup for the upcoming ministry week. I am so excited about this and learning true rest.

Wednesday: VBS/Feeding Center/Church

Twice a week our ministry partners provide a lunch at the church for the children in the community.  We were able to help by playing games with the kids, retelling a story from the Bible, and preparing the food. It’s been such a blessing getting to know some of the kids in the community and having them be familiar faces as we are out and about.

Thursday: Field Day/Youth Event

We had another field day preparing the land for the new church to be built on. We went in the morning which was such a blessing because that day was mucho calor (very hot). Later that night the pastor had a youth event at his house for the community ages 11-30. People on my team are very musically talented – playing the guitar, violin, and singing. We spent some time in worship, praying over the youth, and practicing our spanish through conversations with them.

Friday: VBS/Feeding Center/Church

This day looked very similar to Wednesday with the schedule. BUT what was so cool was seeing the same kids from earlier in the week. It’s so sweet to see that relationships can be built and love can be shown even through a language barrier. The night ended with church service which my talented teammates lead worship in again. Let me tell you, there is nothing more beautiful than worshipping the same God but in different languages. 

Saturday:

We had something slightly different on our agenda than how the day turned out. We originally planned on door to door evangelizing then going to a home church at night. We were going to be going with some ladies from the church and let’s just say things didn’t exactly go as originally planned, but you know flexibility is key. So here we are, not sure where to go, not sure where exactly this home church is or where the people are. Also just need to own that we were the ones behind schedule but we had no way of communicating with the ladies. We begin walking and praying over the town. We end up chatting with this couple who kindly brought out chairs for all 8 of to sit at. We begin making conversation with them through our wonderful teammates who are fluent in spanish (praise the Lord for them). Then all of a sudden, two people on a motorcycle stop where we are and say that the people (the home church) were waiting for us. Keep in mind this is the first time we’ve seen these two people and they tell us to follow them. Ummmmmm sure???? So we follow them for about 1/4 of a mile and there were the ladies from the church who were waiting for us before they started their service. One of them spoke beautifully about living as if we are alive in Christ and not dead. Then afterwards they opened up their house to us and made us supper (I’m now a big fan of homemade tortillas) 

One week in and it still doesn’t seem real. My team is absolutely incredible and have such big hearts for Jesus and serving others. Seeing what this ministry is all about and how they are moving in their community is inspiring. I am very grateful for spending two months in this place.