Mission Lazarus

I've been pretty quiet lately, mostly because of my most recent trip to Honduras. This year, we had a total of 37 people from my church on the trip.  That took a whole lot of planning!  I was there for 8 days and I've been super busy since I got back.

There hasn't been much cooking, crafting, or exercising, but I'll update on all of those things later.
For now, I want to share more about Mission Lazarus.  This is my fourth time to go within a year, the most recent trip being in March.  I shared a little about ML after that trip.  The more I go the faster I want to get back.  The people that we work with there are so filled with joy. It's amazing how much blessing I receive every time!  This trip included construction, food and clothing distribution, school supply distribution, and shoe distribution.

I had a chance to participate in most of those activities, but my main job all week was as a crew leader for food and clothing distribution in a village called Renacer Marcovia.  What  a blessing!

Carlos and his family.  I worked with him all week.

I've done this distribution before, but never with so much of the local church involved.  This was the first time I felt like we were merely helping the church - the way it is meant to be.  When we arrived at the building on the first day, I thought there must be some sort of meeting going on.  There wasn't.  They were all there waiting for us so that they could walk through the village leading us to the homes where food was needed most.  The men assisted in carrying food and clothing.  The women helped me with toys.  They knew how many children and how old at every single home - over 70 homes total by the end of the week.
The preacher preached and the villagers listened.  It was beautiful.
I feel completely inadequate trying to describe this experience.  This may be a blog that is edited over and over again as I process more of this trip.

I spent Monday through Thursday with Santos, the preacher, and his church members.  We spent the first two days in Renacer Marcovia and the last two days in a smaller village nearby where Santos has started preaching on Thursdays.  They have become part of his flock.  At the end of that week, he had the privilege of baptizing them into the family!  So many stories came from those four days, but I'll have to share them in separate posts later.

Here's what we had that week:
-over 2,000 pounds of food
-countless bags of clothes
-hundreds of toys
-zero Hondurans who were fluent in English
-zero North Americans who were fluent in Spanish
-a whole lot of choppy sentences in broken English/Spanish
-thousands of smiles, hugs, and sign language made up on the fly
-ONE GOD

We all serve that ONE GOD.

ONE GOD made all of this happen.  Not me, not Santos, not Mission Lazarus.

ONE GOD