Almost everyday this week while sitting around the table sharing a meal, at least one person has exclaimed “guys, we live in Honduras! How is this real life?!”
So many moments have taken my breath away since arriving at Catracho Missions, a gem hidden high in the mountains of Honduras and our ministry partner here.
A few of those breathtaking moments include:
Trekking through a field of wildflowers to see and pray over a project site.
Walking amongst seemingly endless coffee trees and learning from a man who has proudly spent his life planting, tending, and harvesting from those exact trees.
Watching clouds literally roll in and surround the very mountain we are living on.
Worshipping the same God in different languages–getting a glimpse of the global Church and a better understanding of the body of Christ.
Hearing that the first ministry event we helped put on served 180 women and children from the area!!
Life here has been sweet so far. And it’s also been hard. The learning curve of language and lifestyle feels like an uphill climb somedays (and somedays it is literally an uphill climb, back up the mountainside out of a field of wildflowers).
To keep things really real: I cried a little when my tent kept taking on water and I couldn’t figure out why. I questioned all my life decisions trying to inch my way into a freezing cold shower. I sometimes doubt if my body can carry me up the literal mountains we’re climbing. I pray fervently for protection from spiders and other creepy crawlies. I get frustrated with myself when my brain just can’t seem to remember the right Spanish conjugations for another minute.
But even amidst all of the hard and uncomfortable things, I wake up here with a lot of joy and a greater dependence on God than I ever had in the USA.
This week has honestly felt like a gentle introduction. We’ve been helping with small projects around the mission base and have been learning a lot about the projects in the community and the culture of this region.
Our ministry this month includes a variety of things, so I’m excited that each day will be a little different!
We’ll be doing some construction and other manual labor helping with projects and structures around the base. A few days a week, the girls on our team will be helping with a cooking class for the women in the community where we’ll teach about a woman from the New Testament and then learn a simple recipe together (this week we learned about Lydia and how to make flour tortillas!). We’ll continue hosting events for the children in the area to come hear Bible stories, play games, learn songs, and receive a meal. We’ll be helping clear land, prepare it, and plant vegetables to be harvested as a source of food and income for the base. We might host sports camps, help lead church services, visit homes of community members to help build relationships for Catracho, or find ourselves simply waking up and asking the Lord what He has for us in each new day.
To wrap it all up, month one so far has been a roller coaster! Life feels a little bit like a dream. I’m being stretched and am learning new things every day!
Today we are in town for an “adventure day” (you can imagine how simple life is when driving over an hour to go to town for electricity and a supermarket is an adventure), so I’m able to post this update! Yay!
Please pray for:
- my fundraising — I’m about $4500 away from being fully funded!! Would you prayerfully consider making a donation at the top of my blog?
- the health and safety of the teams here. We are all healthy and we are all safe, but small things can become big things quickly if we make poor decisions, so pray also for our decision making.
- relationships here to continue to grow — for clarity across language barriers, for authenticity and encouragement in conversation, and for unity of the body of Christ.
Thanks for following along, friend. I’m excited to continue to grow and learn here and continue to see God do what only He can do.
