tour of the countryside

Last week was a busy one for us at work. We were out on the road almost every day, running to San Pedro for a meeting, visiting Mennonite churches in our region and meeting with some other people working for NGOs here in Santa Rosa to see if we can work together.

While it has been tiring in many ways, it has been a good way to see more of "occidente" or the western region of Honduras, while also giving me time to talk more with my co-workers.

Although we are still working with women's community groups in 4 different municipalities (see earlier post on work life) we have started to venture into a new project.

Ruth has a vision to work with Mennonite churches here in the western departments of Honduras because many of them are the most rural and impoverished of the denomination. There are 14 churches in Occidente, and we asked the regional pastors to help us identify 6 where we would start working first. Of course, all of them wanted to be included, but we have to keep reminding them that we have to start with a few, but our hope is to eventually work with all of them.

Once we had the pastors on board and decided on 6 (which has morphed into 8), we went to visit each congregation and do "prioritazation of needs" within each individual church. The idea was to have the members of each church identify what their needs are, whether in training, education, health, home needs or church improvements. The whole idea was to not tell them what they need (as many organizations come into a community and dictate what will be done)...and this kind of worked, for the most part. It was some times hard for my coworkers to not jump in with ideas when people didn't talk much, but overall I think we have a good idea of what each church needs.

This whole process has been interesting for me and there have been plenty of frustrations along the way. The largest challenge is that we don't have funds to carry out any projects within these churches, but my co-workers are convinced I will be hooking them up with that. It has been hard for me to bite my tongue against some pretty unrealistic expectations, or when I hear a lot of things I don't agree with...or when they do things in ways that I don't think are the most appropriate.

But I am learning to take these things one at a time and address them constructively, as I am able. On the good days, I think it's getting better. I have also really enjoyed visiting the different Mennonite churches, getting to know the pastors and personality of each church. It is a privilege to get to know and share in the global church.

Here are some photos from our visits last week:

Since I have the nicest handwriting, I get to be the recorder...and it means I don't have to talk as much :)

my boss, Ruth is the lady in the middle w/ the blue coat

yep, I get to work here!

you'll easily notice I am more than a head taller than EVERYONE in the photo (and below). Welcome to my gringa life in Honduras :)

mennonite family

It's the first day of February! Less than 5 weeks til one of my favorite friends, Paula, comes to visit...less than 3 months til Easter week (which is a big holiday here) and about 6 more months left on my SALT term.

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a retreat for young adults in the Mennonite church of Honduras. Lucky for me, it was just outside of Teguc, so I didn't have far to travel :) A few other MCC friends went along too, which was really fun. I wasn't sure how the whole thing would go, being that I only knew 6 other people attending the retreat...but in true Mennonite fashion, we were warmly welcomed and offered plenty of hospitality as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Friday night's worship service started around 7pm and lasted til about 11:30pm. We were instructed that devotions on Saturday morning would be before breakfast, at 6am. When this announcement was received with a round of groans, we were asked "Did we come here to sleep? Or have we come here to worship the Lord together?" ...in the rather quiet auditorium, the leader then said "Can I get an amen?!" ;) Apparently youth the world over hate getting up early. Who knew?!

So Saturday started early, which had us fighting sleep the entire day. There were devotions, breakfast, worship time and then 2 workshops. For the 2nd workshop, we (the MCCers) got to share with the country-wide leadership committee of the youth about our volunteer experience with MCC. We shared a bit about what MCC does, what service programs are available, and why we serve. It seemed like many of them were not familiar with what we shared, so it was great to be able to help connect MCC with the church in that way. Especially with the rising leaders of the Mennonite church.