Sunday

Strangely enough most people were up early this morning, even after an extreme loss of sleep Friday night. There are two medical brigade teams this week (Team A (Us) and Team B (from Lake Zurich, IL and from California) so there are 60+ people at the Mission House. The two teams will be going to separate sites on the four days of clinics, but we are doing some combined ministry training and preparations. Our group devotional time however is separated by teams and Pastor Don led Team A’s session. In previous trips Pastor Don has led he has focused on different body parts (eyes, ears, feet and hands) and how God uses each part of our lives as we serve him. This week, Don is keying in on our hearts and asking God to do spiritual heart surgery on us.

Dios Fuerte

For church today, we went to the church where we will be holding the medical clinic on Thursday and Friday. As plans would have it, the church we attended had already planned a “camp” for the congregation and so many of them were not in attendance this morning. We still had a great time of worship and looking into God’s word and were able to meet a number of people from the church whom we will work beside later in the week.

Unfortunately, and fortunately, there was a car accident after the church service. This church is at the top of a hill (most of Tegucigalpa is on a hill of some type) at the end of a dirt road. The bus that the team rides on, was unable to navigate all the way up the hill because of it’s steepness as well as parked vehicles. The team had already boarded the bus and were getting ready to take off when a car ran into the rear end of bus. Small car against big bus…car loses. There were several people in the car who were shaken up, but no serious injuries. This is the fortunate part of the story, for had the bus not been in the middle of the road, the car could have travelled a long ways further down the hill and potentially injured a lot of people who were

walking or standing along the road. The bus stopped the car and prevented the potential for further injury. It took a bit of time and effort to separate the car from under the back of the bus, but that task was accomplished, the medical staff with the team attended to the minor injuries of those in the car and we headed off to spend time in the park in the center of the city.

The views from the park are spectacular and it is fun just spending time with the team, buying baskets, soccer jerseys and woven bracelets from a vendor. We then headed to the restaurant “El Patio” where we had chips and beans and cheese and salsa and French fries and steak and chicken and cokes/tea/juice and rice and flan. Everyone got enough to eat and the foot was great as usual.

We returned to the Mission House after lunch to pack up two trucks worth of supplies for the two teams using a very efficient process that moved 30 trunks, tents, dentist chairs, tables and other items onto both trucks in about 30 minutes. The teams then spent the rest of the afternoon in conversation, getting materials ready for children’s ministry, counting medicine out from bulk containers into bags for distribution and playing hacky sack followed by dinner consisting of tacos and red Jello ^TM.

At our evening meeting Kent Fuzzell from WGO shared with both teams about cross-cultural ministry and options and tips for talking with people in evangelism. We also got our assignments for tomorrow, our first day of ministry.

The team covets your prayers as we prepare our hearts, minds and bodies for ministry. We especially ask that you pray for our team members in evangelism that God will through the Holy Spirit give them the insights to understand the needs of the person they are sharing Jesus with and to have God’s scripture, words and thoughts to meet those needs. Also pray that God will prepare the hearts of the Hondurans who come to the clinic that they will be ready to respond to the gospel.

Additional photos can be found at:
http://s1087.photobucket.com/user/livinggrace1500/library/Honduras%20July%202013