In March, David, Artie, and I became the proud owners of 2 chickens. I am holding Susan Marsala and Artie is holding Shakira Victoria.
They produce beautiful eggs for us.
We immediately put them to work. They processed all of the medical records left behind by Hammond Street and got them into our computer system...hours worth of work! Thank you!
They went along with us to El Junco where we had some medical follow-up and business to take care of.
Jack, a member of the Honduras Partnership Committee, was delegated the photographer for the week.
Becky was a willing helper. They helped us to inventory all of our tools and we got a number of donations sorted out.
We went exploring in the mountains and stopped by a school in Rio Blanco where we dropped off some donated school supplies.
We went to La Vueltoza, Honduras in the mountains: the site of the 2007 Pilgrim Lodge Mission Project. PL will be sponsoring the Honduras Partnership project to rebuild 9 houses in this community. This house is one of them. Jack and Becky will be resident first-hand witnesses and experts about this project at Pilgrim Lodge this summer. They were a great help with taking photos and getting information that we can use for the presentation we'll do with the campers.
We worked them so hard that after a week, we had to send them back to college. Both are students at Colby.
Jim, Becky, Ashley, and Brian as their true selves.
We had a wonderful week with these four beautiful people. Jim and Brian, our two doctors, did 654 consultations in a week with the support of Becky and Ashley who kept all of the patients moving and sent them home with their prescriptions and smiles on their faces.
This group was a joy to work with as they did their work with passion and kept the days filled with laughter. We worked out of the clinic in Pinalejo and did a half day in Montanita, a nearby mountain community. They had a wonderful sense of humor about the challenges of the week including some moutain adventures and a truck named "Misery."
After we dropped them off at the airport, the house was very quiet. They were certainly a treat to work with. Click the link to see pictures of our week together in Honduras: http://picasaweb.google.com/charles.eh/HammondSt
Members of the First Parish Church of Gorham, UCC came to La Masica, Honduras in February of 2007 where the local E&R church has untertaken a huge construction project which includes both building a new, bigger church around the current pastor's house while beginning a new pastor's house in a different corner of the property. 
Gorham arrived to an empty space that will become a house.
When they left, they had laid the foundation for the house. It took a great deal of cement mixing and hard work, but they made great progress getting this house started. Aside from their construction work, they had a rich experience with Pastor Alexi and the members of his congregation in La Masica. They continue a relationship together and will see more of the project realized as a Westbrook-New Gloucester trip in 2008 will help with the second phase of the project.
While construction took shape, clinics took place, sewing and cooking projects happened, lessons with students were shared, and the school began to glow with a fresh coat of paint, names were learned, laughter was shared, relationships formed, and a sense of community between the people of Franklin Association and El Junco emerged and blossomed. Physical projects and goals were a means to bring this group of gringos to this remote mountian community, but there was divine work happening at the same time.
From one pastor to another, it was learned feel forgotten by the rest of the world. They are an isolated community of between 160-200 people. They suffer from poverty and lack of adequate nutrition and healthcare. They are a tight community on their own, but they do not appear on maps of Honduras. They feel neglected by the nearest E&R church and wider organized E&R church was unaware that an E&R church existed in their community. In their challenges there on the mountain, they feel forgotten by Honduras, by the world, and had started to question if they had been forgotten by God.
Julio Cesar Maldonado, the pastor of the E&R church of El Junco and important leader in that community shared some of his struggles as a minister with Rev. Marcia Charles, the trip leader on behalf of the Franklin Association. She reassured him that she too, was the pastor of a church in Industry, Maine that often is not found on the map. But, they had come all the way from the United States to be with their brothers and sisters in Honduras. They had not been forgotten by the world or by God. The two weeks ended with a shared worship service together in the E&R church. The president of the E&R church, Rev. Feliciano Rivera showed up in El Junco that evening not knowing there would be a service (divine intervention perhaps?) and learned of the E&R church there in the community and affirmed Pastor Julio and his role in the church. Participants from both sides ended their time together in worship with the grace of God all around. Pastor Julio had asked Marcia to share a bit in worship. It turned out, that they both chose the same passage of the Bible to share together that evening...Psalm 133.
"How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! It is like precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there, the Lord ordained his blessing, life forevermore."
The school, which has about 35 students, has a feeding program funded by the government. The mothers of the community take turns cooking lunches for the students as it is often the only adequate meal that they recieve during the day. However, the kitchen that they have to work with (above) was very basic and a challenge to use on rainy days. 
As soon as we got to Honduras, our first order of business was to make contact with the people of El Junco to form a relationship with them. The people in Maine had no way of communicating with them and, in turn, the people of El Junco did not have the resources to organize all of the materials, tools, and logisitics that would be necessary to make the project possible. Therefore, our first step was to go to El Junco and create a "confianza" or trust with the people there. We met with the town council to discuss the project and would go up to the community weekly to meet with the wider community to start the work of getting to know them, learning their ideas, and preparing them for the two weeks that a large group of gringos would be working with them in their community. On both sides, for the people of Franklin Association and the people of El Junco it was important to work on this project together as all recognized that it would benefit the wider community. 
While the Mainers were planning activities that they could do with the students, a sewing project to share in relationship with the women of the community, gathering supplies for the school, and planning clinic days to meet the medical needs of the people in El Junco, the people of El Junco prepared themselves to host the gringos in the community center for the clinic days, make space for the students that would be displaced from the classroom while the painting was happening, and deconstructing the old kitchen to make space for the new one that they would build together. 
In between the work, we had time to cook good food, sample candy made of guava and coconut, play cards, and practice tortilla-making. 
We prefer to call them "maps" as we are still not quiet able to make circles. 
Many thanks to Rev. Gil Healy for his beautiful photography.
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