Hammond Street Medical Team

On March 14, we went to the airport to pick up a medical team of four people coming to do a week of medical work with us through the Hammond Street UCC in Bangor, ME. We didn't know what we were in for!

Jim, Becky, Ashley, and Brian pretending to be serious.

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

Gorham First Parish in La Masica

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.

Artie, David, and I had the opportunity to visit La Masica a couple weeks before Gorham came down to meet with the congregation and Pastor Alexi. They were ready and excited for the group from Gorham to come and for the opportunity to share in a week together.

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.

A mini PL reunion in Honduras with Eric C. Smith!

The Greenwich Connection

In the Partnership that we share with Honduras through the Maine Conference, UCC, we are also blessed to share a connection with the First Congregational Church of Greenich, UCC in Connecticut. They too, have a historic partnership here in Honduras as they built the clinic of Pinalejo. They have supported the cause of health care in Honduras for years.
It was a special treat to have Rev. Susie Craig visit us in Pinalejo in February with a group from Greenwich. It was a neat experience to come together here in Honduras as Maine and Connecticut both share partnerships here. We were especially blessed to have Debi Shaw, a nurse travelling with the Greenwich team, stay here with us for a night in Pinalejo to be able to help in the clinic for two days. We are very thankful for her as she has done a great deal to support the medical mission here in Pinalejo and the work of the interns through personal service and great generosity.
We are very thankful for the relationship that we share with Greenwich as we share in a common vision and passion for the ministries that take place in Honduras. We are very thankful for the Greenwich Connection!

Grace in El Junco

For Artie, David, and I, the two groups that came through Franklin Association (with wonderful additions from beyond those 7 churches) brought many loved ones and new friends. For me, it was a joy to have my mother, Marcia here for two weeks and a extra blessing to have my sister, Meridith, come for the first time. Artie and I both loved sharing this experience with a number of favorite nurses that we have worked with at Pilgrim Lodge as well as a number of campers that we have gotten to know. David and I had also worked with a great many of return participants through trips that we had been on in the past. We hosted them here in the house with us as El Junco is just half an hour up the road from us. Click the link to see the full story in photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/charles.eh/ElJunco.

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."

Preparations in El Junco

The first project on our calendar came in early February. Members of the Franklin Association would be coming to El Junco, Honduras to help in the rebuilding of a kitchen and to work on doing some renovations on the school.

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.

The inside of the school was very dark as the window casings had begun to rot out and be eaten by termites. Therefore, the windows had been boarded up. As there is no electricity in this community, there was not adequate light in the classroom. Franklin Association would be helping to repair the window frames to open up the windows and would also add a new coat of paint to brighten up the inside of the classroom.

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.

We, the interns, started the work of gathering materials and tools together. Unfortunately, it came during a time when the truck that we were meant to borrow broke down and we were left without transportation. This became a challenge as we had to get large amounts of materials up to El Junco as well as making a number of trips to San Pedro Sula to buy tools and groceries. We were able to borrow and bargian transportation for a number of weeks with a whole lot of negotiation. We were able to get everything ready in time and learned a great deal of patience as, in this country, that is of utmost importance as there are always circumstances (broken trucks, power outages that prevent internet communication, people who are late, and steep, dirt mountain roads that are hard to climb) that prevent obstacles beyond our control.

By February 8th, we were ready to meet the first 5 participants from Franklin Association that would arrive for the full two weeks at the airport.

Our first visitors

Our first visitors whom we had the pleasure of hosting were Rev. David Gaewski and Rev. Brad Hirst of Maine. They came for a week at the end of January. Both are members of the Honduras Partnership Committee. They helped us with some of our set-up for our work here in Honduras and took care of some Partnership business while here.
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.

Getting started...

After arriving in Honduras on January 12, 2007, the three of us took our first weekend to settle into our home in Pinalejo and to explore the village. Click this link to see photos of all that we found: http://picasaweb.google.com/charles.eh/TheFirstDays

The next week, we started right in working as we had our first two teams arriving in February. There was lots to set up and prepare.