This week has been full of dealing with tragedy, and more tragedy. Snow, more snow! Now we have arrived at, cold and more cold.

>How blessed to know I have a God that cares.

 >Have a landlord that deals with my snow.  

 >Warm clothes, a working furnace and mittens😊

“As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.” Genesis 8:22

If you missed The Falls: chapter 1 part 1, go to my last post.

Enjoy……..Chapter 1 part 2

Risking sounding like a cheap romance novel when I say, it was a beautiful day in the mountains of Honduras, but it was a beautiful day in the mountains of Honduras. We all jumped joyfully out of bed. Today we would go up into the mountains and baptize about a dozen new converts. The place we went was about 5 hours from Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.   

If you have never had the privilege of being a part of a third world mission, you may not realize the transportation is by whatever will take you from point A to point B. It is mostly on old school buses. However, I have been in cattle trucks, one time I even road in the back of a dump truck in the wet slippery mountains of Guatemala. Today we were on a school bus; with bad tires, and no defrost. Which made it interesting in the rain for the 7-hour trip back down the mountain.

Tegucigalpa is the capital city of Honduras, and its center is set in a valley with the city going up the sides of the mountain. Every place you went seemed to be up the mountain.

We loaded up about 8:30 am. About 90 minutes after we had anticipated leaving. There really wasn’t a problem that I recall; it was just the way they live their lives in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Everything is later than schedule, no matter what you ask concerning time; the answer seems to be “In about an hour”.

As the team boarded the bus, everyone was excited at the prospect of seeing more of Honduras. To this point, we had ministered in the city. We went to schools, did street ministry, ministered at the open-air church. Went the day before to the city crematorio {dump}. We made a meal with vegetables, rice, and chicken.  There were about 250 men, woman, and children. I don’t know what I expected, but I don’t think I was ready to see entire families there. Some were three generations. There were little old men, and little old woman, and tiny babies. I am sure wherever they lived before; they were all together. Family is very central to life there. Sadly, the wealthy western world is trading family for what we think is freedom. Makes you wonder who is rich, and who is poor?

The dump may sound like the worst place to end up. But this was where people threw things away, things they could trade, sell, and yes even eat. Clothes they could wear or sell.

There were little grandmas the age of my mom, digging under large piles of garbage to find things to eat, sell or wear. The ones that had shoes on many didn’t match. I saw one man in his early twenties with one tennis shoe, and one woman’s dress shoe. As bad as those sounds, it kept his feet from getting cut as he searched through the trash.

It had rained the night before, correction it poured the night before. The dump was so muddy it was hard to keep your shoes on. We all looked at each other, wondering where we put our things. We came to bring a meal, some clothing, shoes, and to share the gospel. Balloons and puppets have no age boundaries. They touch lives anywhere from a fancy restaurant in America, to the city dump in a third world country. Everyone loves them. We made lots of balloon animals. Even the grandmas and grandpas would smile as they walked around in one of our balloon hats.

Just as we were trying to figure things out, once again, our God was true to His Word and He supplied our need. A big dump truck backed up and dumped a large load of wood chips. Not Carnage Hall but a dry place to set up our puppet stage. 

This was not only a dry place for our ministry team, but it also became an altar, as well. It doesn’t matter where we kneel, but that we kneel. ‘One day every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord.’ All of us must at one time bend our knee, whether in a castle or crematorio.

I remember one little grandma breaking apart a pallet,

with some metal object. Occasionally she would swing at these big turkey buzzards that lived there, along with stray cattle, skinny dogs.

It had rained and as the sun got higher in the sky, it was steamy. Someone of our team had taken some wet wipes and was passing them out. To see the joy as they washed their hot, sweaty faces. Why do we think it takes a lot of time, or money to touch someone? Mother Theresa was asked what she did day after day, week after week, year after year on the streets of Calcutta, India. To which she replied. “In each face, I see the face of my Lord and I minister to him.” Matthew 42:40 says: ‘When you do it unto the least of these (those who will never be able to pay you back), you do it unto me.’ I read a quote written across an office wall. ‘True success is planting a tree under whose shade you will never sit.’  (Indian Proveb)

There were kids the age of my grandkids. That grandpa had the same look in his eyes when he played with his granddaughter as my husband does when he plays with ours. I have had over 35 foster kids, and I dare say some of them would have lived in the dump, if it meant their family would be together. Some of them have never known that kind of love.

If it tears at our human hearts to see people in this situation, how it must crush the heart of God. The devil came to kill, steal and destroy. The good news is the gospel works for everyone. Your address doesn’t matter to God.

I looked around and was amazed at the human will and strength to survive. There shelters were made from cardboard, plastic, tin tied with wire; rope anything you could hook together with strength to hold. Umbrellas were treasured, they provided some shelter in the rain, and from the heat of the day.

Another little grandma sat on a broken milk crate with an umbrella wired to the back. She had a big smile on her face as she read the Book of Hope we gave her. As I looked around her, I didn’t see much to smile about. Happiness can be determined by your surrounding, but real Joy most assuredly comes from with in.

It would be a great thing to have brought them all home with me, but a greater thing is to bring them to the knowledge of a Savior who will be their redeemer, healer, and provider. An old rule says to “leave things in better shape than when you got there.” I pray to God that in some way, they were better off because we came.

I couldn’t help thinking as I looked across the sky, everything seemed to have a redeeming essence. The mountains were gorgeous, the sky was a warm summer blue, and the sun was bright. A reminder in those times we are unable to change what is going on around us, there is redemption in looking up.

As the bus jostled its way up the mountain, my mind went back to my childhood. These missions’ trips always remind me of my childhood. Now we weren’t a third world country poor, rather a large family, country poor. We had home grown food and hand me down clothes. There were times I would have liked to have had more to eat. Nevertheless, we weren’t hungry, and we weren’t naked.

I was baptized in a cranberry marsh at age 11. My dad was a elder in the church, so he was in the water helping. I can still hear mom’s verbal disapproval when he decided to take a little swim across the marsh after the ceremony was over.  Don’t know what God thought, but my mom was not happy.

I had 19 brothers and sisters. My mom was at home and my dad worked as a nursing assistant at the VA Hospital in Tomah for 30 years. We lived in a small town where everyone had big families, not large like ours, but big. Most families had 6 or 7 kids. Everyone had gardens, burned wood, and hung their clothes out to dry. We lived on the poor side of the tracks😊. I think there is a big difference in country poor and city poor. We had no money, but we had food, water and were warm if you stood close enough to the potbelly stove. It was a challenge on cold winter mornings to be the first to the stove. We had hot oatmeal most mornings. At special times we would have cream of wheat. I remember the week of payday not because it meant we had money, it meant we would have bananas in the Jell-O for Sunday dinner. I think we were the kind of poor that you only realize when you compare it to others.

When I see these farmers pulling their plows, I remember my dad wrestling that old plow behind the horse. The plow would hit a rut and flip over, sometimes taking him with it. He would get up, scold the horse, and go again. We soil wasn’t great, mostly powdered dirt. But it would grow good potatoes. Pasture the animals and give us lots of room to run.

In 1992, I went to Guatemala where we built a church in a village called Semataba. About 60 miles up the mountain from the capital Guatemala City. We went up the mountain in an old school bus, came down 6 days later in the back of a dump truck. We then walked down into a gully where the road had been washed out and climbed up into a pig truck.

In 1994, we built a church in Tryall, Jamaica. That trip was rustic, but the accommodation was better. We slept at a Bible camp, and road in a van. There were a million ants and a lot of goats. Billy goats, nanny goats and a lot of twin babies. They all woke very early, thus so did we. Our youngest daughter joined me on that one; it will always hold special memories.

So many times, while on these trips, I would love to have had my dad with me. Like I said, I grew up a lot like this. Nothing fancy and learning to make do with what you had. I don’t remember my dad buying new anything, he fixed a lot. He patched the tires, the screen door, sewed the shoe as well as polish, them every Saturday night. If he worked, it would be Sunday morning. Don’t remember many new shoes, but new polish and sometimes new shoestrings. We never had the best, but we had their best.

Before I left for Honduras, I called my dad on the phone to tell him about my trip. I’ll never forget that call for many reasons. He was hard of hearing and suffering from Alzheimer’s. I said, “Dad I am going on a mission’s trip.” To which he replied, “A fishing trip what are you doing that for.” I said, “No dad a mission’s trip.” He responded, “Oh a missionary trip, missionary trips are good things. Where are you going?” I replied “Honduras.” “Oh Hondura, huh is that by Guadalupe (Guatemala) where you were missionary before?”  To which I replied, “Yeah it’s pretty close Dad. ” I went on to tell him with Mom in heaven, I was counting on him to cover me with prayer. My Dad loved to pray, he said “I can do that”, and he started immediately to pray.

“Our heavenly Father, we thank you for this missionary opportunity, bless the people that are going, and the people of Hondura and Lord if there are any sick among them let them be healed.” The last semi coherent prayer I ever heard my dad pray for me, was a prayer of healing. How I held that prayer so tight in my heart, when I was many times in need of much healing.  

Chapter 2 Coming Soon 😊

Blessings! Thanks for Reading!