Ministry

Count your blessings, name them one by one, count your many blessings see what God has done!

Every day is a blessing to us. We both celebrated birthdays in October; each new year brings new joys and adventures. When we look back and see that things have happened in each of our lives that could have radically changed or ended our lives we are thankful to be here, alive and well.

While we are still on restrictions, only allowed out once every five days, working with the local mayor’s office continues.  We packed about 100 bags of food to add to what the mayor’s team had packed and have made several deliveries. The city has a place called Caine that works with senior adults, widows or those unable to work any longer and young children with no father in the home. These people, young and old, walk miles to come to Caine once or twice a week to have fellowship with others, work on craft projects, receive a hot meal and life lessons. Many of the children’s mothers work in the market so this is a daycare for them. Unicef works with Caine to provide some food and clothing to be distributed among the attendees. 

We drove to the homes of several of these people who live a long way out of the city to take food bags. We drove 45 minutes to some of the houses, up and down mountains, over rocky roads with deep trenches then down trails to a little community of houses. One lady had twin girls and has made the long trip to town with the two little ones since they were six months old; they are now about two years old.

We are so thankful to be living in the city of La Esperanza.  Thank you to all who have prayed for our city and the leaders here.  They really have a heart to help their people and put a lot of effort into providing for every need. 

We received a call asking us to help transport some trees to a mountain village so we agreed to help.  When we arrived at the greenhouse there were 4 trucks being loaded with avocado trees.   

There were 270 trees in all. With trucks loaded we headed to a mountain village where the people had been notified and were waiting for the trees. They had been instructed to dig trenches for water around square plots of dirt.

Once there one of the men with us showed them the proper way to plant and stake the trees then had the men plant several trees to insure the work was done correctly. With this many trees they wanted to insure a proper beginning so that a bountiful crop could be produced to benefit everyone. Many of the villagers gathered to watch and learn with excitement knowing they would have avocados to eat and sell to others!

Gene’s Bible classes at Southwest School continue as the students learn more about who God is and His importance in their lives. Thank you for your continued prayers for these classes and students.

Later in the month we were able to take some food along with a doctor to visit some of the children of Caine who were reportedly sick. This time of the year as it begins to cool off and the rain comes, many become sick with “gripe”, the flu and cough. So the doctor went along with medicine in his bag, to check on the children. He had them stick out their tongue and say aah, he listened to their lungs and left medicine for each of them. It was clear to see they didn’t feel well and most had runny noses and clung to their mothers so we were so thankful to be able to help get the doctor to them so they didn’t have to walk down to town.   

On October 9 we celebrated “Day of the Nina” in a rural mountain village. Some of the leaders at Caine had prepared lessons for the girls and although this gathering was for girls, the boys came also. We took lots of games and divided the boys up by grade and played with them while the girls had their meeting. It was a fun day of celebration.

Somewhere at some time during our travels we got a nail in one tire. Thankfully when friends came over they noticed our tire was low on air and bulging out so Gene was able to drive to town and have the tire patched. I love the way God takes care of us, we could have been in the mountains far away from help…but God!!

In late September a sweet lady, Soraya Coffelt, who had gone on 2 mission trips with us many years ago, contacted us stating she was now working as a radio host.  She receives our newsletters and wanted to interview us for her radio program in the British Virgin Islands, called ‘Be convinced! Speaking the truth on today’s issues’. We were able to talk with her and share how God brought us together, sent us to Bible College then allowed us to come to Honduras. God does use regular, ordinary people.

Part of living in a third world country is bad water.  Many people here have to haul water from creeks or put out rain barrels to catch rain water while those of us in the city have city water. We are very fortunate to have a cistern (tank in the ground to hold water) and a pump to pump water up to an elevated water tank (ours holds 750 liters of water) so that we can have good water flow into our house most all the time (even without electricity).  The city water works on a system of 24 hours on, 24 hours off so those without a cistern have to plan ahead for water needs. The city water is not purified and not drinkable; it comes straight from catch lakes and is pumped down water lines into our houses. 

Twice a year we have to drain our cistern and water tank and clean it out. This year with all the lock downs and cancelled plans, we did not clean our tanks out on time so our faucet filters were being clogged with gook from the water, clogged so badly that the water would not run into the washing machine. We did find someone to help us get this taken care of and now the water flows freely.  We do not drink this water, it is for washing only.

One of our missionary friends has adopted 3 Honduran children. She is a teacher doing on-line teaching and is confined to home except for 1 day every 5 days.  We were blessed to have the children over on Sunday for a few hours giving her a break and chance to go to town and be on her on for a short time. The kids are so sweet, ages 2, 6 and 14. We had a fun time playing, eating and talking. Their mom is doing a great job teaching them Bible stories; we had a good discussion on King David.  

As we write this newsletter, we are now facing the results of really bad weather here in Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Hurricane Eta moved across Honduras this past week with pouring rain and strong winds.

This has brought much destruction to an already devastated people in many areas with flooding, blown down trees and torn down power lines. We thank you and praise God for His protection and blessings to us in La Esperanza. We have had power outages, loss of internet, light winds and rain so far and have heard that the main (and only road) to the neighboring city has been washed away. That means no trucks will be transporting food and goods to and from our city for a while. Our power was off 36 1/2 hours over the weekend, 32 hours Tuesday and Wednesday and is off again today, Thursday. We learned quickly that when you have power, charge up everything you have. Thankfully we have a couple of back-up battery packs, they are now at full charge also.

If you would, join us in prayer for all missionaries, this time of restrictions and bad weather has caused many inconveniences and frustrations. The San Pedro Sula airport has been flooded and we know that the homes of several missionaries have been flooded along with thousands of Honduran homes. There have not been any complaints just words of confidence that “God’s got this and we will make it”. As we face each day we count our blessings, name them one by one and see the great things God has done!