I'm Baaaaaaack!
Actually, I've been back for a while. I just haven't written yet.
The reason why is that I wanted to talk about my trip; I just didn't know quite how to do it. In my last post I said that I would be going out of town for about a week. The thing I didn't tell you was that it was pretty far out of town.
I actually went on a mission trip to San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and I loved it.
We stayed at an orphanage called Faith Home that is run by Baptist missionaries for abandoned and abused children. There were about 90-100 kids who resided there. This place puts these children through the sixth grade (which is like a high school diploma here in the U.S.), teaching them Spanish as well as English, helps them decide what they want to do after that, and then helps them with public school or work or college or whatever else they need. It sets these kids up for a brighter future instead of one of extreme poverty like the majority Honduran citizens are in. These children are actually seen as spoiled by Honduran standards, which is pretty crazy if you think about our definition of spoiled here.
I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed getting to spend time with the kids there. We got to do Bible School with them, play games with them, and go to church services with them. Hearing them sing in church was one of the highlights of the whole trip, too.
I absolutely loved all of them and wanted to take several home with me. And it's not like they were all perfect little angels; they were mostly just normal kids who went to school and played and laughed and occasionally got in trouble. But to see them in this positive environment knowing what they had previously been through just really touched my heart. It made me feel for the many children out there that we don't know about who get abandoned or abused and can't get away from it like these kids did.
During the course of the week, we also went to public schools for Bible School. They were pretty different than our schools here. The school was fenced in with a guard at the gate because kids who didn't go to school there were hanging onto the fence wanting to get in. There was also no air conditioning. For recess, there was usually one big concrete slab in the middle of the school where they played different sports, but that was all the recess equipment they had.
Each school had a small concession stand called a pulperia where they could buy sodas or snacks. In order to save the glass bottle for money, the pulperia poored sodas into plastic bags for the kids to drink, so it was common to see kids running around with a little plastic bag full of water or soda in their hand. The classes were also pretty large compared to ours. Most of them had up to 60 kids per teacher.
Something that was interesting to me about education in Honduras was that if a child doesn't complete the sixth grade by the time they are 18, then none of their schooling counts. They are just seen as uneducated, and there is no way for them to go back and complete it once they turn 18.
One girl at Faith Home was 15 and only in the second grade, so there was no way that she would have been able to complete the sixth grade by the time she was 18. So the house parents there were teaching her how to clean and cook and take care of chilren, so that she could be a housekeeper whenever she got out on her own.
The area that we stayed was extremely beautiful, too. The grounds of Faith Home were in a valley in between Mountains and waking up to that every morning was amazing. I'll try to post some pictures of it soon.
Overall, this trip was something that will forever be special to me. I can't explain how it felt to be down there in the midst of it all. It was eye-opening and it gave me perspective. I felt just how small I was in the world, but at the same time that I could still make a difference. Me and my problems didn't seem like such a big deal anymore, because helping these people and showing them love was more important.
I have a quote written down from Bono of U2 and it kept running through my mind more and more as the trip progressed. He said, "What more could you do with your life than change the world, make it a better place." I felt like that's what I was doing, that that's what I could do and that's what I wanted to do.
This trip was humbling and heartbreaking and amazing and a million other things all at the same time. And I loved every bit of it.
I had a hard time trying to write a post about this trip because it is something that is very special to me. I felt like I couldn't do it justice with words. And maybe I really can't, but I do want to be sure and write something about it since it meant so much to me.
The reason why is that I wanted to talk about my trip; I just didn't know quite how to do it. In my last post I said that I would be going out of town for about a week. The thing I didn't tell you was that it was pretty far out of town.
I actually went on a mission trip to San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and I loved it.
We stayed at an orphanage called Faith Home that is run by Baptist missionaries for abandoned and abused children. There were about 90-100 kids who resided there. This place puts these children through the sixth grade (which is like a high school diploma here in the U.S.), teaching them Spanish as well as English, helps them decide what they want to do after that, and then helps them with public school or work or college or whatever else they need. It sets these kids up for a brighter future instead of one of extreme poverty like the majority Honduran citizens are in. These children are actually seen as spoiled by Honduran standards, which is pretty crazy if you think about our definition of spoiled here.
I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed getting to spend time with the kids there. We got to do Bible School with them, play games with them, and go to church services with them. Hearing them sing in church was one of the highlights of the whole trip, too.
I absolutely loved all of them and wanted to take several home with me. And it's not like they were all perfect little angels; they were mostly just normal kids who went to school and played and laughed and occasionally got in trouble. But to see them in this positive environment knowing what they had previously been through just really touched my heart. It made me feel for the many children out there that we don't know about who get abandoned or abused and can't get away from it like these kids did.
During the course of the week, we also went to public schools for Bible School. They were pretty different than our schools here. The school was fenced in with a guard at the gate because kids who didn't go to school there were hanging onto the fence wanting to get in. There was also no air conditioning. For recess, there was usually one big concrete slab in the middle of the school where they played different sports, but that was all the recess equipment they had.
Each school had a small concession stand called a pulperia where they could buy sodas or snacks. In order to save the glass bottle for money, the pulperia poored sodas into plastic bags for the kids to drink, so it was common to see kids running around with a little plastic bag full of water or soda in their hand. The classes were also pretty large compared to ours. Most of them had up to 60 kids per teacher.
Something that was interesting to me about education in Honduras was that if a child doesn't complete the sixth grade by the time they are 18, then none of their schooling counts. They are just seen as uneducated, and there is no way for them to go back and complete it once they turn 18.
One girl at Faith Home was 15 and only in the second grade, so there was no way that she would have been able to complete the sixth grade by the time she was 18. So the house parents there were teaching her how to clean and cook and take care of chilren, so that she could be a housekeeper whenever she got out on her own.
The area that we stayed was extremely beautiful, too. The grounds of Faith Home were in a valley in between Mountains and waking up to that every morning was amazing. I'll try to post some pictures of it soon.
Overall, this trip was something that will forever be special to me. I can't explain how it felt to be down there in the midst of it all. It was eye-opening and it gave me perspective. I felt just how small I was in the world, but at the same time that I could still make a difference. Me and my problems didn't seem like such a big deal anymore, because helping these people and showing them love was more important.
I have a quote written down from Bono of U2 and it kept running through my mind more and more as the trip progressed. He said, "What more could you do with your life than change the world, make it a better place." I felt like that's what I was doing, that that's what I could do and that's what I wanted to do.
This trip was humbling and heartbreaking and amazing and a million other things all at the same time. And I loved every bit of it.
I had a hard time trying to write a post about this trip because it is something that is very special to me. I felt like I couldn't do it justice with words. And maybe I really can't, but I do want to be sure and write something about it since it meant so much to me.
