Posted By Warren Watson

Misfortune has Honduras in its crosshairs.  Members of a small Christian church in Indianapolis know that from experience.

Since 2002, the North Central Church of Christ has provided building materials, medicine, food and clothes for a small mountain village near Tegucigalpa, the capital of the poorest country in Central America.

As part of its ongoing outreach, North Central has adopted the village of Izopo, a 6,000-foot enclave of more than 400 people situated among terraced farms, rocky fields, mixed woods and grazing cattle, horses and oxen.

The adoption goes well beyond sending a check.  The congregation also exports plenty of elbow grease, skillfully and lovingly applied by about two dozen men, women and kids in an annual Honduran mission, conducted this year from July 24-31.  In a country where the per-capita income is about $1,800 per person, North Central provides medical care, builds houses and conducts education, social and religious activities in the nation of 8 million.

North Central’s mission, and that of dozens of others to Honduras and other developing countries represent a form of charitable activism.  Instead of sending just money to a cash-strapped country, churchgoers also send themselves.  In fact, the Capital Research Center estimates that short-term missions generate up to $4 billion in aid to the Third World.  An estimated 40 percent of the nation’s health care is provided through mission trips and other church groups. Honduras is a popular destination, with a friendly government, no travel restrictions and plenty of need.

“We are privileged to be able to visit there every year — and I grow from a concentrated week of giving, of living simply, and of concentrating on serving God, said Karen Barnes of Indianapolis, who just made her fourth mission trip.  “I love the relationships that we are building with the people in Izopo. I feel like we encourage them by coming to visit as friends and to help them every year.”

Gary Nead, also of Indianapolis, and North Central’s lead organizer, said he thought the trip “might have been my favorite of all time.”  Strong statement from someone who has been on Honduran missions virtually every year since 2002.  He said it’s all about the people:

“Hopefully, after eight years the people there know we love them and intend to come each year to love on them.”

About the size of Virginia, Honduras is riddled with socio-economic troubles. Crime and poverty are rampant.  Air pollution swells the eyes. Tropical storms ravage the countryside.

Progress comes in fits and starts.  With the economy improving, Hurricane Mitch settled overhead for two days in 1998, killing 6,500 and leaving 11,000 homeless.  Ramshackle, one-story homes melted off the hillsides. The rubble floated to sea on the Rio Grande, which meanders through Tegucigalpa, a city of 1.15 million people.  The nation’s president said the storm set back decades of economic progress.

Rains also destroyed countless homes in 2008.   A political coup destabilized institutions and resulted in an interruption of official U.S. aid in 2009.  Unemployment ballooned to 28 percent.

Since Mitch, the country has grown dependent on short-term charitable missions such as North Central’s.  Honduran political unrest forced cancellation of last year’s Indy trip. Other missions also stayed home.

“The political crap that went on last year ended up only hurting the people with the most need, the people in the villages,” said Dudley Chancey, a professor at Oklahoma Christian University and an evangelist who partners with North Central and other short-term missions there.  Chancey leads work groups into both rural and urban areas around Tegucigalpa.

Many groups operate with the Baxter Institute as home base.  Housed in a walled compound — complete with coiled barbed wire to ward away intruders — right in the heart of the busy city, Baxter is a center for theological learning, with students from all over Latin America housed in its red-roofed dorms.  Short-term missionaries share space during the summer, cooled in the shade of orange, lemon and avocado trees. The banana trees grow to 25 feet tall. The lush groves also serve as shelter from the almost-daily rains that wash through a creek and deposit grime and pollution into the Rio Grande.

With no other place for the water to go, Mitch‘s fury resulted in the river overflowing its banks by 40 feet in 1998, killing hundreds.

This year’s North Central agenda was similar to ones in the past and mirrored

the routines of approximately 20 short-term missions emanating from Baxter each summer.

Nead reminded the group as he completed a morning devotional:  “We have a chance to make a real impact here,” he said, “and it doesn’t take much.”

Riding 9 miles on a noisy, 30-year-old International school bus, air brakes hissing every few moments, the North Central missionaries spent four days in Izopo, building three 300-square foot wooden houses, operating a medical clinic and pharmacy and conducting a religious school.   They treated minor ailments, gave out penicillin for infections and parasites, and dispensed multiple vitamins to everyone.  It was the village’s annual shot at health care.

The group visited Mateo, a nearby village, for Sunday services, followed by a three-hour tour of the Basilica de Suyapa, the most famous church in the country, and a local museum.  Later, the group spent time in a new homeless shelter in the heart of the city.  It was the only non-work respite of the week.  On the final day, the North Central team visited Jovenes de la Camino, a boys orphanage 25 miles away in nearby Zhamarano, leveling land for a new concrete foundation.

Critics of short-term mission trips have long contended that missionaries are actually “vacationaries.”  Some other groups might focus more on the leisure, yes.  But not this trip.  Not this group.   I joined the team and can attest to the rigor.  I have the sore muscles to prove it was no lark. I shoveled gravel, lugged wood, dug post holes and lifted heavy boulders to reinforce Izopo’s sorry excuses for dirt roads.

It was more than a Third-World summer camp .

I joined the mission to perform an act of charity in my 60^th birth year.  One of the older workers, I found the toil excruciating and not what I expected on my surgically repaired knee.

I did what thousands do on these short-term missions every year to Honduras and other countries in Latin America.  I paid $1,400 for the trip – as did others on the mission — with most of the money going to buy supplies and food for the Hondurans. I went to family and friends for contributions. Twenty-five people helped me.

The magic of the bus

Those rutted dirt roads to Izopo provided high drama on Monday, the first day of the work week.

Torrential rains in Tegucigalpa had left neck-high standing water in the city, killing one on Sunday.  After traveling on main highways past small businesses and heavy traffic, we found the terrain up the mountain to Izopo to be rocky, swollen and muddy.  But the bus got through in its customary 80-90 minutes, going about 5 mph that last hilly mile.  We nearly swerved off the slippery road in two places.

Rainclouds formed early that day and North Central organizers Nead and Banta, who heads North Central’s Hispanic ministry, were increasingly concerned about the trip home even as the medical and education teams began their work in late morning with enthusiastic villagers dancing around them, hugging old friends.  A long medical line formed at the town church (built by North Central volunteers a few years earlier, incidentally).

Wood and tin for the roofs for the houses had not arrived, so Nead decided the detail would work to improve the secondary dirt road out of town (which like the primary road was about the width of a suburban driveway, but laden with boulders).

We soon found that the rains had left that road muddy and unpassable.  So, we grabbed shovels and began to clear the 1-mile roadway.  The hillside had collapsed in one place, and washouts were evident everywhere.  Riverlets of runoff gouged ruts through the center of the road.

After several hours, we had finished the job.  Carlos, our Baxter-based bus driver, was pleased and said he would use the new road back.  First, we had to hike the mile back to the bus and our other colleagues.  Carlos told us we needed to shorten our day and get rolling.  Light rain began to fall.

But it took another 20 minutes to assemble everyone and disengage.  Churchgoers were handing out toy animals. “Vamanos, vamanos,” said Banta.  Rain grew heavier.  The bus moved along the newly cleared road.  Rain grew heavier still.

At the base of a steep hill – about 500 yards into the trip back – Carlos ran into difficulty.  The road had become slick again, and he worked through the gears.  But the bus was stuck.

All attempts to make it up the hill failed.  A half-dozen men tried to push, and two-dozen others gathered over the rear axle and jumped up and down to help traction.

Well, we managed to get out, but left the bus behind.  The troupe left on foot in the rain.  A relief bus never made it, but a couple small trucks were dispatched up the mountain and retrieved everyone by nightfall.

It would take another day to retrieve the bus.

Stunning hardship

We spent a week in a mountainous setting that counts among the most beautiful in the world (reminding me of the green-blue cast of the Appalachians), but amid the kind of poverty and hardship I still find stunning.

Sure, I knew the facts and figures about Honduras when I signed on to this adventure some six months ago.  The region was discovered in 1502 by Christopher Columbus.  Its tropical and sub-tropical climate is conducive for good farming but is so rocky that yields of corn remain poor.  Its impoverished state is historical.

And the rain.  More rain fell in a week than we get in six months in my desert home in Phoenix where I moved in 2009 after six years in Indiana.  It colored our visit, and nearly rendered us helpless to help.

Much about Honduras is unsavory.

• The country has the highest murder rate in Central America, and some contend, in the whole world.
• Security guards with automatic rifles accompany soft-drink deliveries in the inner city.
• Trash pockmarks the streets.
• Walls not adorned with expensive barbed wire have sprinkled broken glass on the top to keep trespassers from scaling over.
• Unemployment spiked from 11 percent after Mitch, and pushes 30 percent every now and then.  That forces idleness along with alcoholism and drug abuse.
But there is hope.  Rural electrification has moved through the mountains and brings a better job picture along with lights.  ”The biggest change I noticed this time was electricity,” said Steve Evans, one of the mission members.  “The will be good for everyone.”

And like other Third-World countries, cell service is widespread and reliable in Honduras.  Bypassing analog technology, Honduras’s road to modernity may be shorter.

Urban hardship

The entourage of men, women and teens from North Central Church of Christ got an eyeful during an urban visit.

At Amber Foster’s homeless shelter in the downtown cauldron of Tegucigalpa, they saw grimy, glue-sniffing addicts forced to turn in their metal forks as they left a meal of rice and beans.  “Forks are weapons on the street,” someone said.

The missionaries arrived by bus during a driving rain.  Foster, a student of Chancey at Oklahoma Christian a few years ago, opened the shelter in a sprawling house right on a city street.  Someday she hopes to buy the place (for $125,000), and have both men’s and women’s shelters, soup kitchen and day care.  For now, she is renting, and envisioning a series of structural improvements, including a new roof.  For now, the homeless sidestepped puddles of water on their way to a late-afternoon meal.

These are tough kids, many glue-sniffers. They carry Coke and Pepsi bottles full of an amber-colored industrial-grade glue.  It costs less than a dollar and brings a high stronger than cocaine.  Many suffer brain damage from its effects.  That was obvious from our visit.

After an appetizer of hard candy, North Central’s Phil Banta helped to lead the homeless through a church service, which included small wafers and tiny shots of Welch’s grape juice for communion.  Everyone sang hymns, both in English and Spanish.

Banta was sick the whole time with a stomach ailment but labored through his preaching, not missing a beat.  Missionaries and the homeless sat on the wet floor.

Many from the street wore pro-sports shirts and caps, with the Detroit Tigers and the New York Yankees the most popular by my count.  My favorite attire was a Drew Bledsoe’s, No. 11 Patriots’ jersey, worn by an older boy.  I noted to a mission colleague that Bledsoe and the New England Patriots always victimized the Indianapolis Colts, North Central’s favorite team.

Tegucigalpa has few homeless shelters and Amber’s place is proving quite popular.  She serves food on Sundays to those who come to the weekly church service.  The glue-sniffers can even get their bottles back when they leave.  Amber notes that the drug abusers would not come for services or meals otherwise.  “We’re working on it,” she said, smiling.

But they have to return the forks when they leave.

Four nights a week, she and a group of interns from Oklahoma Christian get into Amber’s truck and take the meals to three locations on the street.  A popular spot is the national stadium.  Amber cooks the meals herself.

She has become a staunch advocate for the homeless and drug abusers, understanding that glue-sniffing fills a need and suppresses hunger.  “I can imagine myself being hungry,” said Amber. “I can imagine myself being without a home. But I can’t imagine myself not being loved by anyone.  That is what these people experience.”

Villagers help themselves

On the final day in Izopo, our team distributed bags of food (in 181 green plastic bags), plus boots, sandals and other supplies to everyone in the village. Families came in one at a time.   The Indy churchwomen even donated knit goods.  I was given the duty of passing out those items.  Blue for the boys, pink for the girls.

While that proceeded, a few members of the construction team finished work on the last house.  That included John Sharkitt, who travels the world on behalf of his employer, Eli Lilly. Sharkitt has emerged as the leader of the North Central construction team in Honduras.  The houses, the church and the school — all built with North Central labor and materials — are icons, representative of the mission team’s success.

This year, the team undertook three houses, with one very special.  That structure, adjacent to the community church, was dedicated to David West of Terre Haute, who was killed in an accident a year ago.  His family donated the $1,400 in materials, with the on-site team providing the labor.  Most of the village came to the house dedication on Thursday.

Sharkitt noticed a change this time.  “When we first came here,” said Sharkitt, “the village men stayed off to the side, up there on the hill.  They would watch, laugh at us, slap their knees, like we were a bunch of Martians.”

He added, “Now they join in and work. They almost take the hammers out of our hands.  Sweat equity, I guess.”

That’s progress – one board at a time.