Day 8 (Monday)

Thanks so much for everyone's prayers! I know Cary has sent a church family email back detailing the situation, so everyone should be aware and hopefully not overly worried. We are safe.

Please continue to pray for the work that God is doing here, that he has allowed us to be apart of.

Yesterday we built 3 more houses! That pushes the total up to 22 houses! WOW! It's amazing how awesome and smooth the construction has been. It is such a blessing to be able to help provide shelter for families who have none.

We also visited the hospital and a special needs children's home. While at both places, we passed out hundreds of Beanie Babies. In addition, we were able to spend some time communicating with the children at the hospital. Then at the children's home, we spent about an hour playing with them. It was awesome! We took them for rides in their wheelchairs. We carried them around. We took their pictures. They took ours. They enjoyed it so much. In fact, one of the older boys had a Beanie Baby dodgeball event with anyone who walked by.

This trip has been amazing! God is doing great things, not only here in Honduras, but in the lives of our students. Morgan, Andy, Chase and Travis are really buying in to the concept of being a servant and I think that will continue when we get back to the states. I truly believe they will forever be changed. God has been working on me a lot down here as well. I see the impact that we have and I know we could have that same impact back at home. We just have to go out and Be The Church!!!

Day 7 (Sunday)

First, thanks for everyone's thoughts and prayers. They are much appreciated. We are safe and serving the Lord.

Yesterday, we were unable to get to Union Mountain and have a bi-lingual service, so we had worship here at the hotel. It was awesome! The singing was LEGIT! Cary shared a very powerful thought and then we had communion together. Towards the end of the trip, at our banquet night, we will take up an offering for the Union church. It will be their largest contribution of the year, if that puts everything into perspective for you.

We also went and visited an orphanage yesterday. We learned about their mission and got to spend some time playing and interacting with the kids. We took a pinata out there for the children. It was so much fun to watch them break it open and run around all over the place picking up the candy!

Monday we are slated to build 3 more houses, host another VBS and do some other much needed work in another village. Pray that we can accomplish our objectives.

Lindsay and Marcia flew back home yesterday. They are back in Orlando safe and sound. Actually, Linz leaves today to pick up Lain and Noah from my parents and then they will all spend the week with her parents in Hendersonville.

God has really been blessing this trip and I ask that you pray that he will continue to bless this trip and our ministry while we are here.

Day 6 (Saturday - June 27)

We finished 3 more houses to push our total to 19! Last night during devo, one of the students shared how he thought it was awesome how it was pouring the rain as they were finishing and it demonstrated what they were providing this family with....shelter.....a place to get out of the rain and mud and to have at least some type of comfort.

We also completed our 2nd VBS of the trip. This VBS was at a small village outside of the city. We again had around 100 children! This particular VBS was amazing! We sang some Spanish songs, watched a Spanish Veggie Tales video, made two crafts, and then Cary shared with them the story of Jesus washing his disciples feet. We then brought the children up a few at a time and washed their feet and then gave them a new pair of flip flops or crocs! It was such a special moment! The entire VBS crew, which included all of the West Orange group, was very much moved and humbled by this experience. As amazing as that was, it got even better. The adult Hondurans who stayed and watched the VBS were so authentic with their praise of our crew. They said a prayer for us, hugged us, and even sang a song for us! It was truly an experience I will never forget, nor will our students!

We finished up the day with a group outing to play soccer. It was a great time of fellowship and bonding for the entire mission team. Things here are going great!

Lindsay and Marcia are flying home this morning (Sunday), please pray for their safe travel. 

Pics will continue to be updated on Snapfish. The link can be found on an earlier blog, just scroll down.

God Bless! 

Day 5 (Friday)

Yesterday was another awesome day! We built 3 more houses, to push our total to 16! The houses are 16 x 16, which I know seem incredibly small to you, but for the village where we are building that is the typical house. Actually, what we are building is much nicer. Most of their homes, if they have one, have no flooring.....so they are sleeping in the dirt. It is so heartbreaking, but yet very rewarding. The families are so appreciative.

Yesterday we hosted our first VBS. It was chaotic! We knew we only had room for 100 children. And we had those 100 children in a matter of minutes. The sad thing was having to tell children they couldn't come in. Or having to tell parents that there was no room for their child. Most of the kids who couldn't get in stayed around the church building for the duration of our VBS. Several would climb up and hang in the windows, just looking and watching everything. 

For the 100 who were a part of VBS, it was a good time. It was a little hectic trying to get organized and get everything going, but we did well for the first one!

Today we are going to a village about 2 hours from here and we will host another VBS. Also, we are going to try and stop by an orphanage on the way back. 

We will go back to building houses on Monday. 

If you missed our pics, go up to the previous blog and click on the hyperlink. Tomorrow will be the last day we add pics because Linz and Marcia leave tomorrow and Marcia takes the pics and Linz loads them on her computer. Someone else will take the pics, but we probably won't be able to load anymore until we get back from Honduras since Linz is taking the computer back with her. 

But I will still be blogging. 

Everything is going great! Please continue to pray for us and God's mission!

Day 4

God is good!

Today we had three house building crews and another crew that went to work at a different village. The three work crews threw up their houses very quickly. All three crews finished their house in 4 hours or less, pushing our total to 13. Linz, Marcia and I were each on one of the work crews. We finished the houses right before a huge rain. God held off the rain, so we could finish!

The rest of the West Orange group went to another village to help do some work at a daycare at a church. They had to dig this huge trench through some nasty tough old dirt. They also did some other odd jobs....just anything that needed some work they took care of it. They also got to spend some time playing with the kids there! From what I understand the kids loved every second of it! 

Today, Friday, we are putting on our first VBS. We are going back up to Union Mountain for it! We can hold 100 kids, sadly we expect to have to turn some away. Along with the VBS, we will be building three more houses! I will let you know all of the details at the conclusion of the day.

Highlight of the Day: Hearing our students (Morgan, Travis, Andy, and Chase) talk about the getting to play with the students at the other village! Also, hearing some students at the devo last night saying that they saw Jesus in Andy, Travis and Chase because of how hard they were working in the trench!

Okay....here is a link to some pics.....we will continue to add to this album.

http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=1142359008/a=57645628_57645628/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

Day 3

WOW!!!! Today was another repeat of Day 2! We built 5 more houses pushing the total to 10! Actually, we have been just working and God has been doing the building and He is not just building houses, but relationships as well. God has been active in Honduras long before we arrived here. He sent his Son Jesus to die for them as well. And now we are just here sharing in that same love.

Today the work crews were shuffled around. We had 5 teams, and West Orange was represented on each of the teams. So yesterday, West Orange was responsible for the building of one house and today West Orange had at least one set of hands in each of the 5 houses that were built. 

The students are doing great! Morgan is playing and loving on every child she sees and they (Morgan, Chase, Travis and Andy) are all working very hard at building the houses. It's amazing what God has been doing through our students this week so far.  

Highlight of the Day: Today the crew I was on built a house for a family of three. The parents had a beautiful little girl. The mother was so appreciative and shared with us some wonderful thoughts of thanks. The dad showed us Jesus today by serving us. We were all working on the house and to keep us from losing time, the dad carried all of our lumber from the bottom of the hill up to the top of the hill where we were building the house. Everyday, I keeping seeing Jesus in these people!

Tomorrow we will build three houses, repair one and travel to another village to undertake some smaller projects. Please continue to pray for our mission. 

Pictures are coming tomorrow!!!!

Day 2

Today was an awesome day!!!!!

We built 5 houses on Union Mountain! This is the first time that 5 houses have been built in one day. We reached the mountain around 10 and by 6, we had the houses built.

The West Orange students were all on the same crew today. Rich C was our crew leader and Andy might as well of had that title as well. They were the only two in our West Orange crew that had previous house building experience. Rich did a great job, getting everything lined out for us. Andy was the roof guy. He handled business up there. The rest of our crew was awesome as well...Linz, Marcia, Morgan, Chase and Travis. I am so proud of our group!

It was a great experience to be able to complete this project with them, but more than that it was such a BLESSING to be able to do something like this for a large family that needed a home. The feeling you get is indescribable. We can actually say that we were out BEING JESUS today!

Thanks to everyone at West Orange who helped support our mission team and allowed us to get here! Our group will forever be changed.

Highlight of the Day: The family that we were building the house for today bought and brought everyone on our crew water today on two separate occassions. Here we were out there serving and trying to be Jesus and they were being Jesus to us. The LOVE of the SAVIOR is CONTAGIOUS!

I am working on submitting all of our pics to a site that I will hyperlink in an upcoming blog and you can check all of those out very soon!

Please continue to pray for our trip and opportunities. 

Honduras Mission (Day 1)

We're here! Yesterday, Monday June 22, was our travel day. We arrived here around noon, which is 2pm eastern time (note 2 hour time difference).

Cary asked me last night, "Is it anything like you imagined?" My answer, "I don't really know what I imagined, but this wasn't it." It's hard to explain how different everything is --- it's all compact, everything is on top of each other, there are people everywhere, armed guards are everywhere, it's a different world. 

And from what I understand it will only get more different because on Day 2 we go to Union Mountain. I'll let you know more about that in the next blog entry. 

Day 1 was pretty basic. Travel. Get settled in. Go to grocery store. Complete orientation.

On Day 2, we go to work. The goal is to build 5 houses in one day!

Please continue to pray for us! God Bless!

We will add some pictures to our blog on Day 2!