Aug 24, 2011 | Travel
The mission trip group was generally split into two main groups, the medical and construction team. The medical team would have clinic during the day either in El Suyatal, La Ermita, or Agalteca, come back to Buena Vista at about 3:30 PM to shower quickly and get ready to leave for the evangelistic series at 4:30 PM. I was on the construction team, so I stayed in Buena Vista. Each day, someone would be pulled from the construction team to help out in the kitchen.
On day 2, I was assigned to help in the kitchen. I thought that was funny. The kitchen is not exactly my playground; you wouldn’t catch me being in the kitchen all day. It was a great day. I got to hang out with Buena Vista’s chef, Joseph, who was a pretty neat person. We started with prayer, then proceeded to make lunch and sacked supper. We were going to make mashed potatoes, among other things.
There was a lot of people to feed, so that meant a lot of potatoes. I think I spent the first 1.5 hours washing potatoes. The chopped potatoes filled a gigantic pot to the brim (biggest one I’ve seen in my life), then steamed, and mashed manually by Joseph. The process transformed the kitchen into a sauna and steam bath altogether, and Joseph got his workout for the day. I didn’t know how he seasoned those potatoes, but they were amazing!
Joseph Nally used to go to culinary school in South Carolina. He had worked in restaurants and bakeries, fine dining included. I asked him what that was like, working in fine dining kitchen. Intense, he said, and lots of hierarchy. When he became an Adventist and God convicted him about the food that he made, all of those things he learned became not so useful anymore. But no experience is a waste with God, and now he’s a missionary chef.
He and Annie, his wife, were baptized about a month after they got married. They had Bible studies with someone Annie used to work with. They have two daughters, Olivia, a very mature 8-year-old who plays the violin, and Maya, a very cute 3-year-old. They moved to Honduras to be missionary about 2 months ago, and committed to stay for at least 5 years. “We told them, as long as they would keep us,” said Joseph. The Nally family has a fantastic blog. Follow their story here.
During the many tasks to be done that day, our conversation included TED, energy issues, and Boston (he used to live in Jamaica Plains for some time) – some of my favorite things to talk about. I also found out that he went to ARISE the year after I was at CAMPUS, which meant that he met some of the CAMPUS folks. Small world.
Lunch was really good. Joseph really is an amazing chef. For the amount of cooking he does, he must really love food. I think, for the first, I saw in an non-theoretical way how cooking is a ministry. Food in the mission field must taste the best. People really liked the lunch. Some of them were working on the road, so all the more appreciation from them. Joseph’s ministry is to enable people to do God’s work – literally. I was blessed to be a part of it.
Joseph's Cave
I left the kitchen at about 4:20 PM to shower and get ready quickly to leave for the evangelistic series. I was part of the La Ermita team. There would be 3 meetings running in parallel, in El Suyatal, La Ermita, and Agalteca. The El Suyatal team would walk from Buena Vista (20 minute walk), while the La Ermita team got the van and the Agalteca team rode in the back of a truck.
The view on the way to La Ermita was indescribable. Jose Mario Franco, the director of VIDA who has committed his life to this mission, drove the van. At one point, a pick up truck overtook us and there was a guy in the back of the truck, not in uniform, holding a big gun. Not sure what that was all about, Jose pulled back and although we didn’t see them come back, he decided to return to El Suyatal to check with the villagers what that was all about.
Some people had seen the guy earlier in the day. Everything turned out to be fine, they were selling something in the village. The VIDA staffs just wanted to be safe because there had been a case of people asking for money in the past.
For the evangelistic series, I was assigned to help Monica coordinate the programming of the meetings. Jose, translated the sermon for Nina. He’s a remarkable people-person, very dynamic, kind, and friendly. He also has an amazing testimony, which I’m hoping is written somewhere so I can post a link to it… By the way, check out VIDA’s amazing ministry and stories here.
Aug 24, 2011 | Travel
Coming to this trip, I said that I’d take any task or duty as lessons from God. Interestingly enough, I was mostly assigned to in-house duties for the first few days. On day 1, after worship, orientation, and lunch, I was part of the team that organized evangelism materials because the car arrangement fell through. Everyone was supposed to do visitations, inviting people to the evangelistic series that would start the following night.
Naomi said that when you visit people there, they will invite you in and serve you some food. They don’t have much, but they will serve whatever they have. It’s important for us to accept it. It’s important for you to accept who they are so they can accept who you are.
I actually wanted to go door-to-door.
We were done relatively quickly and then had some down time in the afternoon. It felt weird. I spent some time reading. It turned out that this down time would be a rarity for the rest of the mission trip, which I was happy about.
I should mention the shower situation. For the girls, there are three bathroom stalls and three shower heads. The water was dammed from a creek upstream and channeled to the complex. That was the source of all running water in Buena Vista, which remained cold during the day and night. Showers were done in the dark, unless if you did it during the day, of course. Sometimes bugs and spiders would accompany you too. They didn’t bite.
They also have a stone-made pila where you wash clothes by hand.
A quick rain passed by. It was gone as quickly as it came.
Some people came back soaked from visitation. They air-dried themselves while hanging out with us. I met Ronny, a student at the Bible school there who was from Norway. Crazy life, crazy conversion story, crazy guy. He had lived there for about a year. He decided to go to Honduras without even being a Christian. He told me he was drunk on the plane to Honduras. God turned his life around in Buena Vista and he said, “I will not go back,” to his old life, that is.
Ronny Svensson is a total joker. He would crack himself up a lot and would see humor in Bible verses. One morning he told me he couldn’t stop laughing during his personal devotion from reading Matthew 15:11-14. He also found Proverbs 11:22 funny. He was right. That verse is hilarious.
“Do you want some guayaba?” That’s guava in Spanish.
Buena Vista property is also a guava plantation, which means guavas are everywhere. That’s snack available for 24/7, right off the trees. They wouldn’t hesitate falling on your head too. When that happens, you just hope that the impact would be in such a way that the overripe guava doesn’t splat.
They have mango trees too, although I was tragically disappointed when they said the mango season was over.
Guayaba
Ronny picked some green guavas because he preferred them over yellow ones. The advantage of eating green guavas is that most likely there’s not any worm in it. But they’re sour. When you pick the ripe, soft, and sweet yellow ones, beware of the worms. When it’s greenish yellow, then it’s perfection.
“Look, it’s a frog.” There were these tiny frogs there.
“It took me a year to get used to them.”
I was like, why should anyone get used to frogs?
“No, the guayabas.”
His randomness was quite amusing.
Aug 23, 2011 | Travel
I left home Sunday, August 7, 2011 at 3:30 AM to go to the airport. Wayne was very gracious to drive me there at such wee hours of the morning. Friends in need are friends indeed. The deal was that he would get half a star in his crown for everyone I reached in Honduras.
My flight left at 6 AM, with a layover in Atlanta, GA. Need I mention again the pure, unadulterated excitement?
This trip was to me about true education. So starting from the plane ride and throughout the trip, I re-read Education by Ellen G. White.
They say that the Tegucigalpa airport is one of the top 5 most dangerous airports to land on. Apparently the runway is surrounded by mountains. I was sitting on an aisle seat so I didn’t pay attention.
We landed in one piece and exited the aircraft to walk outside, around the airport building to get to the immigration entrance. The weather was hot, but pleasant. Immigration line was long and slow – a true feature of the developing world.
There were 8 or 9 of us with GYC Intermission on the same flight, but I had only met Michael because we were sitting in the same row. Glancing through the crowd, I wondered if we could really read “GYC” on people’s expressions. We managed to find 5 other people while waiting in line: Lissette and her niece from Holland, Genaria, Paul from Bermuda, Janelle from West Virginia, and Siobhan from Tennessee.
My line was already really slow to begin with, and when I got to the booth I still managed to be a bottleneck. The immigration lady didn’t speak English and she couldn’t find Indonesia on this list that she had on her computer. Didn’t really know what it was for. She kept scrolling up and down, and she gave up after a while and just stamped my passport. Very amusing. I think they had difficulty Paul too, being from Bermuda.
I grabbed my recently purchased duffel bag, which by the way, can fit so much more than a suitcase, and walked out of the claim area. I saw a tall woman in blue holding GYC/VIDA sign near the escalator. This must be Naomi. Amy had told me about her high school friend, Naomi, who is now a full time missionary in Honduras for VIDA Internacional, the ministry that GYC partnered with for this mission trip.
Naomi checked off my name and I told her that Amy said hi. Some other people were already waiting there and we stepped out to wait for the bus that would pick us up. I was pleased to find more familiar faces. Alex and Nina were from the Russian church in New York. A few of the young adults there had come to an ANEW Sabbath in Delaware back in Spring 2010. I met Alex and a few others then, and Nina forwarded a hello from Vera.
Someone also asked me if I was at CAMPUS and knew Naome Muzhamindo. It turned out to be Chenai, Naome’s sister! Of course I had heard about her from Naome and we were both actually at Naome’s baptism three years ago, although we didn’t meet then.
Another cool meeting was with Jessica Medori. The church that Jessica grew up in is the West Wilmington SDA Church in Delaware, where Erica and Hillary are right now, and where ANEW had done many programs with. Two weeks before, ANEW visited a church in Hershey, PA, where Jessica is currently located. Erica, Jacqui, Hillary, and Melissa stayed overnight at Jessica’s apartment during the ANEW visit, even though Jessica was out of town that weekend. I hung out there too with them. So basically, I was chilling at Jessica’s place before I even met her. It’s grand to be Adventists.
In front of Tegucigalpa airport
We packed the school bus that was our chartered vehicle. We stopped by the mall for lunch and to exchange money. Tegucigalpa was a chaotic city, much like Jakarta. I felt very much at home. In fact, I felt at home during the entire Honduras trip.
It was Sunday, which meant that a lot of people were at the mall, just like Jakarta. I had a baleada for lunch, which was super good. They’d give you a lot of avocados. There was a Wal-Mart at that mall too, though an overpriced one.
Finally, it was time to head out to the Buena Vista, the project site. I was all smiles during the ride to the project. Luscious green hills, sun rays in between mountains, houses on the hills, ultra-confident bus and truck drivers, cows on the street, banana and papaya trees (hadn’t seen those in a long time), small brick homes. Awesome.
Naomi told us a little bit about their work there with VIDA and about people’s lives there. There’s a need to educate, especially young girls, who often would move in with guys much older than them and start a family at a very young age.
We got to Buena Vista at about 6 PM, just before sunset. It was such a beautiful complex! Breathtaking, really.
Our living space was not bad at all. I heard from someone who was with the GYC trip in June that they were sleeping on cemented floors. This time around, the girls’ dorm was tiled and the walls were cemented already. No windows or doors installed yet, so there would gaping rectangular holes on the wall. I looked forward to sleeping in the ‘open’ space that night and waking up to sunshine. The bathroom section was covered by a blue tarp and the soap smell gave the entire floor a nice fragrance. I felt truly comfortable.
We ate supper in the dark. Suppers there are very light, for example, some banana bread and a piece of fruit, how suppers are supposed to be. After a short evening worship, we all said goodnight to settle into our living spaces. It was only about 8 PM.
I stayed out for a little bit to bask in the quietness of the night. I wrote this in my journal:
The moonlight is so bright. I am overwhelmed with the privilege of just being here. Here in this isolated little village in Honduras, I am getting the prime and best education I can get. This classroom is more glorious than any lecture halls, and the instruction much more prestigious than any Ivy League education. There may be much hype attached to Princeton, but I feel much more privileged to be here, with my headlamp, surrounded by mountains and bugs, in communion with my Maker…
I went to bed at about 9:15 PM.
