The past week has been full and varied and the overarching theme of the week has been “doing life with” those who we come into contact with. We have revisited ministry sites and launched our involvement in the ministry in Los Pinos, a hard, poverty-stricken area that has taken Tony, our contact person and director of Zion’s Gate Ministry, several years to come to the level of access that we have the privilege of taking part in. It has been a blessing to witness part of the harvest of the hard work he has poured into there.
Before I get too far though, I wanted to share a few things about day-to-day life here on the property. Currently, there is another group here that consists of about 40 individuals plus the boys that live on the property plus Tony & his wife plus the 8 of us.
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All meals are cooked here, and we rotate, in groups, who cooks each day. My team’s day is Friday…meals usually consist of either oatmeal or cereal + bananas for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and dinner is either soup/chicken tacos/Honduran beans + rice + plantains/veggies + rice or something else….
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My team + two Americans who are serving on the property this summer sleep in a house that is being built to house the family of one of the boys. It has a great tin roof with natural light panels and is made of cement panels + bricks. The wood doors got knobs this week!
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We wake up with the sun and after breakfast, hang out with the boys and school kids that come by and in the afternoon go to ministry sites. This week, we spent Monday, Tuesday, Tuesday night and Wednesday in Los Pinos…and that’s probably our game plan for the next several weeks.
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It’s a very free property, surrounded by the beautiful landscape of Honduras….and even though we may not be able to list off all of the things that we have ‘accomplished,’ it has nevertheless been a fruitful time of doing life with the boys here.
The pace of life idea came from spending the first few days of this week in Los Pinos. We cleaned out a house there that had been trashed and helped make it able to be lived in. My favorite time this week was on Tuesday— we got to meet so many of the relatives of the boys who live on the property of Zion’s Gate—
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I spent a long time with ‘Abuela’ (Grandma in Spanish), sharing stories, being in her house with her, trying to understand her rapid Spanish as we overlooked the beautiful view from the hillside……
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We had time to chat with Besi, the cousin of one of the Honduran girls who regularly visits Zion’s Gate. We didn’t talk about anything significant, but it was fun to get to know her and try to converse J
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We also had the blessing of spending time with Carlos & Steven’s mom, Marva, in her home—she is extremely ill with cancer and Ariel, Becca (two girls from my team) and I got to just be in her home and spend time with her and her family. Marva was in so much pain, so she let me use a cooling gel to massage her legs, feet, shoulder, arms and head.
Nothing earth-shaking…..but these glimpses into the lives of these women here have helped me to enjoy the very relational, laid-back pace of life. Who knows how God may be using us and how the seemingly small things we do may carry eternal weight…..but all we can do is to take these small packages of joy and run with them. That’s been our prayer and it has been such a blessing to get to know these people along the way J
