“I like smiling, smiling is my favorite” A quote from the deep theologian, Buddy the Elf. Today made me smile.
Justine painted this canvas mural that is used for the background of the Project Las Brisas photos.
We began our day at the Church of the Nazerene located in the heart of the Las Brisas Community. Pastor Victor, director of the Las Brisas Community Transformation Center (now call the Family Hope Center) is the senior pastor this little community church. I love this church. They are always so proud to have our team as guests and are extremely hospitable. They always do at least one worship song in english and they also provide a translator so we can follow along with the sermon. Our team made up almost half of the church population. . There is a point in the service when you get up and greet everyone you can in the church. The worship team plays while you leave your seat and walk around the crowd. It’s like a party. They recently had a team of youth return from a retreat. They celebrated their own youth as well as our own. Pastor prayed over all of them and challenged them to remain servants upon their return home. We have talked a lot about that this week. Our devotion time has been focused on Galatians 5:14-25, the fruits of the Spirit, and what it means to walk in the Spirit. We challenged the kids to really immerse themselves in the things of the Lord home just as they are doing here. One thing for sure is Las Brisas residents are happy to be at church and are in no hurry to leave. Service lasted over 2 hours. I appreciate that about them. There is no place they would rather be.
Our team at the Las Brisas Church of the Nazerene.
After a quick lunch we headed to the center at Las Brisas. We were all so full of anticipation to pull this project together and see it come to fruition. Let me begin by saying that God has once again done more than we could ask or imagine.
Luke 6:38 says “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you..”
Our Buckner trip leader, Luis Aguilar, was able to negotiate a deal with a local market. Long story short, we were able to stock the meal buckets with more food than we originally planned for less money! Because of your generosity and God’s multiplication, we were able to supply the Las Brisas center with all the meals they requested with money left over. With the additional funds, we made the decision to supply the other centers, Nueva Esperanza and Casitas, with bulk donations of desperately needed food items and other necessities. This makes me smile
Can we just pause here and say together – “PRAISE THE LORD!” .
Over the past several days we have been collecting the dry goods. By the time we arrived at Las Brisas today there were hundreds of pounds of food to be unloaded from our buses. We were giddy and we smile as we looked at the stock pile we were about to deliver. Earlier today a local vendor dropped off the frozen chicken, red beans and rice. ,
Shannon and Josh unloading.
Sami, Olivia, Josh, Justine and Missy pass out the beans, rice and chicken.
Julia and Noah get some help from a local boy
Josh and Justin deliver buckets
This is Olvin. He is a regular. Recognize him from an early post? He was in the horse cart.
more and more food
We unload the buses and set up our assembly line. Some opened boxes and unwrapped, some handed out items while others carried the buckets through the line. 5# beans, 5# rice, 3-5# chicken, 5# white flour, 5# masa (corn flour) ,2- 5# tubes shortening and 3 pounds sugar. That’s almost 40# total. woah.
completed buckets
Luis gives up packing instructions
It take both Zoe and Sami to carry one.
mission accomplished
Our ace team had things ready to go in a snap. Pastor Victor had walked through the neighborhood and identified the families with the greatest need and invited them to a “special meeting” at the center today at 3pm. He didn’t tell them why. I suppose if the word got out there would be a line a mile long. I stuck my head out of the gate around 3 to see a huge line filled with mom’s and grandmothers. The households are primarily lead by women as many of the men have left to find work or have become victims of violence. When I see the faces of the women waiting, knowing that they are sure why they are there, I smiled.
The line outside the center
The woman learn they will be receiving buckets
Our team lines up behind Pastor and his wife, we hand the food to him and he hands it to the women who have come. When they see the buckets and realize they are about to be given a bucket of food, yep, you guessed it, more smiles. I wish you could have seen the smile that came from their hearts through their eyes. Each one as they left was thanking us with the smile on their face in place of the words they could not express.
Pastor Victor helps one woman balance her bucket.
All Smiles
I studied each one as they waited. My smile begins to quiver as I see the many people, mostly women who have walked here and will have to walk home with this 40 pound bucket of food. Most were capable, but then I see so many elderly, many pregnant, several handicapped and several more with infant babies on their hips. We of course are rendered helpless as we cannot leave the center. They have walked quite a distance in the muddy streets as a torrential downpour had just subsided. I study them. Their faces weathered from a hard life, skin thickened from the harsh climate and mud up to their ankles, but smiles and hope on their faces.
Women returning home.
Because of the heavy rains, the weather was especially thick and hot. Your kids did not shrink back for a second. Packing and stacking a hundred+ buckets, all with smiles on their faces. They all rotated through the line to help distribute the buckets. There where tears behind many of those smiles, especially mine. Giving feels really good. But it’s not about that. The fulfillment that came as a byproduct of this project is just a bonus. The real win is two fold. The first is helping Pastor Victor and his wife Alita to serve the people he loves who so desperately need a break. The really cool thing is that Pastor Victor personally chose the families who would participate. He chose based on need and their commitment to the center. He has a plan for engaging and equipping these families to lift them out of their current situation. His plan is to transform the community one family at a time. Sounds an awful lot like our Northway Orphan Care mission statement – “to eternally impact the orphan by engaging the church to “care for orphans in their distress” (James 1:27) We are dedicated to encouraging, educating and empowering families to free orphans to follow Jesus:” We like his plan. This type of project helps him to help his community. Win.
The second win is watching the transformation of the students on this team as they engage in each new project. Today’s project was joyful, there was a lot of high fiving and celebrating. (just have to say some of the celebrating was coming from the window of Pastors office where we could hear the World Cup game.). After so much difficult mission work this week, the kids had fun with this one. A few of the neighborhood kids snuck into the center with their moms or grandma’s just to catch some bonus time with your kids. I could hear the kids calling for your kids by name. There was a deep connection made in just a few short days. There were lots of smiles.
One woman shares her gratitude
Except it got difficult to maintain my smile as one of the women asked to take a picture with me. If you haven’t noticed, I prefer the back of the camera. She asked me to thank the team for the many blessings we brought her children this week and for blessing her. She express her thanks for our visit despite the terrible conditions and violence. She said we blessed her more than we could know. My smile disappeared onto her shoulder as she embraced me in quite the bear hug. We hugged for what seems forever. As I stand there with her, my mind flashes to the hundreds of kids we talked to at Kidz GiG who proudly deposited there funds in our donation jug. I think of the lemonade stands, the house hold chores done, the birthday party for Las Brisas, the donated Disney fund, the adopted prayer cards, and all of your overwhelming generosity that made this project possible. I lost it. I guess being a mom myself, I couldn’t imagine my children going hungry. I could feel her pain – and her gratitude. I hope you do too.
The food was gone in less than an hour. We emptied our back packs of any scraps of candy and gave them to the few kids hanging in the center to the bitter end. This would be the last time we lay eyes on the Las Brisas Community. But we can smile as we leave knowing that there is a long term plan in place for them; that there is a center there run by a local man who is offering hope through the love of Jesus and truth of the gospel. From the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU to all of you who had any part in Project Las Brisas. Every single cent you gave made an impact today. “Gracias, que Dios los bendigo”. – “Thank you and God Bless You” We heard that a lot today.
Our translator team: Juan Carlos, Jeanette, Vera, Alicia, Norelle and Guilermo. Gosh, will we miss them.
This evening’s dinner was meant to celebrate all that we had done this week and to especially thank and honor our Honduran team of translators and leaders. Your kids have made rich relationships with some amazing young people here. So tonight was good-bye. We wonder, will we really ever meet again? We pray we do as you cannot spend a week together serving in this capacity without developing a deep bond. This was our last time with them. So we end the day with a difficult good-bye. Tomorrow we will journey to a local park to debrief and just have a little fun.
Once again I go to bed tired….but with a smile on my face. – Jenn