God's BIG footprint
To say that God showed up on our Sons of The Father Advance mission trip to Honduras (instead of Guatemala) would be an understatement. It would take way to long to describe all of God's footprints (as in BIGFOOT prints), but a summery is in order. Just talk to anyone on the team and you'll hear different stories.The prophesy - Pastor Cesar received a prophesy from the Holy Spirit two weeks before we came. He shared it with his church, The Real (meaning Royal in Spanish) church in Choluteca - directly south of Tegucigalpa. The prophesy? That the missions were coming. This seemed strange to Pastor and the church since they had never worked with American missionaries before. Pastor Cesar also shared it with the people to whom the Real church was ministering to, a number of poor communities along the border with Nicaragua. The focus of recent ministry was to teach them to grow sweet potatoes - with great success.
The decision - We discovered early Tuesday morning before we were to leave on Friday that we couldn't go to Guatemala (see previous blog for details). When we (the team had a meeting that night) called Meilyn she said that the church in Choluteca was ready for us and would provide free transportation, food and a place to stay - they had already identified two or three project schools. The team had to decide weather to pay the change and upgrade fee of more than $400 each to go to Honduras instead of Guatemala. We prayed - and it was unanimous - we were going to Honduras.
Wednesday morning I called Continental Air and asked for a reduction in the change fare - due to the Guatemala violence. The CO representative said they had not heard of the violence...so I sent her Dara's e-mail depicting the violence, including graphic photos. I hoped for any reduction, maybe to a "normal" $100 fee - since I knew some of the families (not to mention SonLight Power) would have a hard time with an additional $800 in expense - but each man said he was willing to go the extra yard - we knew God was speaking to us - and preparing our way.
Later that afternoon our travel agent called and said she had just heard from Continental - and they were re booking us to Teguc - at no extra charge. Thank You Continental - and PTL Big Time!
Meilyn & Mauricio Moncada (Mauricio was planning to be our translator in Guatemala) as well as Pamela Hanson were happy to have us - and Meilyn and Mauricio worked tirelessly to prepare - the folks in Choluceta were working hard too. Everything was accomplished in the three days - usually what it takes me 6 months to arrange.
The Equipment - usually we ship multi school projects' equipment ahead of time but this didn't work out for Guatemala. Since we had 10 people going on the trip - I knew we would be able to get everything in at most 10 pieces of luggage - leaving one each for clothes, etc. Although we sent money ahead of time to Guatemala for batteries and poles - the major part of the equipment was going with us.
If we had shipped the equipment to Guatemala - the switch would not have been possible.
As the CO air plane banked around the mountains of Teguc, landing on the short runway, the five men and five boys knew we were in for an adventure. M&M & Pamela picked us up at the airport.
The next day, after we bought the batteries and some more tools, a bus came from Choluteca to pick us up - and the luggage was transported via M&M's truck. The story of God's preparation of these people is too long to tell here - just that we were blessed to be there.
Both the installs were accomplished with the normal amount of trials & tribulation. The Real (Royal) church in Choluteca covered all of our expenses there - and our meals were very good. We even spent an afternoon on a Pacific beach. The promised beautiful sunset didn't happen though - so they said we'd just have to come back - which we were all ready to sign up for.
I have been on a lot of short term mission trips - but this tops them all!
More details in upcoming issue of the SonLight Beacon.
Labels: God said Honduras
posted by SolarAl @ 11:54 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
« Home