Summer LINK Honduras: What I've Been Learning

It's wonderful here. The Lord is teaching me so many awesome things. He's taught me about my continual need for the Gospel. That yes, He saved me one time, but that doesn't mean that my sinning stopped when that happened. That didn't mean that I stopped being selfish right on the spot. I'm learning more and more about my need for Christ. That He is what matters and that His work never stops being relevant to my life. That I should wake up and praise Him for the life that He has given us. Friends, this is huge news! Our savior didn't work once and then go back to his cave to dwell... He wants to do life with us everyday!! I'm learning to be naked in front of The Lord. To show Him who I really am, and let Him work with what He's got. Too often we are hiding from the Father when He just wants us to reveal ourselves to Him. 
We are reading through the book of Hosea, and it talks about being adulterous to The Lord. That He is our first love and how He has wrath on anything that is placed before us. It's challenging to see all the different characteristics of our God. Yes He loves, but He is also mad and jealous when you put things before Him. Be brave and really look at what He has to say about us putting idols and other things before Him. But the great news is that this only points to our need for the Gospel. God knows that our sin causes us to put idols in front of Him, that's why He sent Jesus so that we wouldn't be eternally doomed. What He cares about is you being honest about it. Owning up to the fact that I put desire for money over The Lord, or that my desire to go to medical school trumped the presence that God was trying to have in my life. And then we go do something about it. We look our sin in the eyes and get fired up. We know that it's not ok, we know that it's wrong. God will help us change it.. to punch sin right in the face. But we have to ask Him to help. We can't win this battle by ourselves, we NEED His help!! That my friends, is just a snippet of what I am learning here in the beautiful country of Honduras. I'm learning to look at myself more honestly and see my need for Christ every single day. I can't do it by myself, and it's about time I stopped trying. 
Also, our house is surrounded by mangos and every hour or so a massive mango comes crashing down. I'm hoping that in our month long visit someone is walking by (could even be me) and gets nailed by one. It's all about the stories, right? Also there is a beautiful beach that we can see from our front porch.
By: Steven Carroll

SummerLINK Honduras: Los Niños

¡Hola!

Girls playing at recess.

Boys eating their snack.

So far my favorite experience is helping at the bilingual school in Rio Esteban. We all walk to the main road from our house at 6:15 AM every Tuesday and Thursday to catch a school bus full of little Honduran niños. The first morning we got on the bus, every child just stared at us with confusion. After a short drive through God's beautiful creation, we get to this little school that is nothing like what we are used to, but out here this is the best of the best. These children in their cute little uniforms are all running around. The school is made up of students that are kindergarten to ninth grade. It did not take long for the children to warm up even though for the most part, we did not know what they were saying. As long as we play soccer, duck duck goose (pato pato ganso), and little sally walker, the children couldn't be any happier. We were able to help teach the little kindergartners working on their words, numbers, and colors. The language barrier is still very hard so prayers for gospel conversation to occur despite such obvious barriers would be great. We are hopeful in this and we look forward to spending time with them every chance we get to love on them.  

Kindergarten class

Another great opportunity we have all had is to be able to shadow in the hospital that we are affiliated with here, which is Hospital Loma de Luz. It has been great for us because most of us have medical career plans and it has been awesome to see the mission side of this field. The doctor we shadow most of the time is Dr. Vance Pirkle, who is an OB/GYN and a very interesting man. We are lucky to live right beside their family so we see him hop on a dirt bike and ride off to the hospital in his scrubs every morning and you never get used to it. In the hospital, a few of us were able to witness life being brought into this world. Three of us were in the hospital at the same time last week and were able to watch a C-section, and this week, one of us were able to see a natural delivery. Both babies are healthy and we all saw it as a blessing to be able to be in the same room to watch these miracles happen. The Pirkles have been very welcoming to our team and because of that I have to share the coolest family picture I've ever seen so you can meet them too (even if they are pulling for Georgia).

Pirkle Family
(From left: Rebekah, Caleb, Sarah, Vance, Elizabeth, Phillip, Susan)

This doesn't even scratch the surface of all that we are experiencing here, but it gives you an idea. We all look forward to what the Lord will do in the weeks that we have left here. Keep us and the Honduran people in your prayers! 

¡Adiós!

By Olivia Addis

SLINK Honduras: Hot and Rainy

We made it!  After numerous hours of travel we finally arrived in Balfate.  On the plane there were two different teams from other parts of the USA going down to Honduras to serve for a week.  Most of them were doing medical things like passing out medication and pulling teeth so they were shocked to hear that we were going to be here for six weeks.  The plane ride was only three hours and we got to see some beautiful sites along the way. The water was so beautiful when we flew over it!!  We just wanted to jump out of the plane and go for a swim.

(and yes that is how blue the water is!)

The mission groups were pretty big so none of us really got to sit together on the plane, but we sure got real close on the ride from San Pedro Sula to the hospital!!!

Since we have been here we have been working with children a whole lot.  Half of our time we have been teaching English to a group of kids in the community.  It is a smaller class so even after we leave the Pirkles will still have influence in their lives.  They will continue to speak the Gospel to them after we leave, and teach them some more English.  It is such a joy to be around these kids and teach them; even though its only been a week we have developed relationships with them and they ran up to great us this morning.  

Even though most of our team are not Spanish speakers we have definitely gotten better over the few days that we've been here.  The weather is very much different than the United States.  You think South Carolina is hot and humid...Honduras is way hotter and humid all the time, haha.  We have had the benefit of rain every day that we've been here...which is apparently rare for this time of year in Honduras, but hey...we'll take all that we can get!  

We are continually excited and glad that we get to share the Gospel con los hijos.  Dios es bueno! Continue to pray that the Lord will open doors for the Gospel despite any language barriers.  

Blog by Zach Shuba