My Ten Year Trip Brad Pittman
For my ten year trip I decided to go on a mission trip to La Ceiba, Honduras. Our trip started out not knowing what quite to expect. I went on a mission to Uganda Africa two and a half years ago so I’ve seen poverty at its worst, but I’d never been to Honduras so I was unfamiliar with the culture and didn’t quite know how the people would respond to us. Our team had plans to help build a couple of homes, and teach people about the Bible and try the best we could to build relationships with people that speak a different language than we do. The prominent language in Honduras is Spanish, but they have a couple of other languages as well. Fortunately, I remembered some Spanish from high school. It was enough to get me by at least. Be- fore I get into what we did, I want to give you a bit of history of what we were up against there. Honduras is the murder capital of the world. There are more murders in Honduras than in any other country in the world. I didn’t find out about that little tidbit until the third or fourth day we were there. We spent our entire trip helping a mountain village out that for years has been sort of like the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s. In fact, right next to the home we were building a few years ago, a man and woman were hacked to death over a few dollars with a machete. The mountain was divided into two sides with two leaders that hated each other. People in the village are in survival mode. They work for today, for them selves, for their own family, and they don’t have time to help anyone else, at least that is what they thought. There is a full time missionary that lives there in La Cieba, Jeff Hines. His dad was a missionary in Honduras and when his dad was killed in a plane crash he felt like he was called to continue his dad’s work there. So he moved himself, his wife and three kids to Hon- duras to see what exactly God would have them do. Jeff started going up the mountain to build relationships with the people in the village. He met much resistance, and had even been given multiple death threats. Any normal person would have given up, but he knew what God wanted him to do. Jeff hired two police officers with machine guns to escort him and provide protection for him up and down the mountain. For three years Jeff brought fresh water to these people just as an act of service to them to build the trust and confidence of the people. He knew if he was going to reach these people with the Bible he had to first build trust. After a few years the people received him into their village as a friend and when you are accepted into the village you become part of the people there. The people in the village live on a big mountain with about a ¾ mile walk down the mountain to get water that is disease infested water that people bathe in, wash clothes in, drink, and cook with and children are dying because of it. Besides the bad water, the walk up and down the mountain is horrible, especially for an out of shape fellow as I am. I walked it every day while I was there and it was not fun. Now that Jeff was part of the people there it was time for the next step and this is how his ministry Transformation Honduras began. The Bible teaches that we are to always put the needs of others before our own, something that would benefit us all if we applied it to our own lives. Jeff knew that if he could instill that attitude in the people it would just be a matter of time and it would open the door for the message of Jesus to be received. Jeff had already set the example of service, bringing fresh water for three years up the mountain and it was now time for the people to learn that it is far better to give than to receive. The first project that Jeff set up was to get the funding to dig a well on the mountain for the village. Jeff made a deal with the people that if they would work side by side and hand in hand to dig the well, he would provide the funds to do it. The people worked together to get the well dug and then built a public clothes washing basin (they don’t have electricity so no washing machines – just a bar of soap and their hands). Then a real blessing came. There are only two Adobe block mak- ers that exist in the world. One is in Africa and the other is in La Cieba, Honduras. This machine was donated to the cause and now the real work had begun. It would seem like a machine that makes the bricks for you would be a pretty good deal, right? Yea, this was the hardest work I’d ever done in my life. We started by scraping dirt from the side of the mountain and then shoveled it to the bottom of the hill; then we shoveled it through screens to make sure there were no rocks in the dirt. That was the first step. We also had to shovel sand through screens and then shovel it into a wheelbarrow and take it up the hill and dump it next to the dirt pile. Then when we stocked up enough dirt and sand, we would shovel the dirt, sand, and some lime into a cement mixer and add just a touch of water. We then dumped it out onto the ground and then shoveled all
4 Crest Ink October, November & December 2011
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