At the end of two weeks, the team has labored to build a front step, a shower, and a latrine. They have hammered together bunk beds for each family member and rain-proofed the house with vinyl sheeting.

“My situation is not easy,” Wendy says. “I go to church and I pray. I know God has a plan for me and my children.”

“We’re trying to let them know this isn’t something from rich Americans,” Rich says. “It’s a gift from God. We want to serve with humility.”

Aaron Dewaal, 16, and on his second trip with Orphan Outreach, says, “It was a joy to build something for God’s kingdom. I think God wanted to show me about Honduras before I moved here.” This past August Aaron moved with his parents to Honduras, where Wendy Sanchez and her children became more than people he met on a trip; they became true neighbors.

At the end of the long days of digging through tough clay, mixing cement, and hammering together new walls, the team kicks off muddy sneakers and boots in a pile, and curls up in chairs with steaming mugs of tea or strong Honduran coffee. Aaron strums his guitar after helping to clear the supper dishes and joking with Don David’s family in the kitchen. He sings a song the trip inspired him to write—lyrics which well reflect the general mood that has settled over the team like the fog has settled into the mountains: “Then you find there’s more than this/then you know there’s more to life.”




Jesus loves the little children
While one construction team worked to repair homes, another worked to build a playground at AFE School. Breakfast is at 6 a.m. on the day of the playground dedication. The team is weary, but happy.

Dogs sniff around the beds of orange and red geraniums at AFE, and the air is rich with the smell of rice and beans cooking over wood fires. Team members dig their shovels into gravel to put the finishing touches on the playground, and children practice their special performance in an upstairs classroom.

A year ago AFE didn’t have a playground. Instead 140 children took turns swinging from a rope that was tethered to a tree.

“It was a lot of work, but had a lot of rewards,” Lou Modert, who works in a POST cereal factory, said.

“I’ve never experienced children as happy as I have today,” Peggy Fehn added.

The playground was powder-coated in bright primary colors and included everything from a merry-go-round to swings to monkey bars and a corkscrew slide. Joeny, the school’s founder, stretched a green ribbon across the entrance of the playground. All the students and team members gathered around, the smell of mulch wafting up with each little breeze. After praying in Spanish, Joeny cut the ribbon and—instead of the children running straight for the playground—they ran straight for the members of the team, throwing their arms around them in hugs of gratitude.

“I hardly cry, let alone in public,” Katie Knibbe, 17, said. “But those kids were so happy on that playground. It’s a whole new thing for them. Then they got a teddy bear. How does someone laugh when they have such loss?”

“AFE changed who I am,” Derek Lee, radio host, said. “The defining moment for me was the day of the playground dedication. Several of us were given a gift by the children for coming and helping out, and they gave their best handmade thank-you cards, shirts, and hats. Then when the children surrounded us and prayed over us, something in me broke. I did not feel then—and still wonder today—if I deserved any of that. I was giving out of the abundance I have been blessed with; they were giving out of their hearts. I can no longer just talk about it, I feel drawn to do something about it. I am having meetings with others to try and put together a group to raise money for AFE. Before the trip I would never have considered going on a long-term mission stint. Now I would and my wife, Leisa, said she would want to go too.”

“I’m so thankful for the ministry of AFE,” Christine Anderson said. “Without this ministry, the children have no chance of ever getting beyond this lifestyle.”




Jesus was a healer
As the construction and playground teams improved exteriors, the medical team tended to the interior condition of the people. Villagers walked for miles to be seen by the team’s two doctors and several nurses. Most had worms. Scabies. Lice. Colds. Malnutrition. And inevitably the days did not lend enough hours for the number of people waiting in lines to be treated.

Most days the medical team works from a hub at Genesis School in the city. It’s Tuesday. The sun has risen high and hot early, and the people from Nueva Suyapa have formed a line that stretches down the hill and around the block before the medical team even arrives.

Little by little, patients are ushered into a waiting room with two long wooden benches. Folding chairs form a triage center and a small scale records patients’ weight. Moms with their babies and elderly women press their faces against the window in the door, anxious to be seen.

Dr. Michelle Halley and her team wear scrubs, with stethoscopes slung around their necks.  The room is filled with murmurs in Spanish, interspersed with English—conversations about medicine and patients.

A woman breastfeeds her infant as the team pauses to pray with a woman whose son was killed three years ago. She begs for something to ease her anxiety. And as the day wears on, people begin to pound on the door.

“I have thought often and much about our trip to Honduras,” Dr. Michelle Halley, a pediatric internist, said. “The medical team worked as hard as we could to see as many patients as we could—and it became clear to us fairly quickly that we would never be able to meet the need. We had to completely rely on God to send us the people He wanted us to see as well as give us the skills, supplies, energy, and wisdom to help them. He has opened my eyes to a more global perspective. I am very excited to continue in this vein—to serve my brothers and sisters both here and abroad.”

“I enjoy coming to this location,” Dr. Scott Carlson, of Family Care Center in Grand Rapids, said of Nueva Suyapa. After traveling to the area with Orphan Outreach last year, Dr. Carlson wanted to do more. “We found that with Orphan Outreach we got to do some major innovative stuff. We felt that we barely touched these kids’ lives last year—so I wanted to come back to do something about the water.”

The team installed water filtration systems and brought 40 boxes of mostly donated medicines, which included antibiotics, anti-parasitics, antihistamines, pain meds, and vitamins.

“I love serving the underprivileged,” Amy Forward, a critical care nurse, said. “We give them Tylenol and cough medicine, and yet they are more appreciative than patients in the States. Everyone has a parasite. All the kids are so skinny and small for their age. They all live with pain every day.”

One day the medical group traveled 40 minutes to rural community and saw 50 people in less than three hours. “There was nothing we could use as exam tables so we put desks together,” Amanda Keller, a pre-med student, said. “We are so spoiled in America. I think everyone should try to go and help other people at some point in their life. This has helped me really know I want to go into medicine.”

“My chair kept sinking into the ground,” Kathy Beaman said of that day in the rural clinic. On her first mission trip and her first time out of the United States, Kathy said, “You just want to help people, even if it’s giving them an aspirin. Here, if they need something, they don’t have a pharmacy.”

Kathy went with one of the doctors to do a site visit one day. “It was soggy everywhere. We were walking on narrow, rocky paths, with liquid feces running down the roads from the dogs and cows,” she said. “The woman’s home was clean, but with dirt floors. She was so happy we were there. She called us ‘angels.’”




Back at the airport
As I gear up to leave Honduras, clouds are lifting from their bed in the mountains like rumpled white sheets. The sun is fighting to make its presence known, and I am pitching through Tegucigalpa’s rocky streets with the cousin of our translator. He, however, doesn’t speak English, but we manage to talk about some American music he has playing on CD, and establish that he wishes he could be a pilot. The windows are down and the air is damp and cool.

I’m flying on to Guatemala to join another Orphan Outreach team. With little to say to my driver, I settle into my seat and listen—listen to the city waking up: birds twittering along the power lines; dishes clanking in outdoor kitchens; wet towels being snapped and hung out to dry; water splashing in buckets as people wash their bodies; babies bleating like little goats, hungry for breakfast; and chicken bus taxis braking to pick up passengers.

After all I’ve seen and heard—trying to keep up with this hard-working team from Michigan—I can hardly absorb the magnitude of what God is doing in Honduras. How long the arm of Orphan Outreach will be years from now—when the children of AFE grow up to be the doctors and lawyers and mothers and fathers they dream of being; when the people in the city dump are dumbfounded by grace—and their homes and their jobs; when the single mothers see their children go to college; and when pharmacies and schools and clean water are no longer luxuries.

For a person who struggles to hope—even with a profound trust in the God who made me—I feel it. More than the breeze or the sounds, I feel hope rising in the city, and I am stunned all over again at God’s promise to never leave us nor forsake us until the end of the age. And I am overcome with gratitude for Orphan Outreach and for the small role I play in telling these stories.

At the curb of the airport, I get out and haul my bag onto my back—and I pray that no matter how risky the flight, people will come to Honduras. I pray that people who believe in Christ will come, and come in nothing more—and nothing greater than—the awe-inspiring, humbling name of love.