Greetings Friends,

I will try to use this website as a way to transport you into life in Honduras. Please enjoy the stories and pray for the needs shared. Please join me on the PRAYER page for specific needs that I would love for you to join me in Praying for.

Bye for now, John

A Visiting Team Of Students

The early morning mists from the night rain cloak the forest in a haze reminiscent of C. S. Lewis’ Wood between the worlds. The gray silence is broken by the barks of howler monkeys, coaxing the sun to peek above the mountains. Already carpenter birds are tapping their invitations to breakfast to the grubs underneath the bark of the mahogany The early morning mists from the night rain cloak the forest in a haze reminiscent of C. trees.  Thankfully the killer bees still slumber in their hive high in the branches of the Cortez.

The grass is heavy with dew, cool to bare feet  rested from yesterday’s trek. Moisture drops from  leaves above, rolling down the thatching of the roof of the tiny bamboo and yagua house where I hung my hammock last night.  From inside the pat-pat-pat of the women making tortillas synchronizes with the amber flicker of the cook fire.  The bracing aroma of coffee—real, home grown and processed coffee, no two cups ever exactly the same—tells me that soon my special cup, the one with the cat on it, will be brought out to me where I sit on the stump of a felled SantaMaria tree.

A shuttered window from the tiny church next door opens; the Norwegian students are beginning to get up. They will walk down to the river, wash up, and begin their breakfast on their portable kerosene stove.  Then a time of personal and group devotions before beginning the day of visiting homes in this remote community on the Rio Guano.

This is my fourth group of Youth With a Mission students from the Bible School at Christiansand, Norway. At the end of their studies, they are with me for a missions orientation.  It’s a privilege to have this kind of input into such fine young men and women. Former protégées are now missionaries in Australia, the Far East, Africa, as well as Europe.

There is no school in this village, otherwise we’d be doing a program for the students; instead, we will have children’s meeting under the trees here by the church. In the evening there will be a service in the church. The Norwegians will present their short dramatic sketches and testimonies, and I will finish off with a message from the Bible. We expect people from even more remote villages to come in, some walking several hours to arrive.  The local Christians are preparing for this by cooking extra rice and beans, boiled bananas and cassava, and, of course, prodigious amounts of coffee from their own plants.

I remember when there were no Christians along this river. The people were hospitable, kind, and generous, as the Honduran campesino tends to be, but they had not come to know the quality of Christian life here on earth, let alone that eternal life beyond.  On previous visits on this, the most treacherous and difficult of all the trails I’ve ever traveled, these same people had listened with interest to what God had to say to them about His loving plan for them in the Bible.  Most have since received Christ as Savior, and as Lord of their lives, homes and community.  There have been great trials in the ensuing years: sickness, dangers from accidents such as the falling tree which ushered Jorge Acosta into his Heavenly home, and the tragedy of hurricane Mitch.  Still, these all have been met in the strength that God gives, and the meeting tonight will be filled with joyous celebration of a people who know and love their God.

It is interesting how the Norwegians will respond. They will say they have never seen church people so enthusiastic and dedicated and happy as these Christians. In Norway, as in many parts of the “Christian” world, religion seems more a millstone around the necks of its adherents than a door to exuberant and joyful living.  In past years I’ve watched the Europeans move from cautious reservation to a happy liberty in worship as they have come to “minister” to the Hondurans.

It is now evening, just before the service. The forest giants--mahoganies, ceibas, Cortez and Higueros--are silhouetted against the rising moon. For a moment the full moon is cradled in the branches of a Ceiba tree before climbing higher toward the zenith. Brilliant  Venus, just appearing over the mountains,  pursues dimmer Jupiter, already  high overhead, dodging the occasional satellite racing across the heavens.

The cattle are settled in the grassy area around the church; the chickens roosting in the guava trees. In the church the dim light of home made oil lamps bathes the praying believers in gold. The musicians attempt to tune their guitars and the bass, made of a  five gallon gasoline container and hand-rolled strings.

Time to go in, the service about to start. I enter with a heart of thanksgiving that God would let me share life with these people, the Norwegians as well as the Hondurans.

Later I will again hang my hammock, sleep deeply to the sound of the rain which will come, and awake in the morning to the pat-pat-pat of the women making tortillas. Another day, in some ways the same as all the days in the mountains of Honduras, yet in some  ways so different, but always full: full of life, full of people bound  together by the Lordship of Christ, full of the wonderful ordinariness of this world, about which it’s Creator said: “It is good.”

John