Short-Term Missions Team, Ministry Days with children from City Garbage Dump

Let me start with a brief word to my regular ministry partners, please forgive me for not clarifying this beforehand: Just for the duration of the “Short-Term Missions Team Trip” I am using my blog to communicate news and photos about their time here in Honduras. That will entail just two more entries, this particular entry regarding the ministry time we had with children who work and live at the Tegucigalpa City Dump and lastly a post sharing about what God did during our Family Camp Outreach when we inaugurated the ropes course elements we had just built and presented the Good News of the gospel to 30 families (135 people) one on one.

After these two entries, I will return to my regular occasional postings. I have shared this photo journal with you to give you a glimpse of how we host Short Term Missions Teams with Christian Camping International here in Honduras.

For two days we played with the children of the AFE School (Initials stand for Amor, Fe, Esperanza—Love, faith, hope). The parents of these children live and work in and around the garbage dump, in fact, many of these children work there after school as well. Pastor Joeny Ordonez escorted us to the dump to see for ourselves the 1000 or more people who pick through the garbage to recycle plastic, paper, metal and cardboard.

Picture 2: The garbage trucks arrive every 5 minutes as the people line up ready to pounce on the “fresh garbage” to rip open the bags and salvage all they can from it. Vultures were everywhere.

Picture 3:
Under Pastor Joeny’s direction we moved around in small groups to hand out bags of water and bread, without exception the folks expressed their appreciation. Here we gather together to pray and hear more of Joeny’s ministry, you may access their website for more information (http://www.micahcentral.org/dumplife.htm)

During the remainder of our two days at the AFE School we did some light jobs and mostly played with the children, who thrived on the love and attention they received.

Picture 4: The children were divided up into groups (see slideshow of the groups with their respective leaders on the blog) and then they traveled from station to station playing different recreational activities. In this station they children are listening to the Americans share their testimony of how they came to the Lord.

Picture 5-Frisbee games: A few of our translators were also CCI /LA members, who are very adept at leading games, like this station of “bowling with a Frisbee”, it was the first time these children had ever thrown one!

Picture 6- Here we are, Henrietta Doren and I already scheming for next year’s trip!

Picture 7: Decorating visors was a big hit, Ana Ramirez and Cassidy brought joy to every child’s heart as they proudly wore their visor home.

Picture 8: North Way Christian Community donated the poster hangers, Garrin installed them in each classroom and from the water bottles sold during the church’s Friday Nite Car Cruises, the money was raised to purchase Spanish posters for each classroom.

Picture 9: With each new experience God stretched us way out of our comfort zone and fully into our groan zone. Rhonda is making good use of her Spanish language skills, but even so, working with children is a stretch for her since she is used to interacting with adults in her corporate job.

Video clip 1: Valerie found herself at home among the children while they played a modified version of soccer—play it in groups of four without letting go of your hands!

Here's the pictures of the North Americans with their respective teams of children with whom they played.