We traveled with 12 other members of our church to visit Kim and Jon Hekman, who are down there working with an organization called World Gospel Outreach (WGO) in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Jon is a dentist and Kim has a background in public health. You can read about them on their blog.
WGO has several arms to their ministry. The one we helped with was the Medical Brigade outreach. They partner with local churches, most of them in very poor areas around Tegucigalpa. Each week, they spend 2 days at 2 different churches. They provide medical and dental care and run a kids program while the parents are receiving care. We also provide medicines from the pharmacy.
But the main goal of WGO and the churches we partner with is to provide spiritual care to the people we come in contact with. Each and every person who comes to a brigade site sits down with a volunteer and hears the Gospel of Jesus Christ from one of the North American volunteers (US!) with the help of a translator. This was super intimidating to most of us, who rarely in our PC North American culture even think about sitting someone down and telling them why we believe in Jesus. It was scary, intimidating, and such a blessing. We spoke with people who ran the gamut from strong lifelong Christians to people who suffered from deep depression. It was heart-wrenching and convicting.
So needless to say the trip was very life changing for us. People often talk about spiritual "mountain-top" experiences, but I like to think about that week as "getting to base camp" and hopefully giving me the tools to grow in my relationship with God and be more bold in my faith so that I can keep climbing.
Here's a recap video we put together for our church. Enjoy!
Oh, BTW, WGO sells this amazing Honduran, shade-grown coffee, you can buy it here: http://www.hondurascloudforestcoffee.org/
