Dear Friends, I just wanted to update you on the trip to Honduras. I have given the "short version" for the less motivated ones among you, but please, if you have time, read the "long version" and relive the Honduras experience with me.

Jennifer went to Honduras with her daughters Alison and Kimmy for "Jesus Esperanza 2000," a country-wide campaign sponsored by Outpost Centers, Inc. This was a huge effort on the part of OCI, with 154 evangelistic crusades going on at one time. Jennifer and her children worked with Steven and Vivian Grabiner, helping with the children’s program and doing music for the main meeting. The meetings were held in a town called Torocagua. It was an awesome experience! We are now in the process of raising money to fund an addition on the Torocagua church. The people are quite poor, with the average working man’s wage at about eight to ten dollars a day. Yet things cost more than they do here—I paid twenty dollars for a small kitchen garbage can and some bags. Hurricane Mitch set the country back fifty years, and they are still recovering, but the people feel their need of the gospel. Can you help pay for a very needed addition on their church? Please share your wealth with these precious people. It’s tax deductible. Make checks out to Michael Ministries 145 Thompson Ave. Putnam, CT 06260.

I am drinking in the silence of my house, for I have never appreciated it so much as now. Several times when the racket of Torocagua robbed me of sleep I remembered this silence. It’s a luxury, like space, that money can and does buy. In rich North America you can have your space and eat it too—you can have all the modern conveniences of city life while wrapped in woods and meadows. In Honduras, it seems as if you have to pick between nature and civilization, for if you are scratching poor, which most people are, you can’t have both. So you live in the city—the noisy, dirty, crowded city, where there is no silence at all.

The last night I attempted to sleep in Torocagua was a hoot, quite literally. It had been an exhausting day with the campaign ending in a concert (by a famous recording artist from the states named Jennifer Heel, alias Jennifer Jill, who was never famous until she got to Honduras), followed by endless goodbyes and thank-yous. Finally I fell into bed at about 11 PM and tossed for a couple of hours at least. It seems like it was only moments after I finally drifted off when suddenly the hills were alive with the sound of music. No, it was not Julie Andrews, but about five men playing guitars, stand-up bass and drums while singing in Spanish at the top of their considerable lungs. Maybe someone is throwing a party, I thought, finally working up the courage to draw back the shade. Sure enough, they were all standing in a truck facing the house. This was all the evidence I needed that their serenade was meant for us. Oh, how sweet, I thought, I love being jarred from slumber at 2:30 AM. My attitude was checked the next morning, however, when I learned that it was a mother’s day gift. Thanks, guys. Come to think of it, they weren’t half bad. I might even have hired them for a wedding. In the daytime.

Sleep deprivation aside, we stayed healthy. The doctor had ordered me to take eight Pepto Bizmal a day, carry Ammodium in case, and be ready to administer antibiotics should we run into serious runs. I was prepared for at least some "adjustment" to the Honduranian protozoa, but except for a minor hangover from some doughy pizza crust, I had digestive tranquility, as did my daughters.

Now headaches were another story. Some chemical in the exhaust fumes triggered migraines in me and various reactions in several others I talked to. We North Americans are spoiled rotten by emission controls. We can drive, even in the city, and unless we are behind a Mac Truck in deadlock traffic, we can breath, even if barely. Not so in Tegucigalpa. Every car and bus trailed black smoke, and woe unto the one who entered such traffic with a cough or sore throat to begin with. We have so much to be thankful for, breathing being at the top of the list.

But the Lord storms the dirty city with tokens of a better land. While I was there, it was with mangoes. Every street corner held carts brimming with them, glowing green with yellow/red blush. Big mangoes with firm, juicy flesh, little ones with succulent stringy insides, even green mangoes for frying. Mangoes heaped on roadside stands, mangoes overflowing from trucks parked beside the highway. Now, at home we buy two mangoes when they are on sale for a dollar each, slice them carefully so that they can be divided with absolute fairness, and then fight over the pit. In Honduras we had mangoes at every meal—mangoes sliced in piles on a plate, whole peeled mangoes to eat like a glorious apple, bright orange mango juice. It was as if God was saying, "So you think this is poverty! Well, think again!"

There were other fruits I had never seen before. Tiny green apples used to make drinks, something called tamerind which also made a wonderful drink, and baby bananas. Vegetables included plantain, or "plantanos" as they called it, usually served fried, yucca, also fried, and corn tamale wrapped in banana leaves. Avocados were in abundance, most of which were firm and luscious at about 600 calories a pop. I ate them whole. We had savory rice at almost every meal along with refried beans and tortillas. Then there were the festive occasions that brought forth such delights as quesedillas and crispy tacos. As you have probably realized, we really enjoyed the food.

Oh, and I can’t mention the food without extolling the cook. Blanca was a wonderful woman, something I picked up in spite of the fact that we never conversed. Well, I take it back. We communicated with hand motions and the few words we held in common, laughing our way though it for the most part. But Blanca didn’t really need words anyway, she talked with her face. I think she was just my age, but the only sign of years was in the crow’s feet around her eyes, which reminded me of dancing brown senoritas behind black fringe.

Blanca talked with her hands in another way by cooking for us. I felt torn between wanting to help her cook and wanting to respect the boundaries of her kitchen. Most of the time she cooked and we ate. And ate and ate. No, I wasn’t blessed with a few extra pounds because someone who could put Julia Childs under the table was cooking for me. But if anyone ever does provoke weight gain in Jennifer Heel, I think it will be Blanca.

In case you are thinking that we traveled to Central America in order to eat unlimited mangoes, I need to report on the main event of the trip—the "campagne" or the campaign. The plan was to hold nightly children’s meetings followed by adult meetings in a rented facility that would and did hold about 200 a night.

The evangelistic team was a variety pack in terms of background and personality. African missionaries Steven and Vivian Grabiner like to surround themselves with crazy people, which is how I ended up there for sure. Then there was Bev, a dental hygienist from North Carolina who didn’t know any of us from Eve, but bravely packed up her two trunks full of puppets and a suitcase full of amenities and joined us to present a children’s spotlight on health each night. Bev was Mary Poppins, a camp counselor and a mother hen all rolled into one. What would we have done without her bug spray, her itch cream, her granola bars, her blow dryer, and her free toothbrushes? True, Bev snores, but she brings sleeping pills for whoever is in the bed next to her, so she covers her liabilities very thoroughly, putting her squarely in the "asset" category.

Another major asset to the trip came in the form of two translators. Roberto from California translated for the children’s meetings, sang along with the Spanish songs (on key no less!), and just generally cheered us up with his youthful energy. Marteen from Miami translated for Steven, and so fluently that it was obvious he had grown up speaking Spanish. Marteen is a talented man who speaks, in fact, six (?) languages and produces records. If you watched Net ‘99, he composed and recorded the music that plays behind the announcer in the beginning.

The team was graced by the presence of Alison and Kimmy Schwirzer, fourteen and eleven respectively. They wore full-body puppet costumes for the children’s program which Bev had conceived of and constructed. For this reason and because they were Anglo girls, the local children flocked to them like bugs to a light. Alison and Kimmy bonded with many of them in spite of the absence of a common tongue. Hugs, kisses and little gifts were a nightly event (I was once offered a handful of fried yucca). The trip had just the effect I had hoped—my children are now more grateful for what they have, and they saw what a difference they could make among people who had less. Today in school their journal entry was to be on "where I would go if I could go anywhere." You guessed it, they would go back to Honduras. The reason? Because they felt they could help people there. Hopefully the vision for service will continue to grow from this seed.

I sang with all my heart in Honduras. Part of the reason was that if I didn’t really pour it on, no one would pay attention to me. Let’s just say that the atmosphere in the churches of Honduras is as lively as the people are by nature. And if children are included in the service, there is more commotion. I found that the songs that worked best were those that got people either clapping or singing along. This was challenging considering the fact that I don’t speak, or even really sing, Spanish. Oh, I tried a solo in Spanish once, but the people thought I was singing in English. When all else failed, I fell back on the "power songs"-- the familiar hymn arrangements with the long, high notes. This, along with the fact that I actually had produced four C.D.s, seemed to impress them enough to sit quietly through my performances. (Cutting a C.D. is a mark of success to them because they don’t realize that any old North American can take her tax refund money and become a "recording star.")

We would ride back and forth to the meetings in a truck, most of us piled into the back. Alison and Kimberly found this to be a breath of freedom in comparison to what they think are the oppressive North American seat belt laws. The rutted roads made our little truck-flights through town just about a thrilling as the Crazy Mouse ride at Six Flags Amusement Park. Perhaps the condition of the roads was partly due to "Meech," the hurricane (Mitch) that tore through the city two years ago and created floods that washed out whatever they touched. On one of our rides through the city, someone pointed out a tree full of vultures, and indicated that the earth was still heaving forth the hurricane’s dead.

Were there any tangible results of our efforts? The obvious quantify-able results are baptisms. We learned that the pastors were told they could go to the General Conference in Toronto if they got a certain number, so needless to say they were concerned about numbers of baptisms. There was some conflict in aligning this goal with the need to make sure the candidates were ready. In the case of our campaign, there were only eight, but I use the term "only" loosely. "Only" twelve men once turned the world upside down with the gospel. More than this, if the Son of God had time for one person at a time, certainly a bunch of his ragtag disciples have time to travel to a foreign land for two weeks and baptize eight.

There were 154 Honduras 2000 campaigns running simultaneously with ours, and the results were quite varied. One campaign resulted in 150, another that I heard of 120. I was a little surprised that Steven’s high-energy, ultra-clear preaching didn’t yield higher results, but it’s in the hands of God. One exciting development came about when the pastor whose church we rented invited us to lunch at his house. He lives, quite literally, right next to Manuel’s church (the one that needs an addition). You see, the city houses have no yards, so my west wall is your east wall if you happen to be my neighbor. Well, this pastor couldn’t be more connected to the local church without being a church member. At lunch we asked what he thought of the meetings, as he had come most of the nights since the campaign started. He nodded with enthusiasm, but then acknowledged that he had missed the last two nights. Those nights happened to be on the Mark of the Beast and the Sabbath. Steven asked if he would like to study them privately, and so Bibles were opened right then and there and two of the Bible’s most solemn truths were shared. Pray for this pastor as the Spirit strives with him. Wouldn’t it be exciting if his entire church embraced present truth?

In spare moments I took my camera and walked the streets, snapping away at whoever would allow me. I love to freeze little bits of obscurity into photos to hang on my wall. In fact, after ten years of living in a house I have never decorated because I couldn’t bring myself to spend time and money on curtains and pillows, I have settled on a theme. Yes, I will adorn my house, in "global" decor. I will hang photos of the forgotten people of the world all over my walls and garnish my tables with the crafts of their hands. Merely walking into my house will become a witness of the world’s need to those who might otherwise forget it. A ministry museum if you will.

On one of my photo-taking sprees, I snapped my way through the dirty streets, crouching down before a toddler who stared through the bars that enclosed his house. He flinched, as if he might have turn to go, but curiosity glued his eyes to my camera as I added a close-up lens so I could catch the starkness of his eyes. I stopped a young mother holding a baby, "Can I take your picture?" She blushed but did not turn away. A girl in the market sliced mangoes into bags. The yellow of the fruit set off her warm skin tone and she did not wave me off as I found her best angle. Two young girls sat in a sea of cheap silk flowers and I zoomed in on them, saying, "Bonita!" which means pretty, hoping the compliment would insure their complicity. It did. The next subject was harder to win. He was a scary looking man with grime-soaked clothing and frizzy hair which stood nearly a foot off his head. The market people called out his name in mockery, "Roneeee! Roneee!" I didn’t want to wound him further, but I wanted a picture. I held out twenty limperas, which he accepted without a smile. He held still while I captured his actually handsome face. Funny how an attractive person can, through the strain of dire circumstance, come down to a freak that draws sneers in the market place. What crushing calamity derailed this one I held in the eye of my camera? I don’t know, but the fact is that the only thing that stands between my fate and his is the mercy of God. Do I appreciate it?

On one of our last trips home from the campaign I rode in the front with Manuel, the man of the house where we stayed. In broken English he told me that their little church down the road needed an addition—they didn’t have a separate room for children’s Sabbath School. To buy land for a Maranatha church would cost more than the addition on this church building they already own. They had five thousand dollars saved, they needed ten thousand more. I explained to him that in spite of the fact that I lived in the Etatas Unitas I was not wealthy. Well, maybe I could raise the money among my friends, he said. Well, now that I can do, I thought. And so I am asking my (relatively) rich friends; can you help the people of Torocagua put an addition on their church? Send your donation to Michael Ministries, 145 Thompson Ave. Putnam, CT 06260, and mark it "Honduras," and I will see that it gets to that project. Manuel thanks you with all his heart.

I take one last morning run the day before we leave. A woman stands on a street corner in a scant blue dress. I wonder, is she a prostitute? She turns in my direction and confirms my hunches when I see her lips painted in flag-you-down crimson. I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to have to resort to something like that. What drives her? Is she supporting a drug habit? A family? Does she have options? I have been told that this is the shady part of town, but to me it looks like any other. There are the houses, row after row on the streets, stacked side by side, sharing walls, each one encased in iron fences to keep out the bandits. A television, a radio, some other precious token of wealth might be stolen. Some fences are even covered with shards of glass. Then the mountain rises and the houses find nests in her sides, even using her as one wall. Some young children run ragged through the streets, forgotten by their overworked parents. Most of them attend a half-day of school in simple blue and white uniforms, but I don’t doubt that some of the poorer families can’t even surround that.

With irony I note that even the most broken down shacks have rock and roll music blasting out of them. And even the tiniest store sports the red-and-white "Siempre Coca-Cola" emblem, telling us that Coke will always be. Have we Westerners given these people any more than glorified cave man music and the sickening thought that our soft drinks will outlive them? Can’t we give them something else? How about a chance at something better? How about a piece of our oversized pie? How about the gospel?