As usual, our internet access will be hit or miss. Hopefully I’ll get to post at least once from Cholu.

What you can pray for while we are there:

• Health & safety of team members (especially in regards to the heat)
• Humility and flexibility for our team members
• We will make the most of every opportunity we are presented with
• Our team will demonstrate brotherly love toward each other and our hosts
• We will build a foundation for future work
• Seeds of faith will be planted, some will be watered, and others harvested
• We will be an encouragement to our brothers at the Choluteca church, and that we will receive encouragement from them as well

Specific prayer requests:

• Health is a particular concern since temperatures in Cholu have been breaking 100F regularly the last couple weeks.
• Team unity & fellowship, including our Honduran team members that we’ll meet when we get there
• This year, we decided to hire 10 local workers to assist us with construction work. We’re hoping to learn some skills from them, and hoping to share a little Christian love with them as well.
• Pray that we will be as light a burden as possible to the church. We’re challenging ourselves to out-serve & out-encourage them!
• We have some big dreams and ideas for the future, please pray that God will guide us and give us discernment about if/how to proceed.
• Pray for the cultivation of our relationships with our brothers & sisters in Choluteca. Many of our returning team members have begun to build strong relationships, and 10 days never feels long enough.
• Pray that we will be the eyes and ears of The Rock in Honduras, and that when we return, we can be the voice of Choluteca to our church and to the campus.
• May our hearts be broken by the things that break the heart of God…

Out of Africa
from We Are That Family
by Kristen

I don’t know who I am.

It’s a startling realization to not recognize yourself: My own voice sounds hollow. My eyes hold a distant stare, remembering all I’ve seen in Africa this past week. My thoughts keep me awake at night.

Just days after I returned, I found my husband carefully watching me. "I don’t feel like I know you," he said softly, beckoning.

"I don’t feel like I know me either," I said.

And I cried.

I feel more than guilt for such an easy life, accessible food, clean water and abundance. I feel aware. The blinders are gone. I can’t pretend I don’t know how the poorest of the poor live. I can’t act like there aren’t children who go to bed hungry. I can’t ignore that 30,000 children die each day from preventable causes.

I can’t stop thinking about Vincent, living as an orphan and father, in squalor. When I close my eyes at night, his face is what I see. I see him in his "home" that’s not fit for an animal.

I see the joy of the Lord in his eyes. Peace. I see Jesus.

I think that is what is so hard. I cannot reconcile his lack of every basic need and such fullness in his heart and life. The two don’t mix.

In America, in my town, in my home and heart, I complain about a dirty house, yard work, needing a "break" from cooking or my children. Every basic need is met, PLUS more luxuries than I can count.

With so much, how can my joy be incomplete?

How is it that I can see true peace in one of the largest slums in the world, where the smell of death is prominent and it’s rare in the most blessed nation?

I’m not sure how to mix these worlds together; how to show my spouse all that I’ve seen and all that my heart holds, or parent my kids without guilt.

I don’t know how to find myself again. I don’t know how to return to my everyday life when children still need to be sponsored. But I’m trying.

I am so thankful for this place, although foreign and uncomfortable, I’m not alone. God is right here with me, leading me into new places.

I may be out of Africa, but it will never be out of me.

Read the entire post, with pictures & comments:

http://www.wearethatfamily.com/2010/03/out-of-africa.html

Dios de esta Ciudad

Cuán Grande Es Él

Fuego de Dios

Tu Eres Santo (Principe de Paz)

http://www.rockhonduras.com/wp/2009/03/07/staying-healthy/
http://www.rockhonduras.com/docs/heat-related-illness.doc
http://www.rockhonduras.com/docs/healthy-tips.doc

"I have to confess to you that I, too, struggle to mourn over these kids as if they were my own. Becoming the president of World Vision didn’t turn me into Teresa of Calcutta. It is altogether possible for me to do my job at World Vision with a sense of emotional detachment. I can sit in meetings all day, review financial statements, attend chapel at eleven o’clock on Wednesdays, and even write a book about the poor, without my heart burning every moment with sadness., Like most Americans, I can get easily distracted by the details of my own life and family.”

“We have a nice home, live in a pleasant neighborhood, and go to a beautiful church. We make trips to the mall, go out to the movies, and take family vacations – often with little thought for the tragic lives of children thousands of miles away. But then I get on a plane, and twenty-four hours later I find myself in the home of a grieving mother dying of AIDS and leaving her five children orphans. Or I see a baby slowly starving to death, a child with one leg because of a landmine accident, or a little girl who was rescued from prostitution. And all of a sudden it becomes very personal again. Somebody else’s kids just became very important to me because now I know their names, I have looked into their eyes, and I have cried with their parents. I come back home angry at myself, incensed by my own apathy, with a fresh resolve and a renewed passion to crusade on behalf of these kids, to fight for them with every breath in my body. The meetings are no longer routine, and the balance sheets are no longer just numbers; they are now life-and-death issues. They’re urgent. We’ve got to do something! We’ve got to help! But then, a few weeks later, the fire dies down again, the images in my head fade, I drift back inside my safe and protected world, and they’re somebody else’s kids again – not mine."

"I mentioned earlier the prayer of World Vision’s founder, bob Pierce: “Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.” As I have tried to walk in some of his footsteps these past ten years, I have gained new insight into his prayer. While it was a prayer he hoped everyone would pray, it was even more personal for him. You see, I believe that even Bob Pierce struggled to sustain the level of brokenheartedness and caring required to press ahead year after year in this work of loving the poor. His prayer was a crying out to God, that God would break his heart yet again and again, because if He didn’t, Bob knew that he could not love somebody else’s kids the way God did. No man or woman can unless God breaks that individual’s heart. Only then can he or she – or we – care as God cares and love as He loves. That’s why we must pray constantly that God will soften our hearts so we see the world the way He sees it."

- The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns, pg 109

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