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On September 7, I received this email from Ian:

Stevi,

Today has been a very difficult day for us here in Choluteca.  Keydi Paola died today at 3 pm.

She was admitted in to hospital on Friday and we have been shipping down medication from Tegucigalpa because they did not sell it here in Choluteca. She was really sick on Saturday but when we visited yesterday with Pastor Giovanny she seemed much better.

Sadly I received a call saying they needed more medication urgently at around 12 midday. The medication was due to get to Choluteca at 4pm. It would not have made much difference the doctor said because TB had set in and her defenses were so low.

Praise the Lord she accepted Christ with a Pastor from Cedar Creek Ohio and the CHV team had a chance to confirm here acceptance on Saturday, I was really privileged to be asked to pray for her around 5 minutes before she passed away.  She was peaceful when I told her God was there with her.

Thank you for your prayers and your support in all we do, our work here would be much harder than it is without your input. For us it has confirmed once again the importance of the support groups who have rallied around carrying out various things needed before and after Keydi’s death.

Blessings

Ian

COLUMBIA — As soon as Tyler Shields walked off the plane, his mother screamed and gave him a big hug. 

It was an emotional reunion for the MU senior and his parents on Thursday evening, with Shields returning to the United States after being stuck in Honduras amid a government coup. 

“I breathed a sigh of relief when he finally got back,” his father, Mark Shields, said.

In an attempt to block Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from returning to the country, interim government officials closed the country’s main airport last week, leaving Shields to find an alternative departure route.

Shields, who was in Honduras for six months on a mission trip, said he was calm at first but started to get unnerved as the week wore on.

“I was so anxious the whole week,” Shields said. “How am I going to get home? Am I going to get home?”

Answering those questions was no easy task. Shields and his parents scrambled to make plans for him to fly back to the United States. One option was to fly out from neighboring El Salvador, but getting there proved to be difficult.

So Shields instead took an eight-hour bus ride from Choluteca, where he was doing his missionary work, to San Pedro Sula, a city in northwest Honduras. 

“The bus ride was not fun,” Shields said.

Part of the reason was because he was nervous about being in the country illegally.  His visa expired Wednesday, but he was able to leave the country without facing repercussions.

During the bus ride, Shields said he saw broken windows along the main boulevard of the capital city, Tegucigalpa, signs of the protests that hit the city in the past week. 

From San Pedro Sula, Shields flew to Miami and then to St. Louis. 

“It’s really weird to be back,” Shields said, still reeling from the culture shock. “I think I’m still processing things in Spanish.” 

Shields might use his Spanish again soon. He plans to return to Honduras as early as December to visit and might permanently return once he graduates. He said he wants to continue his work with AIDS victims and impoverished families.

Shields said he is happy to be home, but he has not forgotten about his friends in Honduras.

“I escaped the situation, but it’s still going on,” Shields said.  “I still have a heart for those I left behind.”

By T.J. Greaney
Tuesday, July 7, 2009

University of Missouri student Tyler Shields poses with Luz in a recent image
from Honduras, where a government-closed airport has stranded Shields,
who has spent six months doing mission work with HIV-positive patients.

If everything had gone according to plan, Tyler Shields would be home by now. Last week, the University of Missouri senior was scheduled to complete a six-month mission to Honduras.

Based in the southern river city of Choluteca, Shields has been helping run a clinic for malnourished children, working with AIDS victims and teaching English and history at a bilingual school. He said it’s been a life-changing experience.

“You really completely forget that you are working with people with HIV, AIDS or children that are malnourished,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Tribune. “They become just another person to you, and I believe that’s the point. We are trying to destroy a huge stigma that exists in this country.”

But just as Shields was saying his goodbyes last week, there was a rumble of unrest in the capital. On June 28, Honduran soldiers hauled President Manuel Zelaya from his presidential palace at gunpoint, exiled him to Costa Rica and declared a new government.

The coup was bloodless, and most people Shields spoke to were in favor of the change, but things haven’t been the same since. Tanks and soldiers are stationed all over Choluteca at checkpoints, and a nightly curfew has been instituted. Rumors were circulating that neighboring Nicaragua was massing troops on the border, preparing for an invasion.

“I’ve never felt in imminent danger, but there is a slight scariness in being trapped in another country,” Shields wrote. “The serious tone, as well, to the curfews invoke a little fear as you see everyone rushing to their homes to not get caught out late.”

With only a week left in his mission sponsored by The Rock, a nondenominational Christian church at MU, Shields’ parents tried to convince him to cut the trip short and come home.

“His father and I said, ‘Let’s try to see if he’ll come back,’ ” his mother, Lisa Mision of Columbia, said. “And he was, like, ‘No.’ He wasn’t budging. He was staying up until the last day because he was there for a reason.”

Shields’ flight was to return Sunday, but the continued unrest made that impossible. Sunday was the same day that Zelaya, the ousted president, boarded a private jet and began circling the international airport in the Honduran capital, attempting to land and return to power.

Soldiers crowded the runway to prevent the plane from landing, and the attempt was aborted. Shields said authorities recently announced the airport will remain closed at least another week.

So Shields is stuck. His visa expires today, and he is contemplating crossing into El Salvador to catch a flight there. That plan, needless to say, gives his mother heartburn. “Ever since the text came that the airport was closed, we’ve just been on pins and needles,” Mision said.

But far from being frightened, the experience has reaffirmed Shields’ commitment to missionary work in that part of the world after he graduates. He wrote that it’s impossible to forget the feeling he gets by putting a sound roof over a family of 13 in a one-room shack with a mud floor or the feeling of providing emotional and spiritual strength to a woman whose body is ravaged by AIDS-related illnesses.

“I originally wanted to work in the United States at a church there, but after my time here, I feel like I might be leaning towards coming back to Honduras to do more work,” Shields wrote.

“I would definitely say my life has changed, my view is different and the world is a bigger place.”

Reach T.J. Greaney at 573-815-1719 or e-mail tjgreaney@columbiatribune.com.

This article was published on page A1 of the Tuesday, July 7, 2009 edition of The Columbia Daily Tribune.

Honduras Rough Cut from cedarcreek.tv production on Vimeo.

I don’t think you get it.

But it’s not your fault, really. It’s not.

When you see this picture, you don’t see what I see.

You see a Gringo wearing a silly Royals jersey with a bandana that doesn’t match.
You see a little girl who appears to have forgotten to put on all her clothes this morning.
You see a little smile on the girl’s face.
You don’t even know what’s going on with the Gringo.
You probably don’t care.

When I look at this picture, I’m broken anew.

I see a girl who two days earlier probably didn’t know what Love was. She never felt it—and even if she’d heard of it, there’s no way she believed it truly existed. It was merely Santa to her, something else she’ll never understand.

I see a girl who’s hungry.
Not only for the food her body is often neglected of, but for love, attention and someone who freaking cares. Somebody who isn’t just going to write her off as another mouth to feed, another child to look after.

I see a girl who often doesn’t know where her next meal will come from. A girl who doesn’t know the next time she’ll be able to muster a smile.

I see a girl who dreads the darkness because her resting place is in an indention in the ground with 5 of her siblings.

I see a girl who probably doesn’t even realize her 10-year old sister with AIDS is a ticking time bomb, set to detonate whenever nature takes its course.

I see a girl who finally, after years of existing, is able to know what it means to be loved deeply.

I see a girl who doesn’t want this short, simple moment where eyes meet to ever end. Because when it ends—and she knows it will end—she’ll have to return to her former life.

I see a girl whose future is uncertain, her house is eroding and her family is cramped.

I see a girl who now has felt Love, not from any person, but from her Maker. The kind of Love that truly touches the soul.

I see this and I weep, both tears of joy and despair.

I am in despair because there’s nothing I can do from a thousand miles away to continually love on this young girl. There is nothing I can do, apart from prayer, to ensure this girl feels Love. There’s nothing I can do to ensure this child gets the little bit of food that she needs to sustain her life—all the while I am surrounded by a nation riddled with obesity.

While the despair is immense, the joy is triumphant.

I know this young child, probably for the first time in her life, knows that there is something out there that is greater than her condition, her physical hunger, her brokenness.

She has seen Love. And Love is all she needs.

This is one little girl, from one little nation, from yet a smaller city in a world full of brokenness.

You probably didn’t see that.

And you probably are lucky because if you did, you’d have to care. And if you cared, you’d have to help. And no one is in the spirit of helping anyone else—WE’VE ALL GOT OUR OWN ISSUES TO CLEAN UP, RIGHT?

No. You don’t see what I see.

But I wish you did.

"…Blessed are the eyes that see what you see." – Luke 10:23

This is just an excerpt from my journal from Tuesday, March 24th:

After visiting Casa Hogar Vida and having siesta time, we went to the dump. I knew it would be hard and blow my mind, and it did. At first it looks just like any normal dump – trash, messy, vultures, not pretty. But then, you look closer and see people DIGGING through it, people sitting in make-shift shacks amongst it all. Or then, you walk up to this enormous pile of rotted food, bloody meat that look like they just came from a slaughter house. It was absolutely disgusting. Cow carcasses, bones, bloody, rotting meat — and they had to stand and dig through this to look for plastic bottles.

 
Soon the vultures came. And flies were everywhere, and talking with the people working there, you could just see the flies crawling all over them; their pants and clothes. This is their LIFE. This is their everyday, all the time, no escape LIFE. They don’t get to come "visit" for an hour or two and then leave, get in a bus and wash their hands. NO. This is their life, everyday, all the time. And it’s horrible. All day they dig through the trash for plastic bottles, sorting them out, and only making about $3 a day.

I talked with a 14 year old boy who had been in school until 6th grade, but had to quit school after that year. He said he really liked school, and his favorite subject was math. He said that this was his first year working at the dump. He wanted to be at school. He doesn’t like it here. …He is choking up at this point… THIS BOY IS FOURTEEN!! 14 years old! He shouldn’t be working in a DUMP, he should be able to be in school. But he CAN’T. He said that someday he hopes to go back to school in some kind of vocational studies, but a big part of me doubts and wonders that will happen. Which sucks. It’s not fair. He’s 14 years old, and he may have to dig through trash for the rest of his life.

Also at the dump was a married couple, who I talked with for awhile while everyone was waiting for their new shoes. I talked with the man one on one for awhile before his wife joined us, and he was very nice, and sweet. He told me I had a very beautiful face. I think I can honestly say he was the nicest man I talked to in Honduras, not counting the amazing men of the church. He was so easy to talk to and seemed genuinely happy. He was happy, and he worked in a dump.

Soon we called his wife over, and she was wonderful as well. She couldn’t stop smiling. They were so…. happy. Peaceful. Genuine. I couldn’t fathom this. After talking for awhile, I felt in my heart that it was time to ask them more about their faith. I asked Tyler to come and talk with me. I had asked before if they went to church, and they said that they did. With Tyler, we asked, that if they were to die today, would they think they would go to Heaven. With utmost certainty, they replied, "Yes.". When we asked more questions, they had all the right answers, and I honestly believe they have a deep personal relationship with Christ. The one thing that they said, though, that I will never forget, was this statement: "it’s not good works or deeds that get us into Heaven. it’s our faith. Without faith in God, we have nothing." …WE. HAVE. NOTHING.

This blew my mind! How could two people be so sure, so confident, passionate, sincere, and excited about their faith and hope in Christ and live and work at a city DUMP?!? It puts my faith to shame. Hearing their hearts and responses was so exciting and encouraging to hear, and immediately tears filled my eyes. I couldn’t stop crying. THAT moved my heart. I mean they were just great people in their faith. It makes me sad to think that they have to endure this everyday, but I just pray that someday they find ultimate rest.

After we got back on the bus, I kept crying. I couldn’t and can’t get those two stories out of my head (the 14 yr. old boy and the couple with amazing faith). These are real people, real stories, real lives. This isn’t something they do for spare money or to help the environment. This is their life. I was at the dump for about 2 hours, and got to leave. Got back on the bus and went back to a warm meal, a shower, and a soft bed to sleep in. I don’t know what to say. I’m broken.