I think all in the entire trip this year was good. I feel that everyone who was on the team was contributing to what we needed to accomplish. 

When we pre-planned the 3 days camping with the Kids and 3 days of the Vacation Bible study, we were all ready and raring to go. Each person in the team helped with fundraising, even though it was last minute, everyone helped with the one that the church suggested. I am happy that they all showed up during the weekend when we had the fundraising and each one of them had a great attitude. They all helped with set up and tear down and even helped getting misc. items that we needed (people who have gone to our trips before even helped out).

I was a little disappointed that all the planning of the skits and of the games was not realized because of the time and the changes in plans. The good thing is that even though we didn’t have time to do much of what we wanted game wise, we were able to do some of the crafts that we planned. It was also good that there were enough Spanish Speaking Hondurans there. We had a great time even though ½ of our team was late to the camping place. 

It turned out to be a very interesting time waking up and having the kids in my group and other groups do exercising in the mooring. It was run like a boot camp and the kids enjoyed that we were there. The last day, we as adults and kids walked for 1.5 hours or so and we didn’t complain too much for doing this. The lesson that was deemed from it was that sometimes God will bring you all over the place and you may not even know what he is doing with you, but there is a purpose for what you are doing.  

The team, including Justin and Elizabeth that are already down there for Peace Corps, had a great time with the kids. My troop, “Los Valientes” which means the “Courageous” won 2 awards one for our team chant and one for our discipline. 

The best part of the camping experience was when 7 kids accepted Christ. Most of these kids don’t have a family, so it was great to see that they do listen to adults if you show them God’s love and that if are firm in what you are telling them.

The next part of our trip was the Vacation Bible School. We had planned for 150 kids to give our crafts to. What we found out was there was more than that and we had to be creative with the materials we had. We changed the crafts since we found out that there was not enough to do what we wanted to. Many of the crafts we did were well accepted and many kids even the older 10-15 years old had a great time learning about Jesus and how he can be real to them in Honduras. The team came together and helped with all.

There were many kids that we got to know more than before. It was good to see how they do their vacation bible schools. With so many kids, there was a lot of organization that needed to take place; I felt that our team helped the Honduran team as much as possible. We had a lot of things that changed from our original concept of what was going on, but that was ok and everyone handled this well. 

We had a few people that got sick, but they recovered quickly. Usually this happens even to me. It was good that when a person was sick from what was needed that the others pitched in to help with the need and allowed that person to rest up before getting involved again in any of the activities that were planned. 

I was amazed how many of the kids could learn scripture so fast. Every day we had 3 scriptures that each age group would need to memorize and in just a matter of minutes of reading it they were able to repeat it word for word with no problems. I know for me, I was not able to memorize the scriptures but I was able to repeat the scriptures in Spanish and many kids in my group were surprised that I could speak Spanish so well. 

I also enjoyed the day that we were allowed to take the bus with the kids on the way back to their homes since the bus driver was going to drop us off at the mall so that we could eat. We went past some Christmas light decorations on the main street, suddenly the whole bus erupted with “ELLA” which I learned means “Cool.” These kids who come from very poor families and they don’t get out of their neighborhoods too often, and it was just a wonderful experience to hear them all yell this out with such delight. I know it was huge highlight of my day. 

Again the most important part of the vacation bible study was when we learned that 34 accepted Christ. We like Greg Boyd in last weekend’s sermon indicated that we would have gone through all the work for just one child to accept Christ.