DONATIONS TO HONDURAS

By Mariana Lamaison Sears

This year, the same creative and flexible attitude will be required from Gilbert-O'Brien and 69 other Vermonters who will travel to the Central American country this month and next with the Hands to Honduras 2008 program. They will build and paint schoolrooms, install playgrounds, staff medical clinics and engage in other development projects. On the way, they will open up their minds and hearts to the lives of those who live in one of the poorest countries of the Western Hemisphere.

The women carried supplies for the village, including medicine and clothing, and brought funds to purchase building material for latrines and hy­giene items for the villagers.

Memorial is partnering with local missionaries Osmany and Jennifer Hernandez, who live in the city of Siguatepeque, 10 miles from Pane. During their stay, the group assisted Jennifer in teaching a hygiene class to the women of the village.

Approximately 45 women came for demonstrations on brushing their teeth and washing their hair, and to learn about hand washing, parasites, lice, sanitation and latrines. Another day, the women were taught to wash fruits and vegetables and how to gather and clean seeds for planting. The women were given shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, combs and a brush for their families.

Memorial was able to provide funds for seven latrines in the village. Men had prepared the area for most of them ahead of time, and the women of the village carried the loads of wood up the mountainside.

“They are cautious because lots of groups have come, but no one has stayed long enough to truly help them,” Vogel said. “We have a real chance to show the tangible love of God to these people.”

In addition to assisting with the class and helping with latrines, the team also worked with the children in Bible camps. They taught the children Bible stories, played games, made crafts and had snacks. One day over 150 children showed up, requiring the team to divide the two crafts they had planned between the older and younger children.

“We got a little bit worried when it came to snack time,” Vogel said. “We ran out of Kool-Aid, but had enough of our sodas left over from lunch. It was just enough. We said it was a modern-day version of the story of the loaves and fishes — which, incidentally, was our lesson for the day.”

Overall, Vogel thought it was a good trip. On the last day of the hygiene class, she commented that the women seemed cleaner and happier. “There seemed to be a small spark of life in eyes that once seemed dead and joyless,” she said. “That was a wonderful feeling for all of us. There were smiles and laughter where we had not seen it before.”

Church group members learn about themselves in Honduras

When members of a Grand Haven, Michigan church mission team traveled to Honduras this summer, they left something important behind: Their comfort zone. When they came back home, they brought back with them a couple of things that were even more significant: a montage of laughing Honduran faces, plus the glimpse they had taken into the Honduran lives.

Twelve members of St. Paul's United Church of Christ went to Honduras in late June and stayed into early July. During the intervening 12 days, they did construction work and handed out food, clothing and Bibles to the impoverished inhabitants of a remote mountain visit. But they did more.

Keeping their eyes open, they took note of the extreme poverty that afflicted many of the residents of the Central America country. They said they also paid attention the Hondurans' many enviable qualities -- their happiness, freedom of spirit and love of life.

"Needless to say, it was a life-changing experience," said the Rev. John Carpenter, pastor of St. Paul's. Carpenter's wife, Karen, who wrote an account of the trip, called it "the adventure of a lifetime." The experience, she said, "was more physically demanding than I envisioned but also more spiritually and emotionally rewarding than I could have imagined."

The mission team consisted of six youths and six adults. During their visit, they maintained a home base in the city of Comayuga. They also traveled to the mountain village of El Resario, where they worked on a cement block security wall to protect a nutrition center for the community and painted the building inside and out. They also worked on a platform for a tank that would supply the tank of running water. St. Paul's team members said they worked shoulder to shoulder with the Honduran people. This was an experience where we saw the people were willing to help themselves, and we worked right alongside them," said John Carpenter.

Carpenter described an experience he found particularly moving. "An elderly gentleman came up and shook our hands and spoke to us in Spanish, which my wife and I don't understand," he said. The woman who served as the mission team's interpreter told them what the old man said. "He said, 'God bless you. We're glad you're here. May God see you safely home,"' Carpenter recalled. "They're very, very appreciative of what people do."

Honduras is the second largest country in Central America, with a Caribbean coastline as well as a Pacific one. It is also one of the poorest and least developed countries in Latin America. Nearly two-thirds of the people live in poverty. Mission team members said they were struck by the conditions that afflict Honduran lives. On a couple of occasions, they were invited into homes in the mountain village. There they encountered floors of compacted dirt and cooking utensils that hung by rope from the ceiling.

"Most of the homes of average people were one-room," said John Carpenter. "Going to the bathroom was outside." "There were no shelves, dressers or storage areas," Karen Carpenter wrote. "The few clothes owned were piled on the bed during the day." Part of the impact on the mission team members was a greater appreciation of things Americans take for granted, John Carpenter said. "We have all this electronic stuff in our homes, and they don't even have good toilet facilities." In fact, most residents in the mountain village have no access to running water. In the city of Comayuga, residents may have running water but for only two designated hours per day.

When mission team members used a Polaroid camera to take family pictures, typically the photograph was clutched "as a prized gift to be hung on the wall of their dwelling," Karen Carpenter said. "What we take for granted is often a once-in-a-lifetime chance for them."

John Carpenter said it was a prime opportunity to learn about people who live lives many Americans might be hard pressed to imagine. "Many on the team had never been to a Third World country," he said.

Volunteering in Honduras: Dentist brings smiles to needy

Georgetown dentist William Lord is shown during one of his annual trips to treat patients in Honduras. Dr. Lord volunteers through the PRO PAPA Missions America which eases suffering and improves the lives of the people of Honduras. Submitted photo

GEORGETOWN — They wait for hours to see him.

Dr. William Lord is a Georgetown dentist who spends 10 days every spring treating patients in Honduras. He travels with dentists, nurses, doctors and home builders to Honduras to help a people who will walk for as long as five hours in order to see a dentist.

Dr. Lord is mostly retired now, although he does spend one day a week at his Georgetown practice.

In that 10-day session every year, he sees hundreds of patients, teaches children to brush their teeth and pulls hundreds of teeth from residents in a converted beach chair with a head rest. The conditions are primitive and he’s been chased from his makeshift clinic by tarantulas.

With no electricity for a dental drill, he makes due with a Dremel hand drill he bought at Lowe’s. “It sounds barbaric, but it works.”

One of the few bad moments was when airport security nearly prohibited him from taking his drill on board the plane after 9/11. “When you come back, pack it in your luggage and we’ll put it in the cargo,” he was advised.

But the people make it worthwhile, he said. They line up 200 or 300 deep to see the volunteers who come from PRO PAPA Missions America every year. PRO PAPA is a private group which began its work in 1996 to ease the suffering and improve the lives of the people of Honduras, which has seen recent devastation caused by both hurricanes and earthquakes.

The volunteers provide glasses for patients, give prenatal vitamins to pregnant women, teach children to brush their teeth and provide basic medical and dental care for people who may have never seen a doctor. “The people are in such need,” he said. “I have been a very lucky person.”

A special project taken on by Dr. Lord was to measure the head of one girl who is bald because she crawled into a machine which collapsed on her head as a toddler. That child will ultimately receive a wig and she can take off the hat that she wears constantly, he said. “That’s one of my special projects. She could have probably gone to two other dentists and they wouldn’t have taken off her hat (because it was in the way),” he said.

“They are just such nice people,” he said. “It has been such a wonderful experience.”

He proudly shows off a plaque he received given “for your generous, loving and professional dental care for the Honduran people.”

Tax deductible donations may be sent to PRO PAPA Missions, attention: Kay B. Smith, 19 Erica Drive, Indiana, PA 15701.

Mission group takes supplies to Honduras, builds classrooms

People devastated by a hurricane, living without power, few supplies and limited access to medical facilities may sound like Rita-repeated, but it's everyday life in much of Honduras. A group of 29 people sponsored by First Baptist Church in Jasper are currently in Honduras, taking supplies to local clinics and helping to build Sunday school classrooms.

"It's my 13th or 14th trip," said Terri Cheeley, team captain for the Jasper missionaries."My husband and I have been going down there since we were teenagers."

The group is taking pharmaceuticals, medical and dental supplies, clothing and children's items to Cebadilla, a small town in a mountain valley in the El Paraiso region. Cheeley says her group ranges in ages from 17 - 74. They plan to set up their own kitchen, help out at the clinics and with construction, and do evangelism. They also purchased rice and beans before leaving the capital of Tegucigalpa to distribute to the needy.

SHH began as a way to help orphans. It has expanded to encompass an entire Honduran community.

July 23, 2007

“Mostly, we just spent time with the children, talking to them, helping them with school work and just building a relationship with them,” Chan said.

Honduran Trip Impacts Nursing Students

UP Michigan Dental Equipment Going to Honduras

Several Upper Peninsula volunteers are helping to improve dental care in Honduras. For nearly a decade, Vickie Pair has been leading a medical mission team to Honduras to provide care to orphans and students through Mission Honduras. But Pair, a former dental hygienist, says there's hardly any dental care available.

Working with a U.P. family looking to donate equipment, Pair is sending x-ray machines, dental chairs, lights, and other equipment to Honduras.

"Once they know that we have this equipment at a specific site, we are hoping that dentists will have more of an interest in going down and volunteering to do dental work," Pair says.

The equipment is being shipped to Milwaukee today by Escanaba Moving Systems, and will then be shipped to Honduras by the National Guard. The entire project took over five years, but through volunteers, not a penny was spent by the mission team.

Habitat for Humanity Heads to Honduras

David Coats and Jennifer Gordon say they are travelling to Santa Cruz de Yojoa, Honduras, to lead a work team of Canadian Habitat for Humanity volunteers.

Coats and Gordon, along with 12 other Canadian volunteers including local Vanier teacher Carol Jokanovich, are helping to eliminate poverty and substandard housing worldwide. Coats and Gordon, both local teachers, say they are excited to be leading their first Global Village team, which will operate from Aug. 5 to 18.

Honduras, they say, is the second-largest country in Central America and is a land of lush mountains and beautiful coastlines. Amidst its pre-Columbian history, Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, burdened with high unemployment (28 per cent) and substandard housing for over 700,000 people.

This will be the second Global Village trip for Gordon. In 2003 she volunteered on a building trip to Costa Rica.

“It was an amazing experience,” Gordon says. “The work was difficult and the days were long, but the most rewarding aspect was working with the families and interacting with the children. People are living in quite harsh conditions. It really does change the lives of many families.”

Having travelled through 35 countries over the years, Coats has always wanted to combine his desire to contribute with an interest in other cultures. Honduras marks the first Habitat for Humanity Global Village experience for him.

“I am excited to have this opportunity with Habitat to work side-by-side with a family while we all build them a decent home,” Coats says, “and we are hoping that this is just the first of many GV trips in the years to come.”

Both Gordon and Coats participated in the first Habitat for Humanity Comox Valley build during the summer of 2005. They say it was exciting to be a part of that local experience as a volunteer.

The Global Village Program, through Habitat for Humanity, introduces concerned volunteers to hands-on homebuilding work around the world in areas where the tragedy of poverty housing is acute.

Global Village volunteer work teams experience another culture and become partners with people of that culture. As partners, teams help build a true “global village” of compassion, homes, families and hope.

Medical Teams Volunteer in Honduras

When York Hospital nurse Cathy Stauffer returned from her first trip to Honduras, she experienced a moment of guilt. It came when she hit the automatic garage door opener at her home in Lancaster.

She had spent a week in the Latin American country, providing medical care for people in a remote mountain village. The inhabitants lived in huts made of mud or sticks bound together with plastic strips. The only feature on the inside might be a bag of rice tied to the ceiling so animals couldn't get to it. Automatic garage door openers were well beyond their experience, to say nothing of advanced medical care.

"I felt guilty having so much when people have so little," Stauffer said. "It's pretty overwhelming."

In the intervening years, Stauffer's had ample opportunity to get over her initial culture shock. She's returned to Honduras many times in the process of establishing a nonprofit group to help the poor, rural people of that country.

Stauffer's organization, Casa Corazon, has two main components. Through Casa Corazon, medical teams composed of local volunteers travel to Honduras several times a year to provide medical care for people in remote mountain villages.

The group also arranges for about 10 Honduran children a year to travel to the United States. While they're here, the children receive medical care, such as open-heart surgery, not available in their country.

Stauffer recently received the Kitty Reisinger Heart of Nursing Award from York Hospital. The award is named for Kathryn "Kitty" Reisinger, who practiced nursing in the York area for more than 40 years before her death in 2002. But Stauffer emphasizes the fact that about 20 volunteers also make the group's mission possible.

Stauffer wanted to be a nurse since she was a child. The idea of helping people just appealed to her. In high school, she decided she wanted to be a missionary nurse and help people in other countries.

After graduating from nursing school in 1992, she started working at York Hospital. She wanted to work in the emergency room, which wasn't available to her in Lancaster.

In 1995, she learned of an opportunity to do the missionary work she had once dreamed of. A friend of hers was going to Honduras on a medical mission with a nonprofit group, and she volunteered to go along. She left the United States for the first time and experienced the country that would be so much a part of her future.

Stauffer started Casa Corazon in 1997. Since then, the group has brought about 75 children to the United States to undergo surgery.

It's often a culture shock for the children, she said. Before they leave Honduras, they'll sometimes get an orientation to familiarize them with things such as silverware and bathrooms, which they've never experienced before. But to date, Stauffer said, host families and children alike have been able to make the adjustment very well.

"Regardless of whether you speak Spanish, the love in any language goes a long way for them," she said.

Non-Profit Organizations in Honduras Children of the Light (Niños de La Luz) Adelante Foundation Paramedics for Children

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