Things We See

In Honduras - our lives are quite a lot different than we ever imagined.
That is an understatement!
We often pray that God will open our eyes to the needs of the world around us and He does.
Sometimes when He opens our eyes, we sit back and ask "Lord, why do you keep showing me all of these things and what do you want us to do about it?"
Examples -
Gabriela is 19, is in the hospital waiting to have surgery that will save her leg. We keep thinking that the surgery is going to be tomorrow but, every day there is some other reason that the doc's have for another delay. We tried to move her to another hospital but, Hosp. Esc won't give us the records and the other hospital can't (or won't) taker her without them. It is agonizing to know that this young girl needs to have her leg saved and frustrating that nobody seems to care.

Last week I was in a hospital in SPS. They have 5 x-Ray rooms and only one machine that works and the day I was there, the printer was broken.

Last week I was in a place called San Francisco de Cortez and met a lot of people that are working to help this community of more than 25,000. It is really spread out through tough mountain roads. They are 40 or so miles from SPS and don't have an ambulance to transport people to the hospital. Anyone that needs emergency care goes on foot, in a bus, or if they are lucky in somebody's truck. In a bus, they are at least 4 hours from the nearest hospital.

There is a little boy named David that lives mostly on the streets of Tegucigalpa. I usually see David near one of the McDonald's and almost always buy him something to eat. There are 4 or 5 little guys that have become my friends and they like it that I know their names and they always remember mine.

Today the dump was crazy. Everybody was way hungry and thirsty.
I like the dump - even though the people sometimes push and shove, they almost always thank us and when the food is gone, they hang out to talk and laugh with us. There are several that we know by name and many that remember our names. Today, we met a lady that asked for help with a house. She lives with her mom, her 3 kids, one of her grandchildren, and one other person. They live in a "plastic" house. In the states, we might call a subdivision with a bunch of look-alike houses plastic. Here is plastic house is exactly what the name implies. It is made of plastic tarps and sticks.

Every day we drive to Tegucigalpa we see many houses on the side of the road that are some of the worst living conditions that you can imagine. Most are on 'squatter' land so it would be difficult to do anything about them.
I pray that I will never be synical about what I see.
I pray that I never close my eyes to the needs and that God will pour out resources to allow us to do something about what we see.
I am blessed that every day I am here we see the 15 kids that live here at Casa de Esperanza. I try to pray for them by name and for their specific needs. I would ask you to write their names down and pray for them by name too -
they are.
Pamela
Brayan
Jose Antonio (Fito)
Jackson
Daniela
Anita
Jose
Fernando
Maryuri
Cindy
Monica
Doris
Katy
Sisi
Rosita
Pray too that we will soon find the staff that we need to openn our new house.
Be a blessing to somebody today!
Marc