Thursday, January 26th, 2023
Today we visited Cordoncillos, a small village with 60 homes situated adjacent to a large trash dump. Many community members will sort through the dump for sustenance when not working in the fields. Like every other village we have visited, the community leaders greeted us warmly and eagerly helped us offload the bus and get set up.
Many of these villages struggle with having access to clean and plentiful water that leads to many maladies.
Mark had a mother that was severely struggling to get a breath. The use of a nebulizer had a significant benefit and then explained to her how to avoid getting to that state again. Education is a key component of the work here and the medical staff is doing this in abundance.
Wendy and Paul spent time with a 5-year-old boy that told them he wants to go to the bilingual school and learn English. He had already started teaching himself and shared in English all the colors.
Many crosses were given out today. Roger shared his with a sweet engaging boy that helped him to collect papers when the wind blew in. Roger Jr and Chelsea shared crosses with a lovely set of young girls. Kristen shared a cross with one of the local community volunteers focused on getting medical boxes to the community. Chris gave a cross to a young mother and her beautiful 6-month-old.
More than crosses were shared. Linda gave her own socks to a lady that was suffering from severely cracked skin on her feet. Jim shared his thanks with a local man that took time away from his job as a farm hand to help out the medical brigade.
To really understand the village commitment to working with FOB, the local school teacher convinced the community leaders to extend the school roof to create a portico specifically to protect FOB volunteers after last year's visit. It was hugely useful as it started pouring in the afternoon today. When the rain rolled in from the valley, we were high enough that the clouds enshrouded the buildings.
Virginia wrapped up our day by sharing something written by Will Andrew's from Team #1 2005, Trinity UMC, speaking about Hondurans:
"... I had great hopes that I would help the people of Honduras, the place of such acute poverty. What I discovered was quite different. The least of these among us served me.... We were the recipients of hospitality and service..."
~Chris and Jim
