Team Meeting MCC Honduras

We just returned from our first MCC Honduras team meeting, held in La Campa, a small community about four hours from here. If anyone is checking on a map, La Campa is located southeast of St. Rosa de Copan and 10 km south of Gracias de Lempira. Both Gracias and La Campa sit at the foot of Honduras’s highest mountain, Celanque, at ~2,900 meters (close to 9,000 feet). No snow on the peak, but the area is quite “fresca”, which was a refreshing break for the team members that came up from San Pedro Sula. (see picture of team)

Kathy and I had planned to leave Tuesday after our language classes via bus to Gracias to stay overnight in a hotel and explore the city and area. Then the team coming from San Pedro Sula would pick us up on Wednesday to travel on to La Campa for the meetings. However Kathy woke up really really sick on Tuesday morning and didn't feel well enough to go to language class let alone ride for several hours in buses to Gracias. Even if we were picky about the buses we took, it would still be a hot rough ride with an undefined wait period in La Entrada, a wild and crazy town at a major crossing of roads into the interior of western Honduras. So I called the hotel to cancel (good Spanish exercise that was...) and ran around Copan buying a thermometer and materials to keep Kathy hydrated. She really felt awful, I felt so sorry for her.

At the time I thought there was no way we were going to make it to the meetings. But by Wednesday morning she had recovered enough that she was up to traveling. We picked a comfortable looking bus to La Entrada, which fortunately did not fill up beyond capacity as is often the case. We had time for a leisurely lunch (light lunch for Kathy) before Darrin and the team picked us up for the rest of the trip to La Campa.

We really enjoyed the meetings with the team (13 in total, including the two children) and the opportunity to see the work that one of MCC's partners, Comite' Acion Social Menonita, is doing in the communities surrounding La Campa. CASM is working to help organize the communities to assist each other with agricultural projects, including building chicken coops to house chickens at night, raising rabbits, using small metal silos to store grain, diversified gardening in the back yards, fish ponds, composting, and enriching the soil naturally. It was gratifying to see how proud the families/farmers were to show us what they had done as a group. One group in particular has been organized for 20 years and had already done a lot to improve their community, including gathering the funds to build the equivalent of a Jr High School and a building for the first year of High School, very unusual for a rural community like that. Now they are working at the new initiatives introduced by CASM. We also visited a paper making micro-enterprise that had been initiated by a Japanese development agency. The ladies in this cooperative made paper from plant materials found in the area and used natural colors, mostly flowers, to tint the papers. Beautiful stuff!

I wish I could post pictures of the visits so you could better appreciate the situation and how remarkable it was.

I should also explain, that CASM is a Honduran agency originally created by the Honduran Mennonite Church. MCC provides material resources from time to time, but the programs are organized and administered by CASM. They have programs in a number of locations throughout Honduras, staffed almost entirely by Honduran development workers. MCC periodically places (we call it "secunding") staff with CASM. Currently there is one SALTer, Michael, working with them. In fact we left him behind in La Campa, where he will live for this next year.

We also met as a team to review the past quarter (for continuing members) and introduce ourselves (new team members) and to cover some business items. Since the team is scattered in various locations in Honduras, we get together as an entire team three times a year to stay in touch and for planning purposes. It was good for Kathy and me to get a chance to spend time with the rest of the team…. what looks to be a great team to work with. Unfortunately, one of the team members, Caleb couldn’t be with us. He is still in the US recovering from a serious infection he contracted here. Everyone is looking forward to him returning to Honduras, hopefully in a few weeks.

On another whole front, we are anxiously keeping our eyes on the hurricanes working their way through the Caribbean. If any of them cause major damage in this area, including Haiti, we may well need to put our language training on hold and travel to the affected area. Haiti got hit by Hurricane Gustaf and Ike, apparently not in a major way, but enough so that MCC will be responding with material aid. The person to whom we report in our Disaster Response Coordinator roles, Mark Epp, sent us an email indicating we might be sent there as a part of our orientation to observe the assessments and distribution of materials and how MCC works with their partners in the region. Nothing certain – but a possibility. All I gotta’ say is if I go into a Creole speaking environment now after having purged those Creole phrases from my brain, it may be more than those synapses can manage. I tried thinking of some Creole phrases this morning and came up with some pretty ridiculous sentences.

And so, life goes on……. That’s it from Honduras for now. Blessings to all who read this and super-double blessings to those who send a comment or even better an email! ;)