SHARING CHRIST IN HONDURAS (March 2007)

By PASTOR ROGER HEINTZ

God has blessed us with another opportunity of connecting people to life in Jesus. We have that privilege in our own communities as well as the community around Brookfield Lutheran Church.

We are also pleased that God can use us beyond Brookfield, our state of Wisconsin and the U.S.

Bob Gleason, Dan Zehnder and I are scheduled to leave March 19 to fly into the city of San Pedro Sula in the hills of Honduras. Our mission is to train 80 pastors in Scripture and theology. This request from the pastors came through missionary field worker Alan Sowers in Central America.

In Honduras the education level of a pastor is approximately 6th grade (5th–6th grade is the intelligence level of U.S. television). Due to the area’s poverty, these men are unable to attend schools or to purchase books to grow in their understanding of God’s Word. They are excited for us to come and teach them!

The Honduras Mission has been BLC’s February Mission of the Month. Your mission offerings will provide transportation for Honduran pastors to the conference site in Gracias. Your offerings will also provide food and lodging, conference study materials and, for each participant, their very own Thompson Chain Reference Study Bible (Spanish version). This will help them to continue to share the Word.

Crossways International has provided us with materials for two courses: See Through the Scriptures and Divine Drama. Both courses have been translated into Spanish by fellow LCMS pastor Gary McClure. Brookfield Lutheran has been given permission by Harry Wendt, Crossways founder, to reproduce these for free, since the Honduran pastors cannot afford to pay for them. The Crossways material provides for the reading of Biblical text along with explanation and pictures to aid the visual learner. Manuals filled with challenging questions are included. All this will give the Honduran pastors the opportunity to share the Word of God (with explanation and pictures) with their congregations and communities. It will strengthen their abilities to connect people to life in Jesus.

Thank you for this opportunity. We covet your prayers.

Greetings from Honduras!

Our time with the pastors ended last night.  God has blessed us and the pastors through our time together.  We taught all day and their attention never wavered.  The only distraction was the occasional cell phone ringing….they are pastors after all! 


The Sowers have accumulated clothing sent by churches in the US.  Last night they put it out for the pastors to take what they needed.  You’ll see a before and after picture of the process.  They were so grateful for the clothing, sheets and towels they chose.  After 45 minutes there was not a single piece of clothing left.  It was amazing to see. 

We received a number of written notes for us to give to the Living Stones prayer group.  These pastors were so grateful to hear about the prayer support for them during our trip and promised to pray for BLC and our ministries there.

We asked people how far they had to travel / how long it took them to get here.  A 2-3 hour walk and a 4-5 hour bus ride was not unusual.  The longest travel time was 12 hours on foot.  A 62 year old female pastor walked 4 hours and rode a bus for another 3 hours to get here. 

I’m sorry this note is so short but we are headed to the Missionary Ventures property outside of town.  Allen wants to show us his vision for the center he plans to build there.  Later today we are leaving for San Pedro Sula.  We’ll stay over night and go to the airport in the morning.  We leave from San Pedro Sula at noon on Saturday for Houston.  We leave Houston at 7:20 p.m. and arrive in Milwaukee at 10:00 p.m.  We look forward to seeing you all on Sunday morning.

We continue to be in good health and appreciate your continued prayers. 

Blessings to you all!

Bob

March 20

Greetings, all, from Gracias Honduras!

We arrived in Honduras Monday night at about 7:00 p.m. from Guatemala City. We’ll explain later how we wound up in Guatemala City. Our local contact, Allen Sowers, waited 8 hours for us to finally arrive. He took us to our hotel in downtown San Pedro Sula where we got a very good night’s sleep. The next morning we stayed in town until the local Continental Airlines opened to see if they had our baggage. They did not, so we left for Gracias. We will eventually get our luggage…perhaps when we return!

We had our first session this afternoon. About 60 pastors were in attendance today and more are expected tomorrow. Even though we don’t speak the same language we have a bond in Christ that is strong. It is exciting to see how God has been at work here.

The few pictures attached give you a sense of where we are and what we’ve seen. The large church is on the main square in San Pedro Sula, the city we flew into. There is an inside shot of the space with the pastors. The building with the red roof is the building we are teaching in. The picture of the three of us was taken half way between San Pedro Sula and Gracias.

We are all in good health and looking forward to a full day tomorrow!

Blessings to you all!

The Honduras Mission Team

Bob Gleason