Project Honduras

Project Honduras is the name of the conference Marc and I have been attending. The attendees are mostly missionaries, but also some civic groups like Rotary, some teacher groups and a few others. We are receiving a lot of information and meeting a lot of people that are doing the same thing we are.

Bear with me for just a few minutes while I quote a few statistics. Honduras is a country of almost 7 million people with more than 50% of those being age 15 and under. Many, many of those would children would be the parents of children. There is no abstinence taught and no birth control taught. The average wage is 40 lempira per day or about $2.00. Hunger and homelessness are the norm, not the exception. There are no safety nets such as food stamps, ATFWDC, welfare. Nothing. Education is free, but only if a family can afford the uniform, shoes, books, and supplies. If the family cannot afford these things, the child does not get to go to school. This alone would perpetuate the poverty. Every school states their number one need is pencils. Most receive no health care and no dental care. The more rural an area becomes, the higher the statistics become. Not only can we not drink the water, they can't drink the water. Every clinic that is held, every person treated has parasites and intestinal disorders. Tens of thousands of children under 5 die every year from the water they drink. Healthcare is only for those who can afford it. Many people watch their babies die because they do not have $10.00 to buy that child medicine. Or they do not have the money to buy a suture kit for surgery. Most clinics state their number one need as aspirin or band-aids. I could go on and on with these statistics. They are staggering.

Tomorrow, we go back to Santa Ana. I am exhilarated to, at last begin the work for which we have so earnestly and diligently prepared. I am fearful, knowing that my barely-scratched-the-surface spanish is insufficient. I am sombered by the above statistics. How, you may ask, can we possibly do anything about these problems. They are huge. Let me tell you a story about a little boy. One morning he woke up and the beach was covered with starfish that had washed up during the night. He was walking along the beach, picking each one up as he came to it and tossing it back into the sea. He met a man and the man said "what are you, doing? Don't you know that you can't possibly make a difference. The little boy picked up one starfish and tossed it into the sea and said, "I just made a difference to that one."

As we go home tomorrow and prepare to plunge into this new work, that is how we are going to make a difference, one person, one family at a time.

Terri