Never Had A Monday This Good

My typical Monday morning involves me getting ready to go to work, packing my lunch, my laptop and my books for my grad classes I take at night and maybe a change of shoes for walking on my lunch break if I'm feeling ambitious (I usually don't). But this Monday morning, I got to eat breakfast with the team and have a short devo in the chapel here at the Mission House. And then instead of a laptop or running shoes or a textbook, I got to stuff my bags with toys....tons of toys, and stickers, and bubbles, and play do, dinosaurs, coloring books, bracelets and rings for little girls. Because today, half our team got to spend the day at one of the hospitals here in Tegucigalpa.

We were told that we would visit children in a cancer unit, a burn unit, broken bone unit and neuro unit and any other children's unit in which we would be allowed to enter. Our only job? To love. To play.  To make a kid laugh or to hold a parent's hand and say a prayer before we left their bedside.

In the words of one of the members, as he stepped off the bus looking like this:

"Let's do it."

I'm going to brag on the group tonight because I'm just so proud to be a part of this amazing team. Hospitals are not an easy place to hang out in. There are things even in a top-notch United States hospital that are difficult to look at...Honduran hospitals are a whole new level of difficulty. There are cases that can just break you up inside. But our job today was to give our sadness and our reservations over to God and just to simply let His love flow through us all day. And our team nailed it. I saw smiles and joy and heard laughter come from children that hadn't been given a reason lately in life to laugh. Our team members prayed with a mother that had lost her child and with other incredible kids receiving chemo. Everyone that came home on that bus talked about what a wonderful day it had been, how glad each of them was for the opportunity just to go and meet these people.

The other half of our group visited feeding centers today to serve lunches to children who would otherwise not have a meal. One feeding center alone feed over 200 children. That is an incredible number to me.... over 200 children that normally would not know where their next meal was going to come from, had a hot meal in the middle of the day today. Pretty cool for a Monday, huh? From what I heard from others, the kids there were incredible and the people that run the feeding centers are just wonderful people. This crew also jump-started the food bags assembly line for the team this afternoon back at the Mission House. In a little more than an hour, the team put together over 201 meal bags full of rice, beans, sugar, salt, coffee, flour and other dietary staples of the local culture. Had this portion of the team not started on the process when they did, we might still be filling bags right now....

If you caught my earlier little blog post this evening, I let you guys know that we wouldn't be streaming the devo live like we had planned (What? You mean, plans actually change in Honduras?!)... the group had evening devotional at the beautiful statue of Jesus that overlooks the entire city. I can't really describe what it's like to look down on a city of over a million people, the majority of which live below a poverty line so low we can't even begin to wrap our heads around it back home in the states. It makes my head spin to think about all the ways God is using us and will continue to use us in this city.

I can't wait to see what the rest of the week is going to be like....

How was your Monday?

We love and miss you all.
Kathryn :)

ps. Want to see more pictures? Please check out another blog that is being kept by one of our awesome team members... Click on the link... earringproject.blogspot.com.