By Mary Owen
Seven members of Bethel Baptist Church in Aumsville recently took the trip of a lifetime.
“Five ladies and two of our girls felt led by God to go to Honduras in March to help with the Honduras Baptist Women’s Conference,” said Lissa Bales, wife of Pastor Dwight Bales and mother of three girls ages 7 to 12. “Our church supports three missionary couples in Honduras. One of the couples was transitioning to ministry in India in June, so this would be our last chance to go there when they were all still ministering in Honduras.”
The group arrived March 4 at Gracias in the province of Lempira after a long flight from Portland via Houston.
“Our job was to decorate the facility and prepare gift bags for the attendees,” Bales said. “We helped with the registration and gave each lady a gift bag. None of us spoke Spanish, so we relied on hugs and smiles to communicate. The Honduran ladies were very accepting, affectionate and grateful.”
Each Bethel Baptist participant experienced godly reasons for attending. Accompanying Bales were: Hannah Bales, sixth grade; Rebecca Lucas; Kendra Lucas, sixth grade; Britta Weitman; Gloria Weitmand; and ShellyAnn Lokan.
Bales and Rebecca Lucas led a workshop on “Praying for Your Children,” using Moms-In-Touch resources and their experiences praying for their own girls. The Weitmans brought supplies for conference goers to make two crafts, helped by Lokan, who also provided childcare. The young girls planned activities for the children.
Following the conference, Bales was able to meet a Honduran girl that her husband and she have supported through Compassion International for the past eight years.
“We spent a couple of hours touring the Compassion Project center and visiting with the girl and her mother,” Bales said.
Aside from making it through her first airplane ride and eating fresh avocados every day, Bales said the trip was significant because it taught her to trust God’s plan for her life.
“I learned the importance of intercessory prayer,” she said. “Some of these ladies have very difficult lives. I was reminded how vital it is that I pray for them.”
After her arrival, Lucas wrote to her husband, Randy, “I have been a sick girl the past few days – high fever, chills, a long bus ride to Copan, a trip to the doctor, a shot, antibiotics. I barely have a voice, I’m sick to death of Honduran food, and guess what, I’m ready to come back in a year and do it all over again.”
“The time in Honduras was such a blessing that I’m already praying about going next year,” she said. “The day we went to (a nearby) hot springs, I was swarmed by little girls who wanted to play with me. At any one time, I had three, five kiddos hanging around my neck. I asked where their parents were, not wanting them to be concerned about this ‘gringa’ playing with their daughters. It turned out they were orphans.”
One of the girls, a 16-year-old named Zulmin, asked for prayer. She wants to be a doctor, and come to the United States. To do that, she will need to escape early marriage, almost a given in her culture.
“Many of the older men buy or just take girls around 11 or 12,” Lucas said. “They are brutalized by these men, and that is the extent of the women’s lives.”
Lucas promised she would continue to pray for Zulmin, a young Christian on a mission of her own.
Lokan, of Stayton, saw firsthand how many Honduran women are abused at the hands of a loved one. She met two sisters who between them had 13 children. They, too, wanted to come to America, willing to risk anything to better their children’s lives.
“There is such loss of hope in their faces,” she said of the women and children there. “Loneliness, poverty, empty stores, garbage along the roads, dogs running streets looking for food – the same food the people were trying to have. Gangs are common and it’s easy for children to be victimized and persuaded into crime.”
“I know God wanted me to go and help and see things behind the faces, really observe the people,” Lokan said. “Time was short, but needs were so great. And my heart was broken, and God convicted me then and I knew I would return to Honduras.”
Gloria Weitman said, “You can never have enough knowledge about God, or receive enough of God’s love, or know why he loves us so much.”
Honduras is surviving because of the faith of the women there, she said.
“They survive because they trust in God,” she said.
Lokan said, with a little Spanish learned, she wants to return to Honduras to encourage their beliefs in an “awesome God that can help give them hope.”
“We were all about giving hope to these women,” she said. “They need so much more.”
Lucas said she has a renewed appreciation for being born in the U.S. “Though our country is not perfect, as a general rule, we value our women and children,” she said. “The Christian values our country initially embraced have served our country well. We understand that all people are created equally, and have equal value.”
The Bethel Baptist women agree that faith can join together people who speak different languages, live different lives, and who dream similar dreams.
“I couldn’t understand the scriptures they read in Spanish, or understand the words to the songs they sang, but I was united with these women simply because we were worshipping the same God,” Lucas said. “The differences between us just melted away.”
