Best Trip Ever!!!

(I asked my oldest daughter Christina to write a couple blog posts about her recent missions trip to Honduras. She doesn't like writing so these posts are a labor of love.)

As a general policy, I avoid writing or speaking about trips I have gone on.  To me, travel is a deeply personal experience, and while to the individual, travel is something special and unique, to the general public uninteresting and cliche.

  

Talking about my recent trip to Honduras, however, breaks that policy.  I have lived overseas several times and traveled to multiple countries, but those trips were focused on me and what I wanted to do.  This Honduras trip impacted me in many ways because I realized how much I enjoyed focusing on the well being of others instead of myself. 

This trip also combined several of my passions and was a small taste of what I hope to do career wise in the future.   I am currently on the waiting list to start Nursing School and hope to eventually move into the area of Public Health.  I also love the Spanish language so enjoyed a trip that combined traveling, Spanish, and the medical field. 

In mid-January I spent eight days in Honduras working as a Spanish translator for a group of local medical professionals that annually travel to Northern Honduras.   

According to the World Bank, Honduras is the third poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti and Nicaragua and the income disparity is huge between the rich and poor. 

Our main focus was to put on free medical clinics in remote mountain villages surrounding the city of Santa Barbara, Honduras.

The team I went with has been doing these clinics for the past 14 years so they were quite familiar to the people in these villages.  

Many villagers have no access to medical care and our visit will be the only medical attention they receive all year.  

What made the biggest impression was being exposed to the abject poverty that we encountered in the villages.  They have so little, and compared to them, I have so much. They lack so many of the everyday things I take for granted. 

The first village we visited was the most remote and poverty very apparent.   We worked in a field with a few ramshackle tables that served as workbenches.  

Pharmacy - Honduras style

I'll write more about the trip in the next post as this one is getting long. I'll close today by saying that the people of Honduras and their needs touched my heart and I'm thankful for the trip and the opportunity to have a small part in helping to make the world a better place.