Honduras trip

A question I've often received is "have you been on a mission trip?"  Well, yes and no, but definitely not one outside of the country.  When I married Keller I knew she and her family had a long history of being involved with a Honduras mission trip.  The trip was arranged by several different churches in Baton Rouge, Kansas City, and Hiram (Atlanta.)  The church in Hiram is known as West Metro church of Christ. [note: I can't remember if you are supposed to capitalize the church "C".  Regardless...]

We signed up with West Metro and the group totaled about 40 altogether.  Among others, we were joined with Keller's parents and two of her younger sisters, Carltron and Sossana.  Now, only a small inner sliver of me questioned using multiple vacation days to spend with my beloved in-laws - really, only a tiny amount.  But overall I was really looking forward to the trip.  :)

The morning we left our house at 4:30 AM, I was greeted by a maimed, half-full rear tire on the Tahoe.  It turns out that the convenience stores on Roswell Rd aren't open by then, but thankfully Starbucks was (Keller.)  After driving halfway to Hiram I finally filled it up enough to ease into the parking lot, knowing I'd be changing a flat upon our re-entry...

The flight and all went smoothly and soon enough we were in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.  The airport was crowded, but nice, and besides local Honduran travelers, other American missionaries were easily spotted.  We boarded an old school Bluebird school bus and began the trek to Sambo Creek, which was halfway to our destination Trujillo.  I was fascinated by the landscape, having never been to Central America, nor a spanish-speaking country.  There are a lot of mountains there, tall and jagged, covered in vegetation.  Palms grow all the way into the clouds.  Some palms near the road grew about 16' tall with massive fronds that fanned out at least 20'.  No wonder they are used for roofs.

Besides that, there's banana, mango, and coconut trees literally everywhere.  Tropical snacks only a reach away.   When the bus stops at a gas station, local vendors crowd around hoping to sell some snacks.

We stopped after a 3 hour bus ride at Sambo Creek, which I'm guessing is probably a long forgotten coastal ex-pat vacation area.  As we basically followed the northern coast of Honduras, we were near the Caribbean the whole time, and this night we stayed right on the water.  We arrived in time for the afternoon cattle drive on the beach...

 The sand was nice and soft, the water was an opaque tannish color, not exactly the best for swimming.  That night I enjoyed my first eyes-closed mouth-closed shower, the first of many to come.  In the morning we hit the road again, another 3 hour trip to Trujillo.  Along the way a common sight below: Everywhere, skeletons of houses.  Mostly just the concrete block wall, unfinished and no roof.  I don't know if people start to build them and then run out of money (just like in the States) or if builders just build them hoping to eventually sell them.  

 Eventually we wind our way to beautiful Trujillo.  Trujillo is on the northern coast of Honduras and you can see some of the outer islands from the coast there.  Roatan is not far away and is visible - Roatan is a popular diver's destination.  Trujillo is covered in bananas, plantains, coconuts, and mango trees.  Being a smaller city, however, it does not shake the "third world" image much though.  Some nicer and modern houses do exist but most houses seemed to be very basic.  As we stayed there several days it seemed like the typical lifestyle was to have the mother at home with several children, and the father working, if work was to be found.  Keller was struck by the difference in lifestyle that a 3 hour plane trip makes.  In the US she has a career and a lot of autonomy over what she does with her life, but in Honduras the typical mother is truly under the employ of the household all day every day.  Cooking, cleaning, laundry, and (multiple) child rearing was a full time and unpaid job.
   The days were hot, hot, hot...  Below is a view of of the road our hotel was on with the sea in the background.

 From what I could gather we went down with several initiatives to accomplish.  They were mainly focused on work and repairs needed in the community and local churches.  West Metro supports a Christian school in Trujillo and in Honduras, things break down and go missing with much frequency.  Our group painted, fixed things, and repaired various electrical problems around the school.  I worked on the carpentry team a few doors and helped build a bano door (bathroom.)  On the days I wasn't at the school, I helped on the house project.  About 30 minutes outside of Trujillo in the countryside there was a local church family whose home was in disrepair and needed a new place to live.  Our team took on the ambitious project to build them a house.  Mr. Hill (father-in-law) may have worked his way into the Catholic book of saints by spending every work day out on the house site.  Little shade, hot days, limited water, and legitimate hard work was done everyday at that site.  I volunteered to go out there the second day.  Here's a picture of Keller and I setting some blocks.  The hat was a lifesaver. 

One of the boys decided to "ride" this neighborhood dog.  Ears for steering.

Below, Keller and I mortaring the blocks using some precarious Honduran scaffolding.

Keller finally getting a chance to hold Joseph, who for days before had been terrified of the visiting Gringos.  On a seperate occassion I was walking with a group to work at the school and a 3 year old on a porch shouts out, "Hola, gringos!!"

At about the midpoint of the trip, Montezuma issued his assault on my digestive system and I was incapacitated for a short amount of time, but due to an abundant supply of medicine thankfully it was not too bad.  Had I been at the country jobsite, it would have been a VERY trying experience, but perhaps providentially we were at the hotel.  Unfortunately I got hit at the same time with a strange 2 day head cold / virus that about half of our team got while we were there.  So that morning was not my favorite, but again thankfully I spent it in bed and was able to recuperate sufficiently.

There are more pictures that I may sort and post eventually but as that could take weeks I figured I would go ahead and finish the trip synopsis so those that were wondering about our trip can read before they lose interest :)

As expected Honduras did leave several impressions on me.  I had never been to a third world country, and I don't know if Hondurans would take offense to that title, but at least from my understanding it is what it is.  But that doesn't imply that the country or it's residents are any "less" than we are.  The spirit of the people we met, or even strangers we just passed by in a store, was very strong and congenial.  I did not have any interactions that were unpleasant, in fact most were actually refreshing and enjoyable, despite the language barrier.  The people there were very appreciative and authentic and pitched in wherever they could.

Another Honduran element I picked up on was their sense of neighborhood.  With the lack of alienating technology it seems that relationships were "richer" there than what we were used to.  What I mean is here we travel alone in cars to work, work on computers, scroll our phones when bored, watch TV at home.  But because those things aren't as abundant in Honduras, the people rely on each other for quality of life.  Or, at least this is what I thought I observed - I'd leave it up to them to describe themselves.  But in any event, community was much more involved - for better or for worse.

A result of that was while we were there an old fashioned "door-knocking" was taking place with the local ministers.  Every night we would hear them tell us about the minister's success in reaching out to the community simply by going door to door.  Success in the sense that these people studied the Bible together and chose to believe.  Now, in our culture those methods might be perceived as obsolete or unsafe, or not effective any more.  But due to the Honduran communal culture, it seems to be very effective.

We actually got to witness some in action.  While building the home out in the countryside, one the of ministers came to the house where we were working.  One of the boys living there, Luis, had been assisting us in the difficult tasks of mixing concrete and filling mortar joints.  Luis and all of the boys and men in the household were all very helpful.  Anyways Luis studied with the minister, Santiago, and chose to be baptized that day.  Mr. Hill and Mrs. Hill (or Mama Hill as I am to call her) were out there that day and Mama Hill got to go down to the river where they witnessed the baptism.  I'm reminded of the scene from O Brother Where Art Thou!  Unfortunately that was the day I was in bed.

The most impactful information was learning that our group may have helped to influence his decision, if anything by just example.  That is a very convicting feeling, more important than how many doors we fixed or walls we painted.  And, it's one I don't think I've felt before.  On the last work day we showed up to find Santiago there again, underneath the thatched roof and on a dirt floor, with an open bible and talking to Luis' wife.  That day we finished the house and as we were hand-torquing the roof tin into the trusses a cloud came and gave us shade the last hour of the day.  We got to use our hands and wrenches because the power drill ran out of battery and we weren't near an electrical source.

There are more memories: drinking every possible tropical soft drink - coconut, banana, etc., eating plantains, spotting iguanas, watching the ocean, trying to teach kids how to bowl tennis balls into a stack of aforementioned soft drink bottles, and spending time with family and friends.  Perhaps paramount to those is how I can begin to see how you can begin to form relationships with the Honduran people despite sharing maybe 10-15 words of spoken language.  And for me personally it was part of my own mission to understand and experience the global purpose of Christianity.

Lastly, only one selfish benefit to the trip; I was looking forward to pestering our minister who came with us on the trip, Ricky from West Metro, with every possible theological and church history related question I could think of.  So thanks Ricky for being a good sport and hearing me out!!! And of course, another great benefit was getting to spend time with my new family, Mr. and "Mama" Hill and Carlo and Suz.

Last note: upon our return a church member had noticed my flat.  They own a tire shop and removed my tire, fixed the flat, and put it back on the truck.  I was so surprised. 

Chronocentricity

Great title, I know. 

Barring the discovery of some ancient advanced civilization, today in 2013 we most certainly enjoy the status of being the most technologically advanced generation the Earth has known.  That certainly must be a fact. Now, a Revolution-style catastrophe could occur, stifling electricity and throwing us backwards a couple of hundred years.  Or, the global nuclear wars feared in the 1960's could still happen and destroy our technological achievements, again throwing us back several hundred years.  However, that hasn't happened and is fairly unlikely to occur.  So, we should feel pretty confident that our future generations will still be in the vanguard of human achievement.  

It's pretty reasonable then to assume that our generation has something that is slightly better than previous generations.  There has to be some truth to that.  If I contracted strep throat, I'm going to choose a 2013 doctor over a Middle Ages barber-surgeon. If I needed to send a message to a relative in Africa, I'm going to send an immediate email rather than arrange a 1900's steamboat and an ensuing safari team to have someone reach them.  If I have some current need for toothpaste, milk, and a new knife, I can go to Target today, rather than an apothecary, a farm, and a blacksmith in Ancient Rome.  A strange list, I know.

You can't deny how the modern era has made us a more efficient, healthy, and safe people.  But does the benefit of being born into this particular era enable us to assume we're also intellectually superior to previous generations? 

In school we do get the opportunity to learn the fruits of years' worth of work left behind to us by the likes of Einstein, Curie, Pasteur, etc.;  we can sit in science class and memorize (and immediately forget) these scientist's formulas in just a handful of classes.  Although we get to use their lifelong scientific conclusions for our immediate benefit, the average student isn't automatically considered a genius just because they got a 92 on a physics test. 

I think it's even more so in the fields of philosophy, and more importantly, theology.  Granted I am probably guilty of this myself at some point, but how can anyone today begin to assume that just because we are living in this modern age, that we can summarily dismiss the past as obsolete and worthless?  

Here's what I'm getting at - a common objection to Christianity and the Bible is simply, it's old.  Antiquated, and uninformed.  It's a product of an age where it did apply but "we've moved on."  Surely we do not need to accept the attitudes expressed in this book because it was written thousands of years ago by ignorant and unenlightened brains. 

Ah, I'm glad you said that. 

Such is the opinion of the "Chronocentric."  I was surprised but someone wrote a wikipedia article about it as well which is accurate enough for me.  Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronocentrism

Chronocentrism is just as much a mistake as ethnocentrism.  Ethnocentrism, if you can recall again from school days, is an unmerited belief that your culture is superior to others.  For a quick and crude example, "Americans are better than any other nation.  Our lives are just better."  Ethnocentrism and racism can also be closely related.  And they are both inherently and absolutely wrong.  So is Chronocentrism - assuming that ourselves in our current time are more enlightened and smarter than previous generations.  This is simply not true. 

Think about the classic writers of the Enlightenment, the Declaration of Independence and early democratic ideals, philosophic works over the ages (Plato, Socrates, Kierkegaard, etc), novels, plays, music, ancient evocative poetry like the Odyssey?  (This list is embarrassingly brief, but you get the point.)

If you were to be transported to a room with one of these people and magically spoke the same language, what would you even talk about besides the weather?  A status update you made yesterday?  How stupid traffic is in Atlanta?

The writers of the Bible are no less significant than their secular historical counterparts listed above.  The mystical and mysterious nature of the poetry of Genesis is straightforward enough to serve as a history for an ethnic group (and everyone), but on the other hand is so full of enigma and questions that we'll never understand the answers in this life.  Proverbs contains timeless, though ancient wisdom.  John is a gospel, but reads more like a captivating novel.  And Paul in Romans and his other letters uses intricate and emotional language to dramatically and desperately convey his urgent message.  And it was all written hundreds of thousands of years ago.  

The argument that the Bible was written so long ago by ancients does not diminish or alter their message.  We must treat them as peers and their writings as legitimate, because humans are equals, despite race, culture, and even time.  

Caveat 1 - Obviously there were schools of thought that were antiquated (I'm thinking scientific ones mostly) like the sun rotating around the earth, the heavens are in the clouds, etc.  Also, things like human sacrifice in order for a good harvest, etc.  Obviously, people in the past are like us; they were misguided and made mistakes.  For the purposes of this post, I'm primarily referring to intangible truths gleaned from the Bible, i.e. the theology behind it. 

     Some parts of the bible are time-bound and culturally specific and should be interpreted as such.

Caveat 2 - Just because you respect the literature as being legitimate doesn't mean you have to agree with it.  Obviously I've written under my conviction the Bible is truth, but in reading this you may not have that conviction, which for the purposes of this article is not required.  The purpose is just to make sure we are aware and not thinking "chronocentrically," intentionally or not.  On the flipside, I need to respect the Quran or Bhagavad Gita as written by capable authors, though I don't agree with those particular movements. 

Note - I was listening to a song on the radio the other day, I think it was some kind of marriage equality song which one of the verses mentioned that the opponents of the marriage equality were using the Bible as their basis, and it was "written three thousand years ago" or something to that effect.  Thus the inspiration for this post.