Honduras Missions

The Ritchie Family / Children's Lighthouse

Monday, July 29, 2013

The flame never goes out...

A great day in the LORD yesterday though we were so busy, even skipped breakfast and lunch. Left out at 6am to pick up folks in the city to go with us to the mountain church. Pick up more and more, and shuttle them to another mountain church for a joint service. Thought we fixed a charging problem Sat on the kia. The alternator has not worked for a month. Fixed many others things but not that. Just been charging it at night and driving in the daytime. (old style diesels do not need electric to run). But it burned another wire. So by the end of the day we were push starting it again. The multiple churches attended in several services were filled with soft little pleasantries. I noticed as a whole everyone dressing better for church.. For the first time ever seeing all the ladies in dresses in one church. Makes a difference when you are not just under a tree meeting. Many wanting to sing specials from the hymnals. The teen girl who lost her brother last week singing a special in church. A full offering plate…grant it, it was filled with 5 cent bills…but it was filled! And watching as many make change from the money in the offering… kinda tickles me. Someone giving me a free glass bottle of cold coke to drink on the mountain in a village without electric. Think about that a moment.






The pastor making it a point to pull out his cell turn it off and set it on the corner of the pulpit after making a comment he does not want something of lesser value interrupting our time with God…and several others including young people doing the same. Makes certain lessons easy to teach. A mom of our some of our kids in service highlighting her bible and taking notes, she used to not even want her children. Got a chance to see the baby we helped rush mom off th mountain to deliver. Doing well, but not named yet.
Not a day of great numbers or salvations, but with little blessing testifying of the working of God.
  Talked with one of our pastors who has his son visiting from Nicaragua. He is expressing a desire to preach and do the bible institute. Also found out our pastor has been sleeping in the catholic priest’s house doing a bible study with him when he visits the village we are reaching…I had to laugh. He also found a property to purchase and build a church building on in the village…ok’d by the priest. That is a different tune than our first church plant. I shared my desire about running down the Rio Coco, the 450km river between Nicaragua and Honduras, to visit the 114 indian villages that have no road access. The head waters are near us and it exits on the atlantic side. Our pastors want to do it tommorrow. I don’t think so since it will take 2 weeks on the water and at least 200gal of mixed fuel and hire indian navigators and special dugout boats, lots of funds and time to plan and a gallon of repellant ect. A vision at this point. There was another robbery of a pepsi truck in another of the villages we reach. The same thing killed the security guard cut up the drive and robbed them. 4 youth in a red pick up. Now pepsi trucks have 4 police escorts going to those villages. Took a picture of the well our pastor dug. Near 50 foot deep and still a long way (near ½ mile) to haul water. After our years here, seeing how hard most of the world must work just to exist, I cannot look at the simple luxuries without giving thanks. A young person that sleeps in, staggers out of bed, showers in an instant hot shower, wanders to the kitchen pops out something frozen to make it hot in an instant and heads out to school. Here often the kids get up first, 4am to bring water to the rest of family. ½ mile each way on mountain goat paths with a 5 gal bucket on their head so mom and sisters can make food for the husband and brothers to eat and take to work planting the side of a mountain with corn and beans. It is amazing. Ours is a different struggle

The months are always longer than funds, and needs more than supplies it seems. No diapers for 4 babies, need food to feed 25 mouths, need meds for 4 running fevers, need to pay electric and need $500 for Jr's visa... And still fix a kia... Waiting on another raven in the wilderness. But, believe it or not, a really great week with the LORD in 3 churches.
The boys are still making airplanes out of foam plates and straws, but now on their own. This is the last plate and Enrique built a biplane.  Jr got the nursery wired and we held the first church class in it.  pic of our bank today... been this way a week. The rains come, the wind blows, fuel runs empty, but the flame never goes out......

 

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Cheap Cheap...

Fixed another Kia issue. The rubber intake cracked. Needed another, but could not find one without time and money. So found a cheap old drive shaft, cut, curved it and welded it to fit and reused the old ends to connect it. Presto cheap fix. No more dirt in motor. As I was doing it I thought... Propane is half the cost of diesel here... I can add a line to this and cut my fuel expenses and just add a propane tank from the stove... hmmm diesels will run on up to 80% propane diesel mix.. Just might cheap cheap. I had it on my bus in the USA.
 I was looking up to buy old balsa airplane gliders for the boys and got sticker shock. What happen to the 10 cent ones when I was a kid? Some are $7. Ouch, so do what I do best, make do and just use what we got, and taught the boys how to make cheap airplanes out of straws and foam plates and playdoe. As each finished his own I balanced them and tweaked them so they would fly. The breeze let up enough to toss them off our hill. I think with the right wind they will make it to the church below. When the boys saw they really fly, for a long time, their eyes lit up.
But got interruped by another emergency. A church member's son in Trapeche was shot and killed and they needed to move the body and pick up a casket. Saul was not saved and did not heed family or the pastor's plea just a week ago. We went by the funeral place and got the $100 casket(paneling) they purchased. When we arrived to the body , the casket was a wee short. They shoved him into it anyway. Mark Antonio is staying the night and will do the funeral in the morning. There was also a Pepsi truck security guard shot there Wednesday and the driver robbed and cut up bad with a machete. Something seems wastefully cheap about loosing ones life guarding pepsi. But then any time life is cut short it's wasteful.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Catch up.

Been a month of catch up...and never quite catching up. Broken sinks, snakes in sinks, broken kias, broken bank, broken glasses ect. But in all strangely enough passing stress free. Thank You Lord.

Took the kids out to a local public park. Found another one that looked interesting as I passed last week. I would now clasify it as one of the most dangerous I have ever seen. Yikes. Those who know me know that is saying something. All the kids even Sayder said it was dangeous…umm. So after 30 minutes of thrills I figure we tempted fate long enough and left before the obvious happened. Very poorly thought out and worn out. The Merry-go-Round was 4 feet off the ground wobbly and cement benches within a foot or two all around it. and a sharp metal ladder mounted to it. Looked like a giant veggy dicer. The Maypole was mounted in a bed of bolders in which to bounce a head off of when you fall. It had several metal chairs welded to various rotating motor parts. One was on a big old water pump… with the fan blade still attached so when a kid dismounts while it is moving wack. I like giving the kids thrills but at least use a little common sense…(debatable I know) Photos off a phone. Just never seem to have the camera... Not long after this at home the boys made a rope swing in the trees... over the rocks. All was fine till it wasnt. The rope broke on Wilmer and he hit his head. It was scary the first night with many of the head trama symptoms. But our in house nurse (Jrs wife) and several calls to Drs. and a plea for prayer, it turned out fine. Really scary because had it turned bad as was feared, we did not have the resources do do what was needed, and the only CT scan here is 3 hours away and days for an apointment...The LORD provided the healing. Amen


Had a rare opportunity to preach in a different denomination church who once venomiously opposed us… It was… ok. They did not throw rocks at us, but it was hard to handle some of what they were doing and it made some of our workers ill and had to wait outside. The church accepted the milk message flavored with beef bullion cubes on truth to wet an appetite for deeper truths. Till the invitation when it was said by one of our Bible students, that those who do not trust Jesus as saviour die and go to hell… At that point we were accused of “judging“… The rest is a mute point if we cannot get past that. Not sure if we will be asked back… or if they want more truth. Never even mentioned that some of the things they were doing in their service had roots in satanism and voodoo… though it was in my notes if I could have gotten that far in teaching….There was one who wanted to trust the LORD but was intercepted. Time to let the spirit work, I gave the message the LORD gave me.

Good church Sunday though attendance was down, strong message by a bible student. Several out with dengue including Jr's wife. Had a couple of visitors who have not come in a long time. After taking everyone home I got a call and the kia "bus" was needed as a 4wd "ambulance". One of our church ladies in the mountain was going into labor...a month early. Out of fuel and out of money in the house, I had to borrow some to make the run. Still unknown condition of mom and baby when I came home. While we were at the Drs office last week with our kids, another mom died during delivery because she arrived late with complications. One of our babies (Ruth) we have is from a mom who did not survive childbirth... and no one came to claim her body or the premature baby.
Monday made the return trip up the mountain for baby and mom. She gave birth to a 3 week early baby boy at midnight. Got a call at 9am to take them back home. She walked out of the hospital carrying the baby and walked the last hard km to her house because the kia (or anything else) cannot make it there. So 12 hours after giving birth with no pain meds she hikes home with baby. I got her some premie formula and a bottle to suppliment a little. He is a little guy but fully functioning. The lady next to her in the hospital died giving birth. Kind of raw here.
Then went to try and get an alignment only to find we need to tweek the frame more and in the process of the alignment the mech shorted the wiring harness, while fixing that found another problem. The intake is broken and has been sucking in dirt to the newly rebuilt motor.. weee... arrived home at 8:30pm and a pillow was screaming my name.
Fixed a pair of temp glasses. Found frames in the glasses the Dr left, slightly smaller than my broken frames. Took them to a eye dr here and he cut the lenses down to fit the donated frames. They are small but I can see and it only cost $10. Will need new ones when the LORD provides.

Want to share a couple of post from the FB account.
1-The highest glory for me is not that I might seek to hear "Well done thy good a faithful servant". For I am neither good, nor faithful. My highest honor is not in my ability or falsely perceived value, it is in Christ's blood. For only by it am I allowed in the presence of the LORD to touch the hem of His garment, where I can cry out "LORD have mercy on me, a sinner." Anything else the LORD does is by His grace for His Glory....
2-In ministry, I have always been on the fringe. You know, the lowest part of the hem of the garment that is often in contact with the dirt... the part most others do not want to dirty themselves with. And I am good with that because I have seen the power and virtue of God, it most often flows out the hem of His garment...
Unworthy servant to a worthy Saviour,
Barry Ritchie

 


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