Honduras Relief Efforts, INC.
December 15, 2018
Once more, another year has been completed with the December visit. David Lantz and Elizabeth Cunningham, Dawn, MO., and I traveled to Honduras the first week of December to complete our distributions to your sponsored children and their families. Each child in our program received their new school uniforms as well as hygiene items, their monies from each of you and Christmas gifts for them and their families. Nina was unable to travel with us this trip due to some health issues. However, we were able to visit with her by phone several times a day to get direction and to share progress.
Thanks to the assistance once more by Connie Cunningham through Scholastic Books, two schools received several hundred children’s books in Spanish. Also, notebooks, pencils and other school supplies were shared with the students. So many of the schools in Honduras have little or no paper, chalk, pencils, and certainly few work-books, not to mention a total lack of children’s books for reading and enjoyment.
Because David, Elizabeth and Patricia Wever, along with their faithful local volunteer team, were able to have two garage sales again this year, they once more purchased food for 140 families as well as large quanities of adult, children and prenatal vitamins and over-the-counter pain medications. Nina and I, as well, delivered a large amount of other over-the-counter medications to those who need this assistance as medications are often non-existent for those in the rural villages.
Three bicycles were delivered to children who need transportation to school. A grade school boy with special needs who has learned to read with the assistance of an exceptional teacher, was given the gift of prescription glasses to be able to continue to improve academically with help by being able to have improved vision. I was able to take two wheelchairs from home to Honduras for needful persons and we are in the process of negotiating having a bed with rails to be built for one of our sponsored children who was born with spina bifida. In all three villages, we were able to set up “free stores” to hand out hygiene items, clothes, shoes, small toys, wash clothes and other beneficial items for our families and other community members. Special Effort was made to include the elderly poor to receive needed items from the “free stores.”
On two days, we were able to have a group of Volunteer Firemen assist with the distributions. One of these Volunteer Firemen for several years has been and continues to be sponsored through HRE. These volunteers are selected by the school principal recommending this young person, followed by an interviewing process. It is an honor to be selected and we are all quite proud of this young man, who continues to benefit because of our program.
We continue to have the support of our local (and invaluable) Honduran volunteer team including Alejandro Chavez and Dinorah Ayala, along with their 8 year old son, who provide our transportation, feed us well, and gift us with Invaluable Hospitality. Yisella, our Page Rounkles Angels recipicant, who continues to thrive amazing well with the sponsorship of a branch of Honduras Relief Effort, again joined us daily to work along side of us. She will be 20 years old this Christmas Day! She is surely one of our Greatest Joys!
Because we had a few days of extended time in Honduras, we were able to visit one of the six Lenca indigeous Native American Indian communities in southwestern Honduras. We traveled three hours one way up into the mountains to one of the most isolated and poorest villages, where, with the assistance of two local Lions Club Honduran men, we were able to deliver food, clothes, shoes and a box of Scholastic School Books. It was a long, exhausting day as the roads were only passible with four-wheel drive vehicles. The Quiet Gratitude expressed by this community was powerfully humbling.
During our many hours of traveling with some of our volunteers, we were able to discuss the desperateness of those in Honduras pleading for safeness from violence and even death, adequate food and clean water, medical care and an adequate education. To have HOPE is priceless. To loose HOPE is to loose everything. Jesus spoke so simply and so profoundly regarding allowing the children to come to him. (Luke 18:16) This Holy One who’s birthday we celebrate this month made no distinguishments regarding the children’s ethnic backgrounds, their special needs, their gender, or their geographical locations. And are we all not Children of the Great Creator?
Should you know of someone who might be interested in being a sponsor for a child through Honduras Relief Effort, INC., please feel free to contact us. As little as 15 dollars a month can help a child stay in school, have a little extra to eat and create a sense of potential life-time improved self-worth. You can contact us through our website, Honduras Relief Effort, INC.: email Nina Adams, the HRE Director: nina1962@earthlink.net or contact Nina by phone: 1-407-277-9920.
Blessings to you and yours this Christmas Season and Every Day. May the Bright Light of Hope Never Fade.
Louis Adams.
Honduras Relief Efforts Inc. 