HONDURAS, 2009

A Mission Team from Meadow Grove leaves March 26, 2009, for a week in Honduras. The Mission Team will complete several mission projects. The team will install a clean water system at a local church in San Buena Ventura. The church will pay for the water system, set up the system, and train the local Hondurans how to run and maintain the system. Clean water is important because most Hondurans get their water from a lake or stream and the water is filled with bacteria. Clean water is used for babies, drinking, and cooking.

Church members and some members from the Honduran community will be trained to operate and maintain the system. They will also train others that cannot attend the training sessions led by our team. Meadow Grove will supply 100 5 gallon bottles to transport the water. There is a small charge to the users of the system. The money raised will go to maintain the system and to buy more bottles when needed. Water will be provided at no charge to widows, the elderly, and the very poor. The church will deliver water to the elderly.

Carolyn Thornton, Steve King, Marie Montague, and Neal and Aubrey Broome went to Honduras in 2008. They helped with Bible schools, activities for children, worked in a medical clinic and soup kitchen, helped install a water system, and helped build a house and garden on that trip. They returned to Brandon with a desire to lead a larger team from Meadow Grove.

The church has enthusiastically supported another trip to Honduras. Carolyn, Steve, and Buck Roberts went to special training classes to learn how to locate a suitable location for a water system, encourage the local residents to agree to install and maintain the system, install the system, and teach the people the importance of the system, how to use it properly and how to maintain the system. These three went to Honduras in early 2009 to make final preparations for the March Mission trip. They gained valuable experience by helping install a system in another location, teaching training classes and meeting the people for whom we will install the system. A gospel presentation was made during each training session. The training sessions were attended by almost eighty citizens.

The team will also help complete a house for Marcos Hernandez. Marcos works on a plantation. He works 10-12 hours a day for five dollars a day. He has a wife and four children. His wife works, too. The plantation owner let them live in a house on the plantation, but the building collapsed. He is now living in a house with a dirt floor, but has to move out of that house soon. He has started building a small house. He buys bricks as he can and works on the house when he can. Meadow Grove has decided to help him finish the house. The cost for materials to complete the house is about $3,700. Team members will work to complete the house during the trip in March. Church members can contribute by buying a brick for $20.00.

Team members will also have a Bible School for children and a Bible study for women. There will also be sports activities for the children. These activities will be carried on in four different villages. Our mission team will also build a fence around a building containing a water system in El Eden. The team will make improvements and repairs at a Soup Kitchen in El Jaral. Meadow Grove Church members have donated clothes, toiletry items, and candy to give to children in Honduras. One Meadow Grove member made more than 100 clothing items for children.

Meadow Grove works with Salt & Light Ministries in Honduras. Carolyn Thornton plans to stay in Honduras and work with Salt & Light for a few months after the team returns.

Mission team members pay their own expenses which include: air fare, housing, meals, transportation, and translator costs in Honduras. The church raised the money for the water system, a building to house the system, manuals, materials for the training classes, materials for the house, materials for repairs at the Soup Kitchen, Bible study material, and charges for taking extra containers with clothes and supplies, and other trip related costs.

Mission Team members from Meadow Grove Baptist Church are:

Michael Brewer, Neal & Aubrey Broome, Jeri Bullard, Sheri Carter, Melanie Hardin, Stephanie Hardin, Steve King, Darlene Lewis, Lou McDaniel, Marie Montague, Buck Roberts, Sammy & Dinah Scoggin, Greg & Melissa Taylor, Carolyn Thornton, Melissa Wells.

Team members from other churches: T.K. Dunn, Phyllis Ray, Luz Relyea, Robert & Pat Tisdale, and Kenneth & Helen Underwood

VBS - crayons, colored pencils, pencils, pencil sharpeners, big erasers, stickers, spiral notebooks, biblical coloring books, bubbles, Smarties and/or Tootsie Rolls

Soup Kitchen - dish towels, oven mitts, big spoons and ladles, plastic bowls, plastic spoons

Women's Bible Study/Health Class - Everything needs to be travel size for these items: lotion, shampoo, soap, body spray, deodorant, Chapstick, toothpaste, comb or brush.

You may bring your donations and leave them in a collection box in the church hallway.